I sold and bought my first PC a long, long time ago. Back in the late
80s I owned a Mac, I think it was a Mac2. I honestly thought there
would never come a time where I would buy a Mac. Ever.
Then I
upgraded my PC to Vista. What a disaster. I had grown accustomed to my
PC freezing every now and then. Enter Vista and my PC was frozen more
often than it was working. The biggest culprit was Microsoft Outlook.
The
application has to have a memory leak. I could follow memory numbers as
they grew and grew. Then as my email was downloading, the rules would
stop working and everything went straight to my inbox. Spam and all.
When you get as many emails as I do. Thats a problem. When it also causes the system to freeze, its more than just a problem.
My
first step was to get a copy of CPU Magazine with Vista tricks. The
tricks helped. Everything froze or crashed less often. Significantly
less often. But the annoyance factor was beyond belief. I dont run any
special applications. I run outlook, Office and firefox. Thats it.
I
had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed to be a PC owner. The
thought of someone calling me and asking me to go to my computer to
find something was paralyzing (ok, not that bad, but it sounded cool
writing it).
This wasn't just a problem on my Desktop, it was a problem on my laptop with Vista as well.
So a few weeks ago I made the executive decision to buy a MacBook Air to replace my laptop (and now an iMac to replace my desktop).
I haven't looked back.
Its
not that there aren't hassles with the Mac. There are two. One there isn't a version of Outlook for the Mac. As someone who has more than 10
years and gigabytes worth of emails in multiple outlook files, the
concept of exporting and importing wont fly. So i am keeping my PC
Desktop purely to download my emails into Outlook so I have a master
database. But I only do so after deleting unimportant emails from the
server using my Macbook.
The 2nd problem is the lack of the
right mouse click. I know its a Mac thing to only have one button, but
its a hassle. Sure there are work arounds, none of which are quick and
easy for a longtime PC user.
Both of these are easily offset by 3 simple Mac elements that make me very happy.
First
is that when I close my MacBook Air without turning it off, it doesn't lose
power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up.
The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months.
Finally,
i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes
my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).
Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook