Oh, by the way, I, too, am now a Mac User!

I know I was saying I would be practical and all that, but after having my current laptop shut down three times this morning in less than 10 minutes for no apparent reason at all... Well, I know the reason, there's some sort of electrical short. And it's totally random. Sometimes it will go days, weeks, without shutting down out of the blue. But the past week, it's been doing it quite regularly. Sometimes it would shut off just as soon as it completed booting up. Other times, it would shut down if moved it or bumped it a little bit, or started typing. Very frustrating. It's four years old. So...
I hadn't gone to the mall with any real intention of buying a new laptop, but the Apple Store was on my last "loop" of the Mall, so I went in. I tried a bunch of things out. I asked a lot of questions. I surfed the web right there in the store checking on a few software titles and their cross-platform capabilities. I even made a few phone calls. After about a little over an hour, I walked out with a brand new iBook.
I just got the basic one with the 12-inch display. The 14-inch one just seemed a little bit too big for when I travel. The iBook is about the same size as my current laptop - so I can also use the same case! Alas, no Super Drive so I won't be able to burn DVDs, but I can watch them, and listen to and burn music CDs.
I turned it on around 9:30 tonight, and I've been futzing with it every since. YIKES!!! almost six hours! -I did take a break to watch the news, however. There were a whole bunch of software updates that needed to be downloaded, as well as installing iLife '05 - which came with the iBook, but wasn't pre-loaded.
Thankfully, the new models that just came out have the wireless card, Air Port, built in. And since my parents' house is wireless, the updates and such didn't take that much time to download. -Oh, and I'm glad I passed on that "Manager's Special" I saw the other day on the previous model. This one has so much more, and it's $100 less than the old base model.
And as for an iPod... We'll see. I was never really one for Walkmans and Discmans, so... We'll see.