Switcher


After 22 years of computing, I told Micro$oft to drop dead and bought my first Mac. Phew! What a relief.


I’m 67 years old. I’ve worked in sales for the last 30 years, mostly representing folks in the bicycle trade; but, for the last several years, I’ve worked for a local construction company.

22 years ago, I took a position with the company that became Diamondback Bicycles. After they hired me, the vice-president called me and said, “don’t forget to come down to our regional warehouse and pick up your computer.”

I said, “Pick up my what?” I didn’t know from computers. Still, I labored through the predictable beginners’ mistakes and began to supplement how I managed my selling -- with my Tandy TRS80 Model 100 laptop computer -- tiny LCD screen and 32K memory. The OS was written by some guy named Bill Gates.

I welcomed Windows; then watched it slowly become leaden, buggy and insecure over time.

About a year ago, following the lead of other members of my family, I began to experiment with flavors of Linux. They’re proper command-line geeks and when there were hiccups with one or another GUI, it didn’t bother them a whole heck of a lot. My style is entirely based on ease of use, ease of communication. Linux didn’t work out.

So, two hours after Steve Jobs announced the Mini, I ordered one from the Apple Store. I think I got the first one in New Mexico. I discovered a few things:

1. This critter is quiet. I mean QUIET! I’ve had tinnitus for decades. Even with a custom fan installed in my Wintel computer, the noise drives me crazy.

2. OS X Rules! It does everything I expected from Unix -- and didn’t get with Linux. The folks working in Apple’s industrial design crew really do know how people think, feel and react. Intuitive actually is -- for a change.

3. My Mini -- in combination with OS X and software written for OS X -- runs as fast or faster, smoother and easier than my Wintel Computer and software written for that platform. And that critter has a P4 running at over 3.4mhz!

First, I moved all my personal stuff over to the Mini. I hooked up my Maxtor firewire jukebox where I store tens of gigabytes of digital photos, my hobby. Day-to-day stuff, from email [Thunderbird] to web browsing [Firefox] ran just fine.

So, a few months back, I moved everything over for work. I supplement my Social Security check doing sales and custom design work for a locally-owned subcontractor. Lots of images. Years of history of proposals and interaction with other contractors.

As part of my “walking away” from Windows, the past year, I’d already moved everything over into OpenOffice. At first, I tried the version the OpenOffice.org folks were developing for OS X; but, it was cranky. Then I found NeoOffice. They use Java to adapt OpenOffice to OS X. I don’t know beans about the programming; but, even in Beta, it worked well enough for me to rattle back through hundreds of proposals and memos and pick out what I need -- and use it. I mean, this is supposed to be a tool as well as a digital utility, right? [Now, they have a production Release]

It ALL works. A couple weeks ago, I turned my Wintel computer off. Everything’s been transferred to the Maxtor jukebox for storage and reference. Current projects, everything I’m creating, now, gets done with the Mini and resides there. My job runs as smoothly as ever.

I had started up the Mini with a spare keyboard, mouse and an old monitor. Now, those are hooked up to the Wintel machine in case I absolutely have to turn it on -- for some unknown reason. My newer Logitech cordless keyboard and mouse are hooked up to the Mini. My 19” LCD monitor is now hooked up to the Mini.

Now, I just need a little bit of an excuse to get an iBook -- and give my old Toshiba laptop to my niece and her kids.


Update: I bought an Apple 20” Cinema display. Wow! I caught a $150 rebate at Amazon.com and bought a 12” PowerBook laptop. Unlike folks building for Wintel, smaller is less expensive at Apple. I did send my old Wintel laptop off to my niece and her kids. I hope she forgives me.

Posted: Fri - July 8, 2005 at 03:18 PM