Setting up your machine

Everything you need installed, configured, and ready - before you touch a single AI tool.

Most people start with AI by jumping straight into a tool and then wondering why something doesn’t work - a download that fails, an account that won’t verify, a browser that throws an error nobody warned them about. This session does the boring but essential step first: get your machine into a state where everything that comes later actually runs. This is aimed at anyone setting themselves up to learn AI seriously, whether you’re on a five-year-old laptop or a brand-new one. If you’ve never installed anything outside the App Store, you’ll be fine. If you already have a developer setup, you’ll still pick up the cloud-vs-local distinction and a couple of storage and RAM rules of thumb worth knowing. By the end of the 60 minutes you will: • Have a modern browser configured for the AI tools we’ll use across the platform. • Have the right accounts created - and know which ones to skip. • Understand the storage and RAM your machine needs, and what to do if it doesn’t have them. • Know the practical difference between running AI in the cloud and running it locally, and which one suits you. How the session runs: 15 minutes on what AI actually demands from a computer, and where the popular myths get it wrong. Then we set things up together, step by step - browser, accounts, the handful of permissions and settings that catch beginners out. The back half is troubleshooting: bring whatever’s broken on your machine and we’ll fix it in the room. Bring your laptop, charged, with admin/installer access. That’s it.