Normally, when Coupang delivers something, I get several notifications. The most expensive thing I've ever purchased on Coupang, my new 2019 iMac, arrived on the 27th, and I got no notification at all. Figures. Coupang originally said the computer would arrive on June 2, but sometimes, deliveries come early. I was randomly checking the status of a different order when I saw the "delivery complete" notification for my Mac. I went down to our building's front desk, got the computer (it's a monster), and brought it up to my place. I'm in the midst of setting everything up, but for the moment, the machine works beautifully. A couple pics:
This iMac has a 27-inch screen, which is at least twice the diagonal width of my laptop's screen. It's also got a teeny little wireless keyboard with the "Chiclet" keys that Macs have made (in)famous. I noticed that the Korean/English key is located in a different spot from where it is on a regular Windows keyboard here in Korea; that's going to take some getting used to. The computer was supposed to come with a terabyte's worth of memory, but I haven't verified that yet (looks more like 800 GB). The mouse is also wireless; it can be recharged, though, as can the keyboard. I have plenty of USB sockets in the back of the computer, so I no longer have to play musical chairs with my various peripherals.
I'm in the midst of re-downloading what I can, as well as purchasing new versions of old programs (which is a drag) like MS Office, Photoshop Elements, and Adobe Acrobat Pro. More hits to the wallet, and it's a pain to reinstall everything. Luckily, I didn't lose much, this time, when my laptop died: I have my entire movie-review-book manuscript archived in the Cloud thanks to Google Drive. Re-downloading everything will be a snap, especially since I haven't gotten very far with the manuscript yet. Still, I'd like to get back into my laptop if I can, if for no other reason than to be absolutely sure I've rescued everything I can. Alas, I think the poor MacBook Air has been definitely killed by yours truly; there may be no resuscitating it.
In the meantime, I'm writing this blog entry on my new computer. Feels good!
My tired old eyes love that big monitor. But my fat old fingers wouldn't be able to type "qvit" without f'n it up.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what a kyu-vit is, but I'd find that difficult to type, too.
ReplyDeleteThat keyboard would give me nightmares. Can you get a "normal" one to replace it, or would it not be compatible with the Mac?
ReplyDeleteAlso, a terabyte seems like an awful lot of memory--you mean disk space, right? At least on Windows systems, the amount of actual space you have on a drive is less than advertised due to differences in units. Namely, the space is actually measured in tebibytes, which are larger than terabytes (or gibibytes, which are large than gigabytes). So if you have a 1TB drive, the OS will show that as being around .909 TB, assuming there is nothing else on the drive. Add in hidden files, etc. and it is possible to end up around 800 GB (which is actually 800 GiB).
Again, though, that's how it works on Windows systems. No idea if the same thing applies to Macs.
Tebibytes and gibibytes, eh? I apparently have a lot to learn.
ReplyDeleteDo I mean disk space? I don't even know anymore. I mean whatever number I get when I click on the Mac's "storage" tab when I'm looking that statistic up.
Yep. "Storage" refers to the amount of space on the hard drive. "Memory" is your computer's short-term memory. This is where your computer will load applications, etc. in order to run them. You don't need nearly as much memory as storage; on my office computer, I have over a TB of storage but only 8 GB of RAM (memory).
ReplyDeleteAs I may have told you, I was a Comp Sci major before I switched to English, so I have a slightly greater than normal interest in computers. They still baffle me most of the time.
I have a very talky American coworker who is also a computer nerd, but whenever he explains something to me, I end up having to listen to a ten-minute-long discourse about the background of whatever my problem was, the various solutions available for it, and implications for future computers. I'm old, crotchety, and impatient, and I often just want to say, "Shut up and just fix the damn problem. That's all I care about."
ReplyDeleteEven though computers fascinate me on some level, I've never felt much desire to dig into their inner workings. I went through a computer-science course back in high school; I learned Pascal but don't remember a thing now. I was too mentally lazy to get into programming, doing only what I needed to get a good grade, but after the course was done, I never focused on computer science again. I regret that sometimes. These days, I'm little more than a mere consumer of Apple products.
Charles,
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question: I looked online, and there are indeed less Chiclety, more "standard" wireless keyboards available for iMac. I'll need to look more closely at how they're supposed to recharge, though; my iMac came with a charger cord that works to charge both the keyboard and the mouse. The desktop itself is used as the power source. Also: my current iMac keyboard is Korean-standard, so maybe buying a new keyboard off American Amazon is a bad idea. Coupang?
Yeah, I would see about getting a Korean-standard keyboard.
ReplyDeleteAs for computer literacy, I get it. I'd be lying to you if I pretended that I was up on all the latest computer knowledge. The truth is that I know the bare minimum and that's about it. It's just requires too much time and effort to keep up with a field that changes so quickly. For example, did you know that we actually have quantum computers now? This stuff makes my brain hurt.