[G4] Buying your own work computer

[jonny]

>Goodness gracious, I thought I was the only one that bought his own 
>computer at work.
>When running Subcontracts for ElectroCom Automation back in 1986. 
>The company furnished me with
>a Kay Pro running CPM.
<snip>

Mine was a Televideo TS-802.  CPM, wordstar, datastar.  Two 5-inch 
floppies.  I used it for 6 years to run a small service business with 
reminders, mail merge, etc.  I did quite a bit of writing with it 
too.  The printer was a "letter quality" daisy wheel with a wide 
carriage; it cost $1700 in early '80's dollars.  The Televideo cost 
$4800, paid for with a tax credit (which helped jump-start the 
industry).  If I recall correctly, the Televideo had 6K of memory.

Then I met the Mac SE.  And I was in love.  Along came an SE 30 to 
which I added 2 MB of RAM @ something like $50 per MB.  Then the next 
generation, a desktop mac, then a 540C laptop ($4200!!; still use it 
on occasion), then a powercenter clone, then a PPC 450, and seven 
years later, nearly two years ago... I acquired my most wonderful, 
1.25 ghz MDD that I refurbished & fully-loaded before putting into 
service.  Then I added a very clean, used 23" Apple HD (acrylic) 
monitor.  A terrific machine & monitor for anything!  But oh,  I 
digress... Back to the SE.

I was able to take an adobe pagemaker (desktop publishing) class at 
the local community college and asked the instructor if I might bring 
my mac in & use it.  She said "You certainly may".  Educators knew 
about macs.  I was auditing the class (I paid regular fees, but 
wanted knowledge, not credits. and it also allowed that I didn't 
submit to tests), so she also allowed me to apply my lessons to 
something I was doing at work.

Right off I knew I was the black sheep in this flock.  When the rest 
of the class was booting up and monkeying around trouble-shooting 
(!!?), I was up, running, and working on my lessons immediately.  I 
knew I was on the right track with mac, but can you imagine desktop 
publishing with a 9" monochrome monitor?  I did it, and produced some 
pretty good work.  Printouts on a $6000 600 dpi laser printer at the 
local mac store for "photo quality artwork".  I used a backpack made 
for the SE to take it to class.

Just wanted to share this experience, for those who also went from 
CPM to Mac.  It was an exciting time.

Thanks, Robert, for reminding me!

jonny

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