Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

This blog is not about the technology, but I couldn’t help myself tonight. I opened my brand new MacBook Pro this afternoon. The box had arrived a week ago, but was delivered after I had left to go to the Naace conference. A colleague had offered to bring it with him, but I declined. How could I set it up and start using it while in Torquay? I was dreading transferring all those files, emails (I have over 15,500 on my hard disk) and re-installing my applications. The switch to the Intel processor meant that none of them were likely to work anyway, and I’d have to be downloading patches and upgrades all night, I assumed.

The backlog meant it was lunchtime before I opened the box, plugged in, switched on, and the intro screen started. The first thing it asked me was whether I already owned a Mac and would I like everything transferred. “Yeah, sure this is going to work”, I thought as I connected my five year old Powerbook G4 to the new machine with a firewire cable and off they went. It took about an hour and a half, while every-so-often we all looked on incredulously, thinking I was wasting my time, as it transferred, files, applications and settings. Finally, it booted and a familiar desktop appeared. I loaded Word first, it worked, even though it’s two versions old, then Firefox, no problem, straight to my home page, email the same, then printing and finding the network server etc. etc. The only item it reported that would need to be re-installed was my Microsoft mouse, and that works perfectly.

Now I’m not one to crow about hardware platforms, and never bother to enter into the Mac / Windows rivalry unless riled, but we could do with some of this ease when it comes to using ICT in education.