Serious PC user switches to Mac: my thoughts after a few months

Well I've been using PC's since I was about 8 or 9. My first computer was an IBM PS/2 8 mHz with 640k of RAM. I'm now 20 and I have 8 PC's laying around the house - the last five of which I built. I program in C++ as a hobby and am very skilled with PCs in general.

However, lately I have become frustrated with the Windows world. Microsoft, despite all of its money and power, has not released a quality operating system. When was the last time Internet Explorer was significantly updated, for example? When was the last time Windows improved significantly at all?!

While working at CompUSA as a hardware salesperson, I became more and more envious of the Macintosh computers. Eventually I broke down and purchased a G5 tower.

WOW is all I can say!!!! I absolutely love it! THIS is what Windows SHOULD BE! A fully powerful command line with a stunning GUI. Reliability. Speed. It's just a friggin pleasure to use. I can't even explain how happy I have been. Everything is so beautifully detailed. Even the keyboard is perfect. About the only thing I don't like is the mouse, and I replaced that with a nice Logitech model.

Suddenly I'm enjoying computing again....

It's like a whole new world, isn't it? I got my mac last week and it's like I just hopped on a computer for the first time. It's such a wonderful feeling.

Well, the Apple Computer has come a long way from starting out in someone’s garage as a hobby, to joining the big boys in Silicon Valley. It’s not always been this crash free, stable system, as you know it. There were times in the pass where people lost tones of work from bombs, errors, crashes and unexpected sudden freezes (windows are still here, in my opinion.) At least it rarely does that now, maybe the odd Kernel Panic once in a month or two (assuming your system is left on twenty-four hours a day and used during office hours.)

We're glad your enjoying computing again. Welcome to the Macintosh community. Pity other users don't see it like you. I don't know why? Maybe they aren't using their machines for serious work; I hardly call ‘playing games’ serious work (covering more ground from game designers and game developers takes time.) Unlike other’s I try not to bias, as each platform has their strong and weak points. In the end which ever you use, they are only a tool, similar to a hammer, a saw or a electric screwdriver.




Your sure to bump into some of them, worry less of the trolls and spanners, they are just lost soles... Maybe, they just envying us Macusers...because they say strange things; talk about the Apple systems being too expensive or some thing. :shrug:

Apparently there are people around here, who are complete spanner! (Oh, so i've heard)... Right Darren?

hype.it said:

Your sure to bump into some of them, worry less of the trolls and spanners, they are just lost soles... Maybe, they just envying us Macusers...because they say strange things; talk about the Apple systems being too expensive or some thing. :shrug:

Click to expand...

To me, Apple is sort of like the BMW of computers. It costs more, but it's WORTH IT.

In many ways (and I reveal my true nature as a nerd with this admission) my computing path has been like something from Star Wars.

Many years ago, when I was only about 6 or 7 years old, the public library in my town purchased one of the first Apple IIg's in that area and made it available by appointment. They had a small selection of games and applications and the machine generally stayed in use all the time. I would go every afternoon, following school, and sit during my allotted time in rapturous awe at the mere potential sitting before me. That began a love affair with computers that would ultimately shape many facets of my life.

Yet, Apple disappointed me with the "beige box" years, even as the PC clone market was beginning to really take off. I would buy Computer Shopper and pour over the ads looking for deals on parts, pausing briefly over ads for complete Mac systems that were dishearteningly out of my budget. I could build 3 PC systems for what a Mac would have cost me!

So I turned away from my Apple (Jedi) beginnings and began to walk the path of Microsoft (Sith). Yes, there were pleasures and debauchery...hollow, all of them for the instability they caused and frustration following them. I was there for the Browser Wars, when it seemed Netscape might offer us legions a way back to the light again. Yet, even that hope was squelched beneath Gates' jack-boots.

All the while, Apple kept its tiny flame alight. It evolved, as only an organism under the shadow of dinosaurs can.

Enough of the prosaic wanderings into the past. It happened that a friend lent me his little, white iBook a few months back so that I could have some computing power on the road. I was completely befuddled by the interface and single mouse button. I couldn't understand anything I was seeing, but it was all just so pretty. I flashed back to the days when I had last felt so overwhelmed, but overjoyed by a computer: that old Apple IIg.

The decision to migrate over to an Apple again was not an easy one, however, and at first I thought only of getting one to augment my already formidable PC. Yet, as plans have a way of changing, so too did this idea. It happens that I might be travelling abroad later this year. I will be gone for some time and so it became clear I would need rugged, small, powerful mobile computer. I was looking at Dells and Gateways one night when my decision was practically made for me: Windows XP was announced to be vulnerable...again. That's when I decided to throw caution to the wind and begin actively working towards coming back to the Path I remembered from my youth.

My for-sale ad now appears on my personal blog, this site, and now a few others. Time will tell what my turning away from the Dark Side will mean, but I will keep everyone informed.

Oh yes.. Netscape Communications, Inc., the first unknown company to hit the stock market back in the days of the dot con boom!... I remember them well, although some people refer to them as netscrape or nutscrape!

I can happyly say that I was there then Netscape Communications went public with the IPO's, made a little investment then a little profit. Later took the advice of a friend and managed to get out before the bubble bursted. I was one of the luckier people.