I am a visual artist, whom has many muses spanning many types of media. 10 years ago I worked for the author of "DRUMMING AT THE EDGE OF MAGIC' and "PLANET DRUM' I was the low woman on the totem pole in the ART REQUISITION (and eventual return) department. It was here I encountered my first mac,,,,I wrote letters to museums, kept track of the art transparencies and all that office stuff. My experience with the learning curve of those macs was typical-a week or two of struggling to remember the tricks, one afternoon of tears and thinking I would never get it, followed immediately with a breakthrough of understanding and awe...

I was lucky enough to work part time for an all mac music publishing office after that, too. And learned a lot more cool mac tricks.

I have never owned a computer of my own before april fools day this year. Not because I was rebelling or switching brands (like dish soap or laundry detergents) but because It would do me the most justice doing the things I wanted to do, I BOUGHT MYSELF A G4 TITANIUM POWERBOOK.

My plan was to record music live, so with the powerbook I also got a Motu 896 firewire interface. I did not want to schlep tons of stuff to gigs, just a laptop, the interface, and mics+ cords, etc. The multitrack music scene was put on the back burner due to the lack of drivers for the 896, and I refused to partition the hard drive on a brand new machine as a workaround for using '9'.. waiting for what surely should be a brief time on development of the appropriate software. The drivers still are not ready! But I don't care,

The folks at my local music store told me that music processing and graphics were a bad combination on a computer, and not to do it. They had yet to understand how magnificent os X is at multitasking and not hogging and hoarding memory!

I am the proud home network administrator of 2 macs, a lacie firewire 120gb external D2 hard drive, 2 printers, airport base station, all my audio engineer gear in the racks, my digital camera,I waded the morass of connectivity hell and beat the DSL monster, and after all that and more have become the default mac guru to whom all computer questions must be asked. In our gang of musicians and creatives, we all have macs! Well, there are 2 PC's in the family-One was home built, the other was bought because the guy talked her into it with lies, but the machine is working out for them anyway.

As a result of my husband and I with our new this year macs, at least 3 new macs have been purchased by our friends!! And all without saying anything remotely negative about the PC. Lots of people have them, but not me!

the mac is special. My powerbook is a traffic stopper, I LOVE IT SO MUCH, and now I get to do art without getting all dirty or trashing my studio. I take it places with me to process images. My cats vye to sit on top of it when I'm not watching , Because it is nice and warm, My oldest cat (17 years) just leans on it when I work it is just adorable!

SO thanks for the visionary work!!!There is so much more to say, But that's enough for me tonight

Sincerely,