Okay, I finally did it.
I started my formal departure from the Evil Empire. After 25 years of DOS / Win as my main environment with a little bit of VMS, UNIX, and a fair smattering of Linux thrown in, my new main machine at home is a Mac Pro.
It happened this way.
In the fall of 2004, the campus computer store was clearing out some demo machines, and the guy (Ed) in the office next door bought a dual-processor G4 with Mac OS X Panther installed. Then he had buyer’s remorse and was worried his wife would be really ticked. (I know her. She’s sweet, but she probably would be ticked if he brought home one more computer.)
I asked Ed how much he paid. It was a very good price. I argued with myself (successfully) that I ought to have a Mac to test Web designs on. One in my own office. I wanted to see how this pretty face on top of Free BSD really worked. Soon I upgraded the operating system to Tiger.
When the Mac Mini came out — at $500 — it was too cute not to try (at home). This was a machine for Nancy, of course ;-).
Well, a couple of major Windows security disasters and some truly evil business moves after the 2004 “test machine” and I was watching with interest to see how the new Intel-based Macs would perform. Well enough, thank you, that our college started buying them. I WAS going to wait for Leopard to come out, but …
IE 7 broke a couple critical applications I use at work. Then Redmond came out with Vista. The reviews were generally not too positive. Then I had a chance to help a friend at church who had just bought this new laptop with Vista.
Oh, my!
If ever there was an OS from Hell, Vista is it.
Then in May, we were playing host to a visiting delegation from the Vietnam News Agency. During one of the sessions, for the VNA folks, one of my colleagues (Todd Chambers) showed off our Podcasting facilities and got our visitors involved. Wow! It was impressive. Even the politician was having fun! And of course it was on one of these new Intel Macs. It just zoomed through everything.
Oh, did I mention, we had just bought stock in Apple (AAPL). It was doing well, so I said, “this is it!” So after four years on my last Dell machine, and a couple of years experimenting with a couple of different “budget” Macs, I am doing most of my work now on a Mac Pro.
Dianne, stop shrieking!
rlr