At this month’s meeting members approved spending up to $1000 for a newer Mac. Club member Christine Takerian spoke to her friends at Simutek for us, and yesterday Darwin and I went down and purchased a 21″ Intel-based iMac running OS X Mavericks, with wireless mouse and keyboard, for $790 plus tax. It’s now available in the club rooms for searching Ancestry or FamilySearch. Mac users are encouraged to take it out for a spin during its 30-day free warranty. It looks awesome!

We have not yet installed Family Tree Maker or Reunion or any other desktop genealogy software. Let your Board members know what you’d like to see.

Printing: I removed the old printer attached to the Mac to make room for the larger monitor. The Mac now prints via WiFi to the black HP printer, the same as the PCs do.

Wireless keyboard & mouse: there is one unresolved issue with these. They are Bluetooth devices and the Mac seems to forget about them when it goes to sleep. Each has an on/off switch on the back, and turning the mouse or keyboard off and back on again fixes it. The old wired USB set is available in the cabinet. I don’t know yet whether there’s a problem with the devices themselves, or whether they’re just not configured properly. This will be fixed by Monday. Please give me a call if you’re having trouble.

Thanks to Ron Ancell for noticing Sunday’s Simutek ad and to Christine for her help.