West Hill House

As many of you know Peter, in his spare time, is a Certified Mac Consultant. As we have noticed that a large percentage of our guests are also Mac users, we thought you might be interested in some non-techie useful tips and insights from time to time.

As this part of our blog will be written exclusively by Peter, it will be written in the first person ongoing…

A little history: I have been using Macs since they were launched in 1984. Then in 2005, after “retiring” from a full time career in the Telecoms business, I took a trip to the “mother ship” in Cupertino for training and subsequent certification as a member of the Apple Consultants Network.

So to tips and insights. Starting from the top, if you are not yet using Snow Leopard, it’s time! With the OSX 10.6.2 release and some updates of major apps like Microsoft Office and Quickbooks, virtually all the initial teething issues with Snow Leopard have been resolved.

Of course Snow Leopard requires an Intel based Mac. If you still have one of those old steam powered PowerPC based machines it REALLY is time to make the shift. You are just wasting your precious time with the slower processors, reduced functionality and – for laptops – shorter battery life. Remember that time is the fundamental non-renewable resource! And increasingly new apps and app updates will be for Intel Macs only.

And my top picks for hardware? For desktops the MacMini is an amazing machine for 90% of Mac users. Match it up with your existing LCD monitor – or buy a new one, as there are lots of bargains these days. (Make sure the LCD has a DVI input.) For laptops go for a non-glare MacBookPro – the $50 premium for non-glare is well worth it (available on the 15 and 17 inch models).

So that’s it for starters. If you do have questions post a comment. I’ll try to reply to all of them, and deal with questions that likely have general interest in a future blog.

Peter a.k.a. Mr Mac