Around three weeks ago, Low End Mac published a column of mine detailing my
month-long switch to PCs and Windows. It was somewhat of a success;
after all, what more controversial topic could be found to post on a
Macintosh website?
This piece concludes that journey.
I caved in and managed to obtain a new (to me) Macintosh. (I'm now
on an Intel Mac and loving it.) I had to negotiate with different
people for four days, but here it is.
To begin with, I will talk about how I managed to survive using
Windoze (Yay! Back to calling it that!) for an entire month. My next
column will be a review of the Macintosh I got, a barely used 2.2 GHz black MacBook with
1 GB RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and Leopard.
How I Coped with Windoze
In a world full of wonderful Apple products, it's rather hard to
imagine someone voluntarily using Windows, assuming they are well
informed. However, I did do such a thing.
To give my readers a quick refresher course on what I used for this
little experiment, here is the rundown: As my main machine, I used a
Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T60, which is a Core Duo at 2.0 GHz with 1 GB
RAM and a 100 GB hard drive. It was running Windows XP Professional. I
used Microsoft Office 2007 for school work, iTunes for listening to
music, and Mozilla Firefox for Web browsing. Pidgin was my application
of choice for instant messaging using both Jabber and AIM.
As I said in my previous column, there were several Macintosh
applications that I could not live without. They included Skitch, for
easy image manipulation; iChat, for stupidly easy direct IMs; and
Camino. Love ya all.
To avoid completely repeating myself, I'll tell you how the rest
went. Overall, it wasn't really that bad. Screenshots in Windows are a
pain in the neck, for sure. You have to press the key, open Paint,
paste it, and then save it - as a bitmap - to your hard drive.
One thing I did like about the whole experience was how snappy
everything was, excluding boot times.
I mostly used the ThinkPad on a laptop stand with a Logitech MX
Revolution mouse attached. Setting up the MX was a huge pain. It took
me a half hour to get it working, because you had to download a 60 MB
file to install the "connection utility". On the other hand, once all
of my hardware was up and running, it was smooth sailing.
One thing I love about Mac OS X that I didn't find in Windows is the
cheesy slogan: It just works. The third-party hardware and software I
purchase for my Mac don't need additional drivers.
For example, a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse I found laying around my
room was too old to support computers with built-in Bluetooth. It had a
gigantic USB dongle to allow wireless connectivity. When I attached it
to my Mac, it recognized the mouse. I ran the Bluetooth setup utility,
and the mouse was working perfectly, within two minutes.
To be completely honest, the whole Windows experience wasn't all
that bad. The reason why this article is so brief is because there is
almost nothing to conclude. The experiment did help me realize how
lucky I am to be a member of the Macintosh community. It is helpful,
informative, and supportive, something Windows users cannot say about
their user/support base. 
Benjamin Zalutsky is a recent Mac convert.
