Keeping One Eye on the iClouds...

How many of you are on Mac computers of some kind?

Do you have a mac.com/me.com email address?

Have you tried moving over to the iCloud, yet?

Were you successful?

I've been getting the Mac-sponsored not-so-veiled threats that I'd be losing my email account if I didn't get upgraded to the iCloud before the end of June. And so, although I'm kind of terrified of most major computer changes, I figured I needed to do the upgrades so that I could move my stuff over.

Christopher helped me through finding out what steps I needed to take. He assured me that the folks at FirstTech (a local Apple-approved service company that's been around for years - long before Apple stores) would be able to help me out. Since I CANNOT STAND to go to Apple stores, this was some very good news for me.

So I went to FirstTech, yesterday, and bought "2 Gigabytes of RAM" (Christopher taught me how to say that and sound like I knew what I was doing). And then I came home and Christopher installed the 2GB of RAM for me and I started the first upgrade I needed to do.

My MacBook Pro took to the upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard pretty easily. I was able to play around with it and make sure it all worked, and then went ahead and installed a bunch of updates that were possible now that I had a newer operating system. (That second set took a while, but I figured it needed to be done, right?)

Then, in my attempt to take a big step all on my own, I decided to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion this morning. (You have to be on Lion to get to the iCloud.) And, guess what? My MacBook Pro can't move to Lion because the processor is too old.

Which is interesting, because in the past week or so, the "YOU MUST MOVE TO iCLOUD NOW OR LOSE YOUR EMAIL!!" notices have started showing up with a secondary line in smaller type saying that "If your devices are not compatible, you'll still be able to keep your email, but you won't get any of the other iCloud features."

So... Here I sit... Having spent $49 on my 2GB of RAM, and having installed the Snow Leopard, and - I have to admit - rather enjoying the currently much faster email on my computer. But still pretty much just as far from being able to get to the iCloud as ever before.

Where's a typewriter and a set of encyclopedias when I need them?