Waiting for the White Cat

I'm getting ready to get my wife off that horrible XP machine and on to a Mac. I wish I could say that she finally gave into my arguments, but it was "60 Minutes" show on viruses and hackers that finally convinced her.

The only application we run on that XP is QuickBooks. Thankfully, they have a Mac OS X version and when I visited the web site to see what features it might lack, I found that it lacks nothing I need and that it was being offered at half the usual price. I bought it instantly - when I checked back today, the half price offer was gone.. I guess that "Today Only" was real.

Exporting Windows data and importing it to the Mac version was quick and simple. We're not ready to actually use that yet, but I wanted to make sure it would work - it does, and nicely. Menus seem to be the same, the reports I need are all there and produce the same results.. this is a zero-issue switch.

But we do still need to buy the Mac. I decided on a Mac Mini because we are limited for desk space and I already have a nice monitor that I hardly ever use. I already have a spare Mac keyboard and mouse too - again, things I very seldom use, so that lets us cut the price to the bare machine plus a little extra memory that I can buy cheaply anywhere. I looked around for deals but really couldn't do a lot better than Apple's regular price at a store - the discounters all add shipping that eats up any price savings.

While searching for memory prices, I came across this Mac Mini RAM Upgrade Tutorial. Uggh.. that's not fun. I think I'll just buy it with the extra RAM from Apple.

I'd love to run over to the Apple store today and just do it. I have to see a customer near to it anyway, so I'd be saving a trip. But there's that darn Snow Leopard, rumored to be coming out "soon", but who knows when? I don't want to buy this thing with Leopard and then have to upgrade it two months later. If I knew that Snow Leopard was going to be a low priced upgrade as some think it should be (because it isn't adding a lot of "new"), I would, but if it is the more usual pricing, I don't want to waste the money - we've suffered this XP for many a year, we can stand it for a few more weeks or months.

Come on, Snow Leopard - I'm waiting!