making The Switch: Upgrade choices

Today was Steve Jobs's annual MacWorld conference keynote, a perfect opportunity to post about my experience with my new MacBook.  Last year I needed to upgrade my old Dell, but I really wasn't interested in "upgrading" to Windows Vista. The irritating security warnings I've read about, with a very poor signal-to-noise ratio, make me believe that Microsoft has lost any empathy for real end users. Still, I was resigned to limp along for as long as possible on Windows XP before grudgingly transitioning.

Instead, a confluence of events convinced me to take the Mac plunge. Reports of the diminished cost difference between PCs and Macs and Apple's growth in market share helped me think different, but not nearly as much as the examples set by my peers. My wife is a teacher, so it's not surprising she's a longtime Mac user. The tipping point came when I started my new job, however. I was impressed to find the most thoughtful engineers preferred not Linux boxes, and certainly not Wintel devices, but Macs.   

In the end, and say what you will about Apple's marketing hype, it's clear they are among the leading companies in the world who have chosen to compete on user experience. I want to support a company whose values are so closely aligned with my own.

So at the beginning of December, for my birthday, I purchased a black MacBook.  (I wanted the sophisticated black shell no matter what, but since my wife already owned a white MacBook, it was practical to get the different color for myself.)  This post is becoming a little long, so I'll follow up soon with my sense of whether the product has fulfilled my expectations.

Next: My MacBook user experience

Comments

[Dr. Pete]

I went the other direction and bought a new Dell laptop with Vista and Office 2007. I haven't thrown it out the window yet, but the learning curve is very steep, especially for all the hype about the new Office's usability. Microsoft has a bad habit of making dramatic changes just for the sake of drama (to sell more product).

[Adrian Salceanu]

I have used various operating systems in the past - OS X for about 2 years, while I was the happy owner of a PowerBook and for about 6 years, all versions of Windows (95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, 2003 Server). Vista convinced me to drop Windows for good - after trying to use it for about 6 month, after hundreds of hours of slow updates and solving MS software compatibility issues (SQL Server, Visual Studio) I madly gave up. It's more than a half of year since I switched to Ubuntu and I love it. But I do believe that Mac OS X is the most advanced OS today and it's very likely that my next portable will be a Mac Book (Pro, hopefully :) ).