Working out the kinks, continued . . . .

It’s been a tough few days working the kinks out of the new iMac I bought at the Apple store during halftime of the Superbowl.

I think I’ve spent five hours with Apple tech support. I’ve come to know James and Doug, Burt and Bev. I have their numbers, they have mine. We are on a first name basis. We were from the start.

But after we clear up one problem, another crops up. I have five "case" numbers in Apple tech support's memory bank.

Right now, for the first time in my computer literacy, I’m writing on Apple’s very own “Pages” word processing program. I had been using my old 2004 Microsoft Office's Word, which I put through various upgrades after I got the new iMac.

It was still doing strange six-year-old things.

For instance, the Constant Contact program I use to put out my newsletter was was not formatting. It refused to cooperate with a 2010 computer trying to get by on a 2004 brain.

If I wanted to bump up a front size on CC's editing palette, nothing happened. Bold-face? No way. Ital? You must be kidding.

The Apple folks, who never kept me on hold — not once — and who spoke in good old Midwestern English, finally suggested I call Microsoft support.

I was put on hold with a message machine that repeated every 20 seconds (I am not exaggerating) that they were experiencing heavy call volumes and they thanked me for my patience — endlessly.

After ten minutes of this mantra, my appreciated patience ran out and I hung up.

I concluded that my upgraded 2004 version of Microsoft Word was the problem. I called the Apple store and they suggested that I try “Pages,” which is part of the Apple iWorks suite of applications.

I read several Microsoft Office versus iWorks entries on line. The reviewers seemed to give Office the edge but I kept thinking of James and Doug and Burt and Bev, and comparing them to Microsoft's “We are experiencing a heavy volume of etc.”

I bought iWorks, which cost about one-third what Office for Mac does.

So I'm writing these words with “Pages.”

We’ll see what happens when I go to post this ditty on Blogger. Will I still get the coding at the top of the post when I paste this? Will the metatags show up when I hit the “Publish Post” button.

Wish me well.

When this finally appears, I’ll let you know whether I made the right choice for decidedly the wrong reason.

I'm now in the Blogger program and there was no coding to delete at the top. A good sign. Here goes with the "Publish Post" button . . . .

Bingo. No metatags.

Thanks James and Doug and Burt and Bev. And Steve, as in Jobs.