Switch to the Mac...

This will be a series of blogs detailing my 'Switch' over to Apple Macintoshs over the past couple of weeks.

One will be on the value of Apple's 'Mobile Me' service - it's made it very easy to backup, restore, sync and access via the Internet my Mail, Address Book, Calendar and ToDo lists... plus a nice place to store photos and share large files... more later on 'Mobile Me'
Another blog entry will be on the actual transition from a Windows XP user - with ALL my use on a computer on a series of Windows based laptops - for well over a decade. Moved to a Macintosh as my sole platform in under three weeks!

Another entry... "Things I Like on the Macintosh" Another coming blog will be some of the things I still miss from my XP laptops. (I never did feel comfortable on Windows Vista...)
And finally a short blog entry on WHY my life has had so many computers - and what it should me to you the readers of this blog!

__________________________________

This blog will start with a little bit of history of me and Apple Macintosh's... Early in 1984 I was still a student at Brigham Young University (in the Business College) - and happened to see an announcent of a new computer from Apple to be held during lunch at the MARB building... so I went over to 'check it out'. I was blown away!

I 'had' to have one. Even though Jill and I were living on $350 per month... I walked right over to the BYU Bookstore and signed up to get one of the brand new Apple Macintosh computers (with a huge 9" b&w screen with 400k floppy disks and a whopping 128k of RAM) - and if I remember right they were selling with the BYU Student discount for $1,850!!!
Well over the next decade I owned/sold over 30 different Macintosh models - desktops galore, the HUGE Apple Portable (this one I went through MBA school with) - then ended on a Mac Powerbook 180 as my main machine (this was my 32nd Mac). I used this in my post MBA consulting and start of CNEPA and NPA days and it did very professional work! It became a bit too difficult to always be the 'different' one with the Macintosh. All my files couldn't be read by any of my colleagues, file formats were always difficult, and Mac's always costs a bit more than PCs. So I slowly moved away from Macintosh's to Windows based machines.

Here too I've been through at least 30 different laptops, IBMs, Toshibas, Fujitsus, HP, Compaq, and now for the last couple of years Dell. Dell Inspiron, D510, D600s, D620s, D630s, and lately a D430... I've been quite pleased and happy to work on Windows machines.

Ok, Ok, some people are 'into' cars and buy and sell cars all the time. I find car buying a pain, and car selling even worse! So I do computers instead.

Along the way I've always had a Macintosh at home for doing Video and Photo work, and I 'fixed' my Wife Jill's propensity to 'attract' viruses on her Windows machine by moving her to a Macintosh a couple of years ago.

Fast forward 15 years...

For a special project I developed at work - a lecture series on 802.11 N wireless networks, I purchased a new MacBookPro - a top of the line Apple Macintosh. It was easily the fastest computer of all those I tested.
I spent a couple of weeks on the road doing demos and experiments to show off the new wireless protocol - and kind of liked having a Mac back in my life. But... this MacBook Pro is fairly large (15" screen) and pretty heavy, especially compared with the light little Dell D430 that was my computer of choice. Then when I was thinking of moving down to a smaller Macintosh for my demos I purchased one of these new Apple Macbook Air laptops.

I've already blogged the 'metaphysical' change that happened in a previous blog. Then after the MacBookAir became my 'main machine' I was faced with a dilemma the night it 'crashed' and had to go into the shop for a replacement Hard Drive... what to do on the next business trip? Go back to the slow D430 that was my previous main machine, return to a rebuilt (bit faster) bigger Dell D630? Then I thought perhaps I should try using the larger MacBookPro and move my stuff there for the week while the MBA was in the shop...
To my surprise this too under an hour to have all my important stuff, Mail, Calendar, ToDo's, Browser & Bookmarks, and 'my documents' all moved over and ready to go. (Thanks in a large part to Mobile Me and the ease at which the Macintosh Operating system works) Then during the week I moved over my 'final' software of choice. iTunes - is the software I use to sync my iPhone for music, audio books, movies, calendar, etc. This was the final 'hold out' on the older Dell 430 and last week while on the road teaching - I took one night and moved this too over the the MBP.

I was now fully Macintosh! And Loving it!