The solution to my troubles with Windows
Published February 14, 2008 by Robbie
That’s right. I’ve switched to a Mac. I bought a MacBook Pro a couple of years ago, but only used it sparingly. Now, I’ve turned in my Microsoft Club Card (btw, MS didn’t renew my MVP status this year and for good reason). There is no going back…at least for a while. There has been some initial discomfort during the move, but I’m getting used to OS X. The honeymoon period is already over though. I’ve experienced many application crashes. Firefox is still a pig. I’m going to give Safari a try. Because I’m still hooked on Outlook, I’ve been running VMWare Fusion. It is pretty good–especially Unity mode–but at times it slows down the system and doesn’t always suspend correctly.
Because I’ve been using Windows for so long as my primary desktop, it feels good to try something new. I have a theory that becoming too familiar with something is a bad thing. When you get too comfortable, you miss out on stuff. You never learn there is a better way to do something. Perhaps partly because I’ve written a bunch of books on Windows, I became too comfortable with it. There were no more surprises (besides the different ways it could crash on me).
Don’t get me wrong. I really really wish we didn’t even have to talk about which operating system I’m running. Modern desktop OSes are still too heavy handed. They should do all the heavy lifting behind the covers and get out of the way. I wish they were so dumb that no one needed to write books on them. But that’s not how it is today. Windows and OS X are big complicated pieces of software. With all the recent problems I’ve had with my desktop environment, I wonder if some higher power is pushing me to take on the cause of “thin” clients (for lack of a better term) because ultimately I still believe that’s where we are headed.
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Congrats! I made the change a few years ago, haven’t looked back since.
Firefox is a decent browser, but very difficult to use as it is crash-prone, has inexplicable slowdowns and so many other irritations that you feel like you’re browsing the World Wide Wait.
I’ve switched to Opera as my main browser on OS X, with FF as a backup - for sites which are actively anti-Opera. It’s much faster than FF, and also has a number of great features built-in (mouse gestures, speed dial, decent memory management) that make it superior to Safari / Camino / Omniweb etc.
I think you should give Mail.app a try. Running email in VMWare has got to be frustrating. Mail isn’t perfect and I agree that Outlook is king but I’ve become rather happy with it over the past year. Search feature is better in Outlook IMO.
I haven’t tried Office 2008 for Mac yet but I’ve heard good things. May be worth investigating.
Well I just tested out Office 2008 and I think its pretty nice. Entourage is really snappy and much like I remember Outlook to be. It actually had me thinking about trying to switch but I’m not sure how my iPhone sync would go with Entourage.
I just installed Office 2008 myself. I’m going to give Entourage a try and see how that goes. I’ve heard a lot of positive things about Mail.app, but not having Exchange calendar integration is an issue.
Good for you!
Now if we can get you to start using a Linux desktop…
Seriously though, I hope you don’t mind if I show my wife this post in yet another futile effort to get her to agree to our getting one of these too.
WOW!! I think that this is saying a lot. When one of the preeminent engineers in IT, who has an extremely intimate knowledge of the Window operating system, and through his books has really supported Microsoft platforms for years, makes a switch to a Mac. And I know that Macs have some shortcomings, but they have done a great number of things VERY well. I appreciate Windows and it pays the bills but I love and appreciate my Mac.
Boo Hiss. LOL. I have been tempted to bite the mac bullet but cost factor is still an issue. My home PC is escapism so games are critical and bleeding edge hardware is important. Macs are so behind on graphics hardware. For 800 dollars I can get an 17″ laptop with a dedicated graphics card and blu ray player that lets me play the latest games and watch bluray on my pc or home. I have yet to have vista crash (currently running 64bit premium) and that includes some all night late night City of Heroes sessions!