I am not a technical person. I have been using Apple computers for the past 20 years for their ease of use and the wide range of available applications. I was more than happy to upgrade to the iMac. And when it came time to upgrade to OS 9.1, I noticed that for the same money ($99) I could get Mac OS X which included a copy of Mac OS 9.1 for the same amount. Nothing to lose! Or so I thought.

Installation; The instruction manual was very straight forward in what to do to install it. But it does not tell the whole story. Having tried the public pre-release beta and not liking it, I purged it from my system. Or so I thought.

What the instructions don't tell you is that if you tried the pre-release version, you have to reformat (dump all and start over) your hard drive. Once this is done, you are in business.

Using It; Your new desk top is a thing of beauty. Ah, aqua blue. And if that's not enough, check out all of the groovy desk top patterns that you may choose from. (Sorry about the 1960's slang but it really is appropriate here.)

What? You want more? Then there is "The Dock". The early versions of the Mac had this only then it was called a "Launcher". It is still annoying as it takes up way too much room on the bottom of the computer. I really do not need a one inch trash can on my screen. But not to worry, you may adjust the size of "The Dock" or make it disappear all together except for when you lower your mouse to the bottom of your screen and then it reappears when you least want it to. I may be old fashioned but if I have a program that I work with all of the time, I just simply leave it on my desk top where it is handy and it does not take up much room.

Email, Internet; I actually like the email layout. It is simple to use and organize. It is also easy to do searches. Using the internet, works about the same as with past versions of OS.

An added bonus here is that the system is less prone to crashing. And when it does, it may only shut down part of what you are doing so you may not have to restart everything.

OS X Applications; Mac OS X may be the information superhighway of the future but if it doesn't lead anywhere, why bother driving on it. On my computer, I run programs that make news letters, make listings for eBay, upload items to the internet, work with photographs, and run PC applications on my Apple. I also own a scanner and a printer. Now I know that several companies have plans to someday offer all of these applications in the OS X environment. Some are available now, for a fee. But most applications that I now use have yet to even have a date of release announced.

For those programs; I can run in the classic Mac OS 9.1 environment, as I am now doing. So why bother?

Mac OS X may be the wave of the future but why be the guinea pig? Wait and see what applications are available for it and what they will cost. Are the programs that you like to work with available and if they are, do you gain anything? And ultimately, if Mac OS X doesn't obtain market share by the end of the year, it will not matter how good it is.

For now, don't bother with OS X.

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