My first computer was a Commodore VIC 20. My second computer was a Commodore 64, of course. Somewhere along the way, we had one of these, but I digress.
I’m a PC Girl. I always have been. A friend had a Mac in college. I tried it, but was completely befuddled. I certainly wasn’t going to run out and get one. Throughout the years, I’ve heard the fanbois go on and on about how fabulous macs are. I just didn’t get it.
Throughout the years, I’ve been lucky enough to skip the worst of the Microsoft operating systems (Millenium and Vista, anyone?). My most recent laptop is an HP running Windows 7/64 bit. I loved it enough to jokingly call it my “shiny precious”. But…
I’ve had a couple of problems with it lately. Nothing huge, but still annoying. And I feel like I always need to replace my PCs every year or so. I find myself tweaking a lot to get things to work. But my mac friends were often heard saying “it just works”. So I started having mac-envy a few months ago. It started small, but has steadily grown.
Then my PC battery life was getting so short as to be worthless. I bought an external hard drive that the Windows 7 machine didn’t like, despite supposedly being compatible. The laptop won’t shut down if the external drive is connected to my network. And if it goes to sleep, it won’t come back, but won’t shut off. I need to manually shut it off. REALLY annoying. So I’ve had to disconnect the external hard drive, which is pretty lame.
Cut to the holiday season. I bought myself a little present.
A 15″ Mac Book Pro
I must admit I was completely befuddled when I first got it. I really struggled to get anything done. However, after a few hours I was up and running. I *LOVE* the trackpad. I’ve quickly become addicted to two-finger scrolling. So much so that when I use my corporate PC’s trackpad, I keep trying to do the two-finger scroll. Installing applications has been a breeze. Connecting to my wireless printer was stupid simple. I get it, fanbois, I get it!
I still have Skype and Tweetdeck, my “must-have” apps. I polled people via Twitter and Skype (of course) and came up with a pretty consistent list of apps I needed to have:
Skype
Tweetdeck
Keynote
VM Fusion
iLife
Lotus Notes (of course)
Dropbox
I am really loving it. It’s a breeze to use once you get over the learning curve. And it’s pretty much the same screen size as my PC, but it has to be close to half the weight. Height and width are similar, but it’s half the depth. And it’s prettier. 
And you know what? It just works.
