A laptop for my travels...

The 1984 Mac commercial.

Mark asked me what my new Mac (the Macbook Air) is like.

Well, it is all very lovely - sleek, silver, thin and (relatively) lightweight.

It will fit inside an envelope, as seen in their ads, albeit a B4 envelope. I will be keeping it in an envelope when travelling. It has thin tapered edges and so when it is in the envelope it does not look bulky, or square, at all and hopefully it will just be one more defence.

After 25 years of using a mouse and a number pad to the right of the keyboard, it is taking a little while to adjust to the touch pad. But it works well and is fascinating how it gives different responses to one, two or three finger caresses. The pinching and rotating movements are easy to use on the touch pad as well. Others will no doubt be familiar with this sort of thing but it is all new to me.

The programs are ones I am familiar with, so nothing new there. It is just a matter of customising them for the road.

Finally, it is a child of the wireless generation (although I am taking an ethernet connector as a fall-back position!). There was something surreal yesterday to be sitting in a comfortable armchair, at a large shopping centre, wirelessly connected to the internet. I just need to figure out easy ways of finding out where wi-fi connection points are without having to start the computer and 'look' for networks.

Earlier yesterday morning our Scottish relatives called (via Skype) so I took the laptop into the bedroom and we both sat in bed doing a video call. Cute. Presumably I could take it to the gazebo and use it there. (I say presumably because it is raining at present. So many good things happening at once!)

So, I have 10 days to learn the ways of the machine. Haven't even named it yet. All my other Mac have had ladies names, largely due to Margaret declaring that they are my mistresses.

Next Monday I will cross over to using it for all my computing, blogging, email etc so that I am quite at home with it before I actually leave home.
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