It is 7:30 p.m., and I am an hour out of Raleigh, bound for San
Jose. It has been a crazy day. I got to work this morning at 7:00 a.m.
and worked almost a full day before heading to the airport in Atlanta
to catch my flight. I reached Raleigh just in time to get through the
door of my San Jose flight.
The craziest part is that in little more than 24 hours I will be
leaving San Jose, bound for Raleigh again. San Jose is still over five
hours away. Midway is my favorite airline, but the only drawback is
that they don't have an in-flight movie - and I sure could use some
mindless entertainment right about now.
It is 8:00, and I may have found my entertainment. Seated on the row
with me are two hospital IT Directors returning from a conference in
Raleigh. They have their trusty Dell notebook computers loaded with
Windows 2000. The one seated by me has a DVD player in his notebook,
and they brought along their own entertainment: a DVD movie. However,
they seem to be having a bit of difficulty making it go.
They have now been trying to start their movie for 30 minutes
without success. They have tried rebooting several times. Having to
deal with more than my share of PCs loaded with the Redmond OS, I am a
little surprised. Generally, one encounters very few problems with
Windows PCs that rebooting several times a day won't cure.
As entertaining as this is, it is time for me to get a little work
done if I want to get in that long nap before reaching San Jose.
I have pulled out my PowerBook 3400c and started working.
For a brief moment, I am a little embarrassed. Their Dell has a huge
screen; it must be close to 15 inches. This feeling quickly passes. The
3400c's screen is not quite as impressive, but it is working.
As my seat mates continue attempting to diagnose the problem with
their sick notebook, they periodically shoot glances at me. Or at my
PowerBook? I can't be sure. I contemplate volunteering, "Sorry, but the
3400c does not have a DVD drive, otherwise I would be glad to swap with
you for the duration of the flight."
I usually take my 3400c on flights instead of my iBook 466, mainly 
because the 3400c has a smaller footprint and will
easily fit on the tray table. Right now, however, I would love to have
the iBook and be able to offer it to these guys, "Here, why don't you
watch the movie on my Apple computer. Let me try to fix your
Microsoft problem while you enjoy yourselves with my Apple
computer."
I decide to keep quiet. This is getting to be quite a hilarious
show.
These guys are obviously, to some degree, "hands-on" IT Directors.
They are going through the logical troubleshooting steps. They have
rebooted the PC, then completely powered it down and turned it back on.
The drive spins up and will access a CD placed in it, so it is probably
not a hardware issue. They have reinstalled the driver and then the DVD
software, but still no movie. After more than 90 minutes of intense
work, they decide that the solution must lie in manually editing the
registry. How exciting! I am going to see, for free, a show that I
would gladly pay good money for!
Well, almost two hours have passed. The registry has been edited.
The DVD still doesn't work, and now there is also some sort of "DLL
error." To be honest, I am a little disappointed. Most manual registry
edits end in a much more exciting manner. Usually, the PC won't even
reboot and gives all kinds of cryptic error messages. I am now feeling
guilty for so badly wanting to gloat.
After a little over two hours, they have given up. More accurately,
the notebook has given up. The battery is dead. My PowerBook has been
running only 10 minutes less than their Dell, and my battery indicator
is only slightly below 50%. I might also point out that this is the
original battery. I am not nearly as jealous of the 15" screen as I was
an hour ago.
As I have been sitting here taking all this in, I can't help but
think that I could not have scripted a better example to illustrate why
I use a Mac at home and why I use a Mac as my primary computer at work
[as does my staff] when 95% of the employees my department supports use
Windows PCs. For one thing, we can't afford to spend our time fixing
our own computers, so we have to use computer that, for lack of a more
eloquent term, "Don't need fixin'."
As for home use, after spending all day sending my staff from one
fire to the next and usually dispensing the advice, "Just do
'Start>Shut Down>Restart the Computer' and it will be OK,"
numerous times, the last thing I want to do at home is work on my
computer. I have the radical belief that my computer should work for
me.
With the exception of installing new software or updating Norton
AntiVirus, I honestly can't remember the last time I had to reboot any
of my Macs. And I don't use OS X except on a test Mac at work. My
PowerBook runs Mac OS 8.6; my Power Mac 7500 and my wife's
iMac both run OS 9.1.
There are some who would say that a Mac has no place in the office.
These same people, by their statements, must also say that productivity
and efficiency have no place in the office.
Why do I use Macs in the office? Because they just work - and they
always play my DVDs. 
