Once you go Mac...
..you never go back. Heh.
Going back to my Vista PC at work was shitty, to say the least, after using our new iMac all weekend. Part of it is OSX, to be sure, but good LORD are those new Intel dual-core procs fast. I installed Windows XP on it for the fun of it, and it took like 3 minutes.
Heather wanted me to port all her e-mail over from her laptop, which considering she was using Outlook Express was easier said than done. I actually had to download and install a copy of Eudora on the PC that ported her e-mail to that format, and then import it to Eudora on the Mac. THEN, I imported the mail from the Mac Eudora to Apple Mail. What a PITA. I hope she never wants to go back to Outlook Express, that just ain't happenin.
It's strange that Microsoft will let you dump a raw text file out of their address book, but won't export mail to anything but Outlook.
I haven't decided whether I'm "switching" yet. We all have seperate accounts, and I even have Mail set up for me, but it doesn't actually remove e-mail from the server yet. I got VNC working (VNC = Remote Desktop) and everything, but I'm not sure whether I want to leave the iMac running 24/7. Hard drives and crap are a LOT harder to replace than they are in my PC.
I think part of it is that I've been using Windows for 17 years now, and it's hard to let go. MacOS has sucked for so many years (if Brett still reads LJ, he can attest to this.. remember recloning shitloads of Macs in HH? Yeah.), I had pretty much given up on it. OSX though, is a different ball of wax. It's clearly superior to Windows in pretty much every way.
While I pondered this, I ordered two toys for it from Newegg. One, a 6 to 4 pin Firewire cable so I can start dumping home movies to the Mac; I can't wait to see how iMovie destroys the PC shit I'm using to edit and process DV today. Two, Parallels for Mac. It's hard to describe to non-IT people, but basically it is a computer inside a computer. You can install any operating system you want in a window from WITHIN the MacOS operating environment. In addition, you can even mount a Windows partition remotely or connected to the Mac, and run Windows like you're sitting at the computer itself; this includes copying files to and from the Mac, running programs, etc. It's really neat.
Believe it or not, this is not my first Apple computer. This is news to pretty much everyone reading this including my wife, but I have had one before. In 1989 or so, my mother won an Apple IIc+ at a Farmer's Market or Quality Farm and Fleet or something equally incongruent with offering a computer for raffle. I did actually use it for learning BASIC programming and playing games, but that was about it (my Epson 8086/DOS PC had Microsoft QuickBasic, but my textbook focused on the Apple version for whatever reason). The IIc+ was a weird duck, because it had a 3 1/2 floppy drive built-in, in an era when pretty much all Apple software shipped on 5 1/4 disks. So it was a complete PITA. Thankfully most computer software stores were hip to this fact, and let you copy your purchases onto the proper format of disk. Can you imagine Best Buy allowing this? Heh.
Yeah, the demise of the mom and pop computer store is a topic for another LJ. There is one that still exists that I know of in GR, and another in Holland, but they are hardware-only (OEM copies of business apps excepted). There used to be an awesome one in the little plaza on 28th St (next to Ryder's Hobby Shop) that sold Commodore stuff, and another on Plainfield that sold Atari stuff (STs). My first date ever was in 8th grade, with the Plainfield store owner's daughter. OK, enough, I'll quit right there. =)
Going back to my Vista PC at work was shitty, to say the least, after using our new iMac all weekend. Part of it is OSX, to be sure, but good LORD are those new Intel dual-core procs fast. I installed Windows XP on it for the fun of it, and it took like 3 minutes.
Heather wanted me to port all her e-mail over from her laptop, which considering she was using Outlook Express was easier said than done. I actually had to download and install a copy of Eudora on the PC that ported her e-mail to that format, and then import it to Eudora on the Mac. THEN, I imported the mail from the Mac Eudora to Apple Mail. What a PITA. I hope she never wants to go back to Outlook Express, that just ain't happenin.
It's strange that Microsoft will let you dump a raw text file out of their address book, but won't export mail to anything but Outlook.
I haven't decided whether I'm "switching" yet. We all have seperate accounts, and I even have Mail set up for me, but it doesn't actually remove e-mail from the server yet. I got VNC working (VNC = Remote Desktop) and everything, but I'm not sure whether I want to leave the iMac running 24/7. Hard drives and crap are a LOT harder to replace than they are in my PC.
I think part of it is that I've been using Windows for 17 years now, and it's hard to let go. MacOS has sucked for so many years (if Brett still reads LJ, he can attest to this.. remember recloning shitloads of Macs in HH? Yeah.), I had pretty much given up on it. OSX though, is a different ball of wax. It's clearly superior to Windows in pretty much every way.
While I pondered this, I ordered two toys for it from Newegg. One, a 6 to 4 pin Firewire cable so I can start dumping home movies to the Mac; I can't wait to see how iMovie destroys the PC shit I'm using to edit and process DV today. Two, Parallels for Mac. It's hard to describe to non-IT people, but basically it is a computer inside a computer. You can install any operating system you want in a window from WITHIN the MacOS operating environment. In addition, you can even mount a Windows partition remotely or connected to the Mac, and run Windows like you're sitting at the computer itself; this includes copying files to and from the Mac, running programs, etc. It's really neat.
Believe it or not, this is not my first Apple computer. This is news to pretty much everyone reading this including my wife, but I have had one before. In 1989 or so, my mother won an Apple IIc+ at a Farmer's Market or Quality Farm and Fleet or something equally incongruent with offering a computer for raffle. I did actually use it for learning BASIC programming and playing games, but that was about it (my Epson 8086/DOS PC had Microsoft QuickBasic, but my textbook focused on the Apple version for whatever reason). The IIc+ was a weird duck, because it had a 3 1/2 floppy drive built-in, in an era when pretty much all Apple software shipped on 5 1/4 disks. So it was a complete PITA. Thankfully most computer software stores were hip to this fact, and let you copy your purchases onto the proper format of disk. Can you imagine Best Buy allowing this? Heh.
Yeah, the demise of the mom and pop computer store is a topic for another LJ. There is one that still exists that I know of in GR, and another in Holland, but they are hardware-only (OEM copies of business apps excepted). There used to be an awesome one in the little plaza on 28th St (next to Ryder's Hobby Shop) that sold Commodore stuff, and another on Plainfield that sold Atari stuff (STs). My first date ever was in 8th grade, with the Plainfield store owner's daughter. OK, enough, I'll quit right there. =)