Moving to a Mac full-time
I used to be a Mac person back in the early to mid-'90s, starting with the old Mac Plus. That changed in 1996 when I joined Microsoft (for 20 months of full body immersion), where Macs were seen as somewhat alien and software programs were not yet compatible across platforms.
I've bought a G4 desktop and Powerbook and MacBook Pro laptops since then, but I've remained cross-platform, buying a Dell Dimension and Sony Vaio desktop for my day-to-day work since 2000.
Today, however, I've gone back to an all-Macintosh home business. The government's economic stimulus rebate check arrived today, and by this afternoon it was in the coffers of Steve Jobs -- I ponied up for a Mac Pro desktop.
Haven't set it up yet, but it looks pretty sweet: Two quad-core processors (8-core) of 2.8GHz along with a 325GB HD and a separate internal 500GB Western Digital Green Power hard drive. I do a lot of video, and I like the Mac Pro's expandable upgrade path. (There's an alarm system on the house, so don't try anything, buster.)
So long, PC-land
One reason for the switch: I'm sick to death of not being in control of my personal computer experience. I've been plagued by PC registry problems lately, and can't find my Windows XP install disk so I can do a clean reinstall (and I just won't buy it again, thank you). Every time I boot up my PC I get:
• A "Windows Explorer has encountered a problem" dialog box
• A Dr. Watson Postmortem dialog box problem.
• An NEC Display solutions Spectra View II popup that won't go away
• A Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Error! dialog box
• A Uniblue Registry Booster offering to fix the 60 or so problems with my Registry (somehow, despite the fixes, it never gets fixed)
I'll miss a few things about the PC (mostly the cool little programs that are written just for the PC), but not much. So, I'm now an official Machead 24/7. Some day I'll pony up for a Windows XP disk so I can run Windows programs on Leopard OS 10.5. But not for a while. I want to see what an all-Mac experience is like.
May 11, 2008 in Computing | Permalink
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Hey JD...I got my first PC in 1990. It was an HP 386 -20 mhz and it ran on DOS. I wanted a Mac, but couldn't afford it. (Trivia: I signed up for Prodigy when I got it).
In '97 I got a PC laptop with Windows. It so sucked.
In '99 I got a Mac and I never looked back.
FWIW, my first PC was a champ. I had it for 12 years albeit the last 5 years I only did word processing on it. I was sad to let it go.
Anyway...I didn't mean to trip down memory lane. I just wanted to ask you: did you see the Apple II at Maker Faire? The one with a dual floppy drive and a cassette drive? That was a trip!
Posted by: T. Barnes | May 11, 2008 12:25:15 PM
Uh-oh. Another one of these posts. I get the feeling I'm not going to be able to hold out much longer. This may very well be my last PC. But I'm scared - my Vaio XP laptop has been chugging along without any problems since I got it many many moons ago. And I've seen a lot of scary things happening with Mac laptops. What to do?
Posted by: Chris Ritke | May 11, 2008 12:35:09 PM
I saw an Apple II not at Maker Faire but at a computer museum in Silicon Valley a coupl e of years ago. Yeah, it was a trip ...
Chris, you shouldn't move to a Mac unless you feel the need to, especially if things are going well on your Vaio laptop. You're still in the majority ... for now. :~)
Posted by: JD | May 11, 2008 1:08:24 PM
