When I received the Powerbook, it didn’t take long to get it going. I set up a wireless connection to my existing network at home, which includes two printers, an Ubuntu-based linux fileserver, a windows server, and a Powermac running 10.2.8 Jaguar. It took me longer to find the WEP password than it did to set it up.
The new Powerbook came with iLife ’05, which has an updated version of iTunes on it. I was not about to re-rip my entire cd collection into the new laptop, so I used podworks to move 4000+ songs from my iPod into iTunes on the new laptop.
Now, I needed to make the machine suitable for daily work. I installed the Verizon software for my KPC-650 cellular modem and it worked immediately. I have read that you need windows to activate the card, but since I had already used it in my windows laptop I didn’t have a problem with activation. It works well and I can ping sites by name and IP, so dns resolution is working fine. The pings showed the latency is much lower than my current satellite internet connection.
OK, now I have internet access. Safari works fine, but I need to test sites in several browsers to ensure they are compatible. Let’s start with FireFox 2.0.0.1 – it installs easily and I grab the bookmarks.html file from my windows laptop and instantly I have all of my bookmarks available on the Mac. Nice.
Next is email. I use Thunderbird, so I grab 1.5.0.9 and install it. Now to move my mail from Thunderbird running on my Linux server to the Mac.