A couple of years ago I was coaxed away from Redmond toward Cupertino. It started with youngest daughter wanting a Mac for university. A G3 iBook was purchased. I borrowed this on occasion when on business trips and quite liked it. It looked cool (but who cares) but it just worked. No blue screens of death, no falling over, no virus scanners, no uninstalling things - just drop them in the trash. I could get to like this. Next number one daughter gets a G4 iBook and I get her cast off Compaq to use as the boat computer. What a heap of junk, but at least it was sort of zero cost despite the fact I had paid for it a couple of years previously. Still I persevered with my Dell desktop. G3 ibook gets swapped out for a G4 and I again get the cast off. I find myself using this more than the Dell. This is gathering pace.
The straw that broke the camel's back came about two years ago. The bloody Dell crashed for the third time in two hours and I started a piece of work for the fourth time that night. Sod this for a game of soldiers and in a fit of pique I bought a 20" G5 iMac the next day. Now this is what a computer is supposed to be. I even like the fact that it looks cool. But bottom line it just works - day after day after day after day.......... Number of crashes in two years? None, nil, nix nada, not a one, not a sausage. Bliss.
I still have a Pocket PC as my PDA so I buy a third party piece of software to sync with the new white God. It doesn't work. I throw the PDA away and buy a Treo650. I am slowly divesting myself of all things Microsoft and it is like losing pounds of useless blubber. I 'need' Office for Mac so I can use Word documents and PowerPoint presentations in the unenlightened world. I actually use Entourage for my email program for a long time but a few months ago I even got over that. The G3 iBook dies after about four years. Number one daughter buys a MacBook and I inherit the G4 iBook which swaps his Panther for a Tiger.
The Dell has been given to SWMBO to just serve as an email terminal in her work room. I buy a wireless network card for this and it has a working range of about 14 Angstrom units. This bloody heap of garbage works only when the world price of tin is aligned with the value of Pi and starts gathering dust.
I am completely smitten by Macs now and only tolerate PCs in my life at work (where an eighteen month campaign to get Mac support for VPN is bogged down in trench warfare reminiscent of the Somme) and on the boat. Ah, the boat computer is what is driving this lament. There is just not the range of navigation software for the Mac as exists for the PC.
We soldier on. It becomes obvious last week that I need a 24" Dual Core Intel iMac. So one is purchased - an extra gig of RAM is a steal at $110, I can't use Time Machine with out a backup drive and it would be rude not to get 500 gig number would it not? Oh, I might as well buy a MacBook for number two daughter to save bleating around the Xmas tree. Fire up the new machine and every Mac in the house that is AirPort equipped (five as I type) is immediately networked without my doing anything. This is what it is supposed to be like. The Mac can 'see' the bloody Dell but that's about it. Its a bit like my being able to see a DB9 - not a lot of use unless I can get the keys. I have tried intermittently for three evenings now to get it in the network and I may just give up because there is nothing on it's smelly frame that I want to put anyway near my lovely Mac gear.
Just to remind myself that I hate Microsoft products (I don't think I hate Microsoft) I decided to get the boat laptop ready for the fishing season by get the real time GPS input sorted. Who in their right mind would want to spend four hours wrestling with serial to USB converters, serial splitters, stop bits and parity when there is a company that makes tools that work. Plug things together and turn them on and they talk to each other. That it is how it should be not worrying whether the application will allow COM 6 to be split to COM port numbers that are greater or less than 6.
This is what a computer should be.
Unfortunately most computers in my past have looked like this
This is not using technology as a tool; it is using it as a stick with which to beat yourself.
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