System 7 is showing itself to be a fairly solid release, and more and more Mac users are opting to make the upgrade. Because the “official” System 7 Personal Upgrade Kit (available from Apple dealers) is selling for almost a hundred dollars, many are choosing to get theirs from user groups. This is, of course, a much better bargain (SMUG is selling its set of disks for only $20), but all you get is the disks themselves—no HyperCard and no manuals.
Many Mac users foolishly disdain the use of manuals. After all, Mac programs are supposed to be easy to learn and use. If you do this with System 7, you’ll likely miss out on some of the goodies; the new system is both easy to install and easy to use, but there are a lot of new features that you won’t find by blind groping.
There are a number of shiny new books that can fill the user manual void, and The Little System 7 Book ranks high among them. From the same publisher that brought you The Little Mac Book and The Mac is not a typewriter, this book shares their excellent price/performance ratio. The Little System 7 Book lists for only $12.95 and is short enough (less than 150 pages) to read from start to finish.
The tone of the book is very informal, yet there is concise coverage of all the major points, from installation, through customizing your icons, to font strategies, aliases, and Control Panels. There’s a whole chapter on the use of the new networking capabilities. You’ll also find a good index and a section on trouble shooting.
Tips are everywhere. I was impressed at the depth of the information packed into this small book. I found several tips that I had missed in larger books. For instance, I knew that the TeachText application can now be used to examine text and PICT files from various sources, but I didn’t know that it allows you to select a part of a PICT for copying.
System 7 has lots of new keyboard shortcuts which allow you to do just about everything in the new Finder without ever taking your hands from the keyboard.
I found only a couple of minor mistakes in the book. The author states (p.43) that you cannot customize the icons of applications by pasting a new icon into the Get Info box, but I’ve done this many times. Despite a couple of minor mistakes, the book seems right on target, commendable considering the newness and complexity of the subject.
This is a book I can recommend to any Mac user, from neophyte to power user, who is planning to make the move into the Mac’s future with System 7.
The article above is reprinted from Mac Monitor, the newsletter of The Savannah Macintosh Users Group. It may be reprinted in a single issue of newsletters published by non-profit user groups. Payment shall consist of a single issue of the newsletter in which the article appears, sent to the following address:
