Browsing Tag: cari

    Miscellany

    Real Estate on a Macbook?

    April 11, 2008

    My wife is a real estate agent. Real estate agents rely on the MLS system to look up house information for buyers and sellers. In the Tri-Cities, as in many areas, the MLS system runs only on Internet Explorer, and only on a PC. (So 1995….)

    Until now.

    Tools of the Trade

    This is what arrived at our house today, and it’s all in the name of making Cari what we think will be the first Mac-using Tri-Cities real estate agent. Here’s what we got:

    1. Macbook – the low-end Macbook, which I expect will offer more than enough speed and space to do the job. It’s a 2.1 ghz Intel processor and 120 mb hard drive. That oughtta work just fine.
    2. Brenthaven shoulder case – this is a copy of the case I use. These are pretty expensive, but worth every penny. They’re custom-sized specifically for the 13″ Macbook, and have all kinds of padding to keep the machine protected. And there’s plenty of storage space, too.
    3. Extra battery – just to be safe. She’ll be using the power adapter most of the time, but it’s good to have an extra battery in case of an emergency.
    4. Memory upgrade – two 1gb memory cards to replace the 256mb cards that are pre-installed. So we go from 512mb of RAM to 2gb. Gotta have the extra juice to run Nos. 5 and 6…..
    5. Parallels – the software that will let her run a full version of Windows on the Macbook. Easy to install, too!
    6. Windows XP – I wouldn’t go near Vista if you paid me. No way, no how. And last, but not least….
    7. Speck plastic case – another one that’s somewhat spendy compared to similar items, but worth every penny. It’s a tight-fitting plastic case to protect the Macbook from dings and scratches. It’s see-through, too, so you keep that Macbook “cool” factor going. I have a red one. Cari went with the blue, as you can see.

    I’m about halfway done all the setup to get her going. I’m sure it’ll work just fine because I bought my own copies of Parallels and Windows XP a couple weeks ago and used my laptop to make sure this’ll fly. Took a bit to get the MLS web site to work (Explorer really sucks), but eventually got there on my laptop. We’ll get there on hers and she’ll be an original of the species: the first Mac-using real estate agent in Tri-Cities, Washington.