Moving to a Mac

Over the last several months, I've migrated most of my day-to-day computer usage to a Mac. I am weary of the maintenance of a PC, and particularly dislike the amount of time it takes to start-up a new Windows session (ugh), or heaven forbid, restart because of an update or software install.

I won't tell you a Mac is perfect. To start with, I miss certain programs like ACDSee, which I now run in Parallels. Entourage is a poor replacement for Outlook, but it is much better behaved. (Maybe Mac Office 2008 will finally be able to read Notes and Tasks from an Exchange server.) As a crossword puzzle fan, I miss the computer version of WordWeb. Another issue with a Mac is that it is not as good a client on a Windows-based network as a PC. I understand that there would be some incompatibilities, but the inability to map a drive to a share within a series of shares (\\servername\users\username where "username" is what you'd like to map) is awkward at best. I'm not fond of the abbreviated keyboard found on the MacBook and the new wireless keyboard for the iMac leave out the secondary delete key, which makes the equivalent of CTL-Delete and CTL-Backspace difficult.

The stability of Tiger, however, outweighs everything. It boots up fast, shuts down fast, closes a hung program on the first request, and is amazingly intuitive. iPhoto is a great way to handle your photos, and iDVD and iMovie are the same in their respective genres. It does away with Windows-based DRM, an awful part of XP and Vista that is easy to corrupt and almost impossible to restore. Above all, it adds a level of beauty to the daily use of my computer that I appreciate. With Parallels or Fusion, I can run those occasional programs that are unique to a PC without having to give up the functionality of my Mac.

Would I recommend it to everyone? Not really. If you like your PC and are comfortable with its foibles, stay with what you have. If you find you want to upgrade to Vista, however, and need to buy a new computer to do it the right way, I'd strongly suggest you spend an afternoon at the Apple store taking a long look at their offerings. You'll probably pay a tad more for it, but believe it or not, XP and Vista run better under Boot Camp than they do on a new Dell or HP! Hard to believe, but true. Walt Mossberg reached the same conclusion in a recent column in All Things Digital.

I, however, opt for simplicity, stability and ease of maintenance. As a simple example of that, with OS X there is only one version of the OS for everyone, no Home Basic, Business, Ultimate, et al.

Lastly, the Mac is just a lot more fun! Great built-in software and an interface that shows real thought and design. It is definitely worth an afternoon's research at the Apple store to see if this solution is right for you!