Bonnie's New Computer and iPhoto 08

I had planned to work on my flight-plan to Duluth for next week, but was sidetracked when one of the teachers from our school called. Her name is Bonnie, coincidentally the same as my wife. She does pre-K early intervention work and is a wonderful persson. The district gave her a new computer on the last day of school, but did not set it up. I know she wanted to practice with it this summer, so I went over to see if I could help.

Turns out Office 2004 (including mail) was not loaded. I learned a new trick last week; you can boot up a Mac in "target mode" and it acts like an external hard drive. I took her old laptop, booted it in target mode and then copied all her programs and files to her new computer. We checked everything out without any issues. We then spent some time looking around her new Leopard system. She loved "spaces" as well as the document preview and widgets. I know she is going to enjoy playing with it this summer.

On her personal Mac she has a lot of pictures but didn't really know how to do anything with them, so we talked about what she wanted to do and decided iPhoto combined with Google's Picasa web albums would work the best. When we upgraded her setup to iPhoto 08 (since that is also what's on her new notebook), it was amazing. It reorganized her photos and set up the new interface. Its very cool. One cool feature is when you search a subject for help (like combining events), it actually tells you and shows you what to do, not just describes it. Very slick. Signing up for her Google account was quick and we downloaded the iPhoto plug-in for Picasa (why we chose this approach).

She can now put her photo's in iPhoto, select the ones she wants for an album, upload them to Google to store, email her friends the location and send them to Snapfish with just a few clicks. All inside iPhoto 08 and all free (except for the cost of printing her pictures) She is going to the Tetons this summer and is excited to try out her new photo capability. She might even bring her notebook and upload her pictures as she goes.

My good deed for the week (setting up her computer and teaching her pictures) was made easy because of the capabilities and simple interface of Apple products. Yes, I am a real fan now.

I promise not to do all my posts on Apple and technology (although I will do some on the new cool tools I am practicing with for next year's class). Upcoming entries will focus on my upcoming trip to Duluth and having a great time flying myself in my Cirrus.