Kevin M's Story - Motorcycle Paramedic, Internet Technology Consultant

I’m a 47 year old paramedic, working in Surrey, UK as a member of the motorcycle rapid response unit. I’ve been with the ambulance service for 8 years and before that I was an IT specialist for over 20 years.  I have Microsoft qualifications and could be called a ‘guru’ when it comes to FreeBSD Unix.

There are 3 Windows PCs and a FreeBSD box in my house. Around 18 months ago I bought my first Mac, a Mac mini. I needed to replace a DVD player that had died and wanted to go the ‘media centre’ route. A friend had recently got a Windows Media PC and had nothing but trouble with it so I decided to take the plunge and get into Apple.

I could not believe how easy it was to get going! I turned the Mac mini on and the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard almost set themselves up, so different to the days I spent getting similar gear working on a PC.  On connecting to my 32” LCD TV there was a crisp, clear high resolution display. The wireless LAN connected automatically too. I was seriously impressed and immediately hooked on Mac.

The transition from the XP GUI to OS X was quite painless (of course, I had been using X windows for many years). I loved the Dock and Finder and was amazed by the quality of the bundled iLife applications. Moving the family’s iTunes library was simple - my wife, two sons and myself have iPods so this was important. Everyone loves the remote and Front Row and even my wife (who dislikes computers) was using the Mac like a pro within hours.

A few weeks later I discovered Darwin Ports, it looked similar to the excellent FreeBSD ports system so I installed it. By the end of the day I had a fully functional LAMP server running under the TV in the living room!

I began to leave Windows XP behind, even using VNC so that I could work on the Mac while sitting at a PC. I do quite a lot of web design and consultancy work still, even though I’m now a paramedic. I'm now able to do all the development work on the Mac mini even when the kids are watching a DVD or listening to music.

In March this year I was lucky enough to go on an expedition as the medical officer - nine motorcycles and a 4x4 support truck travelling from the UK to South Africa (over 14000 miles!) along the west coast of Africa through places like the Sahara desert and the Congo jungle.  The expedition’s aim was to raise money and awareness for a land mine charity.

I wanted to take a small notebook computer to write my blog entries (http://bigkev.net) and manage the thousands of photographs I planned to take. My heavy, cumbersome Dell didn’t hold a charge for more than 30 minutes so instead of buying a new battery, I bought a shiney white MacBook.

It worked great! The battery life was amazing (finding somewhere to charge it in the African Bush was often difficult), I plugged the LAN in at the very popular African Internet Cafes that appear in most villages and it worked straight away. Just imagine, one evening I was uploading the day’s photos onto the MacBook in my tent in the middle of the Sahara, thousands of miles away from civilisation!

The MacBook survived the journey. Unfortunately, I did not. I crashed the bike in Gambia near the Senegal border and had multiple fractures - foot, ankle, ribs and a smashed collar bone. My expedition was over.  The MacBook was a great asset event then as I could watch DVDs and surf the ‘net from my hospital bed.

That was May 1st, I’m still off work, recovering slowly and often bored, but doing some web design work for an African charity (www.attaah.org.uk) and have plenty of time to do things like share my Apple Mac experiences with you.

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