If you thought this blog might be another dog story, sorry to disappoint you, it isn't. My Mom bought her very first laptop computer. And it just so happens to be an Apple macbook. I am a HUGE mac fan, user, promoter, addict, etc... so, when she told me she was going to order this new macbook, I told her that if she did anything at all extra, she needed to get HIGH speed internet. I offered to help her set up her wireless connection and was more than happy to teach her all she would need to know about her new macbook.

It took her almost a month to decide which internet package she wanted to purchase from her provider. Finally, the weekend came when I could travel 3.5 hours north to my home town and spend quality time with her on our new adventure of the www. My first night there I had to set up the connection to the internet itself. She used to have dial up (on a 5 yr Dell) and we needed to change some of her phone connections, there were a few too many plugs where there weren't supposed to be. With this now being DSL, it was pretty easy and I expected a fairly quick set up. I hit a snag though, had to call for support, but luckily with my tech lingo knowledge, the system support person on the other end had a relatively easy time. I imagined the conversation he and my Mom might have had. And wondered how frustrated she might have been.

By the next day, we were able to get down to business. We went through the basics of the mac operating system, then continued with apps. Of course we had a few interruptions, between Dad's PT appointment, friends visiting them to see how they are doing. (last July, mom's knee replacement and this past February, dad's quad bypass). Oh, did I mention they are still really working? Yes, they own a 163 storage unit business and mom needed to work on statements too, picking the end of the month to visit might not have been the best time to go after all. While working on her old PC and making statements, and after my sister created a new documents for her business in order for her to transfer onto the macbook, it wasn't quite the right choice after all. I needed to start from scratch, making her an entire new data base and layouts for the business. Now at this point I am thinking, ... teach her a NEW OS, new software, and now NEW way to do her statements??? yikes... is she really going to be able to handle this? I also had to teach her some tech terms like, browser, window, scroll, trackpad, homepage, I think you get the point.

Mom and Pops, I LOVE them!!!

Mom was a real trooper and pretty eager to learn about her new laptop. I had great success saving her old "works" file to a simple text file so I could import all her clients info into the new database. Next was setting up her printer, she bought a new HP7200 series, wireless capable too. Very slick, got it to work perfect.

By Monday, we had tackled some real intense learning time. Finally, I got to show her the fun stuff like photo booth, itunes, garage band, iphoto and ichat. She already had an aol account so setting up her ichat was a breeze of course. So here came the real fun part, she was thrilled with audio and video chat but when it came to the screen sharing...she was ecstatic. I left Tuesday leaving her with confidence and thinking she really would be fine and if she had any questions or problems, I was only going to be a "chat" away. She was even beginning to talk some tech talk, it was pretty cool.

...and last night was the ultimate test, ichat is pretty awesome, I was able to screen share with her from 200 miles away. She was truly amazed. Troubleshooted her questions and created a new word document on HER laptop from Spfld. I am pretty confident she is going to do very well with her new macbook. A new computer, a new lesson, who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?