DP 2.5 Ghz G5 Received and Setup

"Sittin' on the dock of West Hall, watching the time roll away..."

I will never choose Ground shipping when I buy from Apple, or any other vendor again. FedEx Ground has until 8 PM to deliver, and as I found out Friday, it does not seem to matter if the delivery address is a business or not.

When my G5 did not show by 5 PM, and the web site said it was on the truck for delivery, I started calling FedEx. I had to talk to 5 people and did not get through to the person I needed to on the first call, but I finally confirmed that my G5 would show up by 7 PM. I had to confirm with FedEx that I would be there at 7 PM as well. So I grabbed a chair and sat on the dock behind West Hall. I got some of my Economics reading done, so it was not a complete waste of time.

Once you start up a G5 for the first time you are prompted to transfer files from an old Mac. I have heard of this Setup Assistant feature but never have I seen it first hand. I have to say that the hour it took to transfer all my files (about 50 GB of stuff, lots of video too) saved me probably 10 fold in time installing and setting up preferences.

What I am very impressed with is that my unix apps came over, even though they are not in my user Library folder. I use POPFile, which uses SQLite, as well as a number of perl modules. I was sure I would have to install POPFile on my G5, and I did not have to do a thing. How wonderful is that! The only thing that was not transfered was the Developer folder with all the developer tools and 'developer' unix apps. This was a quick install however as this package installer is provided in the Installers folder.

The only casualty of using the Setup Assistant is that iSync thinks your new computer is your old computer. You have to delete the "old computer" name and then you are set. Not a huge problem, just something to be aware of, because you cannot keep two computers in sync if they are both named the same thing.

Article Author: Ken Edwards

Ken Edwards is the Gaming Editor at Blogcritics, and calls Breaking Windows home. Ken works part time for Student Publications at BGSU as the Webmaster and System Administrator. He is also a freelance web developer.

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