It’s been almost three full months now since I have switched my main home PC to a Mac. In a word I am very happy with the switch. The general consensus was the Dell Latitude D620 laptop that my wife and I were sharing for a year and three months was becoming a burden not necessarily in performance, but mainly in that we had to “share” it. On most nights when we both needed to use the laptop I would use my work laptop which was usually at home plugged in in the evenings.

Another catch in our office setup was we only had one desk. Sometimes we would both be at the desk each with their own chair plugging and chugging at our keyboards. Sooner then later we drove each other nuts.

I ordered up a Mac Pro (i.e., Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeons, 5G Memory, ATI Radeon X1900 XT and 250G + 500G HDs) and dual 24″ Dell 2407WFP-HC panels to be mounted to Ergotron LX Desk Mount LCD Arms. Mom loaned me Dad’s old desk which became my wife’s new desk and I set the new goodies up on my old desk.

Mac Pro

Compared to the Windows machines I have used for the last 15+ years this is a big improvement.

  1. Very fast start up times
  2. Only one crash in three months and that was caused by third party software
  3. General administration is a snap
  4. Unix (i.e., Darwin) as the base OS is a huge plus for a CLI guy like me
  5. Runs for weeks at a time without a hickup

True I have had to make some software sacrifices like forgoing OutLook Business suite and bowing to Mac Mail and I still don’t have Adobe CS3 Suite. But other then that my computer life has proceeded normally. If anything the Mac Pro just feels right. With XCode and MacPorts I can compile just about any standard piece of Unix software known. Setting up Time Machine was so easy I was not sure about it so I kept poking around looking for something more to do. The overall philosophy of Mac is just so different then Windows it’s hard to summarize. Mac puts you in the drivers seat and faithfully handles the rest without a bother. That’s a far cry from the Windows way.

Online support for the switch was close by as I did stumble a few times with keyboard shortcuts and the like the first few days.