My parents just got a new 14″ iBook from Apple … I was at their house last weekend with my family and got it setup and gave my Mom some directions. They have had Macs in the house for about 20 years (we had the origingal 128k Mac back in the day), but they’ve never really become power users. Sure they could do email, browse the web, and use Word … beyond that it was a no-go and those tasks seemed to be tough.

Enter the new iBook and there has been this amazing transfermation! My Mom is on the thing half the day browsing the web wirelessly, looking up directions on Mapquest, booking rooms, invoking dashboard (her favorite part), using iTunes and her new Nano … all from an hour long hands on demo. The most stunning and unexpected thing has been that she and my Dad really seem to get it … it is wonderful to see. The coolest part for me? They are using it to communicate with me on my terms, using my modes — they have either texted me, audio chatted, or like today, video chatted me with iChat everyday this week. Now that is cool. I even have the screen shot to prove it.