Yesterday, Robert talked about setting up a new Mac Pro for his switcher Dad. Today, setting up Windows proves to be a bit of a headache.

When I mentioned to my best buddy Cameron that Dad was getting a Mac Pro to replace his just-months-old Mac mini, he said "Wow. He sure moves quickly when it comes to toys!"

That he does. Just three or four months ago, he had bought his Mac mini. Now here we were, installing Windows on his tricked-out refurb Mac Pro.

This was proving to be a problem. For me, mostly.

He wanted to install Windows XP Service Pack 2, which, as far as we knew, would work fine. We started Boot Camp Assistant, and printed out the instructions. We had a whole 750GB hard disk to give to Windows, so we chose it and were restarting into that purgatory of Windows Setup in DOSville.

After loading its various components ("Human Interface Parser" was our favorite), Windows Setup displayed the volumes available to install Windows, but our newly-created Boot Camp partition wasn't listed. Uh oh.

Last October, Robert's dad -- a hard-core Windows developer -- bought himself a Mac mini to see what the fuss was all about. The first two installments of the series are available here. Now, we find out what's happened since.

Mom sent me an email about two weeks ago now, irritated. She said that Dad's old PC was making loud, awful noises, and it probably needed to be replaced. She said that he had been looking at new Macs all morning, after they talked about it over breakfast. She had given him the blessing of the purse-strings -- always a scary thing to give Dad -- and I gave him a call to see what he had in mind.

The fan, apparently, in Dad's old PC power supply was wearing out, and the bearings were squealing. I had an old Power Mac G4 at work that had this happen, and replacing the power supply was something I could do. I offered to do that, but Dad was already miles ahead of me, looking at the newly-released Mac Pros.

"Isn't that a little, uh, more than you need?" I asked, tentatively.

"It's not a question of need," he said jokingly, noting that his financial ship had come in with the payment of a long-overdue check from a completed project.

Dad was most interested in combining his Mac and his PC. Ever since he and I started working on the same project (which has expanded to projects, plural) he's finding that he uses the Mac more than the PC. The PC, he says, became just for email and Microsoft Office. Then, the perennial switcher question: "Do they make Office for Mac?" Yes, I said with a smile.

If you're new to the Mac or just bought an iPhone you could pore through the "Switch 101" series on Apple's site, you could browse our Mac 101 or iPhone 101 series, or you could spend a few bucks and get trained fast. We checked out "It's About Time" products at this year's Macworld (remember back in the beginning of 2008, where Steve Jobs made his final appearance?). As a former teacher and trainer, I think these are great for hitting the basics and in a short time you'll know what to do with your fancy new machine.

Seems like the perfect companion to a gift this year, doesn't it? To help you out we're giving away 10 licenses of "It's About Time to Learn the Switch to Mac" and 10 Licenses of "It's About Time to Learn iPhone" (that's 10 winners, everyone gets one of each program), courtesy of the folks at It's About Time products. Rules below, good luck!

• Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment telling us if you are a "switcher" (moved from a PC as your primary machine to a Mac).
• The comment must be left before December 29, 11:59PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: License of "It's About Time to Learn the Switch to Mac" ($29.95) and "It's About Time to Learn iPhone" ($29.95) for each winner.
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Peripheral maker Belkin has taken note of the fact that a lot of people are switching to Macs. Their new Switch-to-Mac USB Cable, available in the US now for US$49.99, is designed to streamline the process of moving files from your PC running Windows XP or Vista to your Mac running Tiger or Leopard.

The cable comes with a Migration Assistant that performs a similar function to Apple's Migration Assistant -- it copies music, movies, photos, files, and Internet preferences from the PC to the Mac at USB 2.0 speeds. At the completion of the migration, the software provides a summary of all of the content that has been copied and the location of the files.

Belkin says the Switch-to-Mac USB Cable is on sale in the US now, and it will be available in Canada, Asia, Europe and Australia beginning in February, 2009.

Last week, my previously-very-anti-Mac dad started using a Mac mini, and I wrote about his experience -- positive, to say the least. If you haven't read the story of his first day with the Mac, you might want to read that first. Yesterday, one week in, I checked in to see how he's doing.

So far, Dad has nothing but positive things to say about the Mac. Even when I asked him specifically for things he dislikes, he had to think for a second. "It's such a breath of fresh air from what I'm used to, I can't come up with anything specific that I dislike." High praise indeed from the man who doesn't like The Daily Show because of its intro music.

He also just discovered that, in Leopard, there's a little light underneath each application that tells you it's running. That was his huge discovery yesterday, and something he was proud of finding on his own.

Asked about what he does like, he mentioned the ease of application installations. He loves Dashboard widgets, and installed the MySQL Health widget that comes with the MySQL GUI tools. He did this without my help, too, which is great progress.