Moving Back to Windows from Mac: Why I made the Move to Mac

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I bought my first modern Mac in February, 2008, a 15″ MacBook Pro. At the time I was frustrated with the laptop I owned – a 17″ Toshiba X205 – which was running Windows Vista Ultimate in what seemed like a most underpowered way. I was tired of being told that there were no drivers yet available for my gear, I was tired of seeing notifications pop up asking me constantly if I was sure that I wanted to do something, and I was basically ready for a change. It didn’t help that I had already seen Mitchell and Vincent‘s MacBook Pros, and I was swooning over the hardware.

In all honesty I also felt a bit left out, because I didn’t know anything about the Mac OS other that what I had experienced in the late 80s (which hardly counted), and I certainly wasn’t immune to the praise heaped on it by friends who had been converted. In other words, I wanted to see what all the hype was about.

Trying a “new to me” but very developed and feature rich OS was an adventure, because nearly every day I had some kind of “a-ha” moment – some were as simple as learning how to right click with two fingers on the Mac’s generously sized one-buttoned touchpad, and some much more exciting – such as discovering that I could get obscure symbols to appear while typing on the Mac by just holding down the Option key and pressing the corresponding single keyboard button, versus having to key in a numeric sequence while holding down the alt key in Windows (meh!).

The hunt was on as I looked for programs that would do things similar to the Windows equivalents I had been using, and in almost every case the Mac program i found would look more hip, more modern, more colorful, more… (dare I say it?) fun than the Windows OS equivalent. Heck, even the application setup process was cute: download a program, drag it over to the applications folder, listen for the springy sound, click to open – and you’re good to go!

Sometimes I found Mac programs that were even better than what I had been using on Windows, but there were times when I was completely out of luck, unable to find a Mac version solution.

That wasn’t necessarily a problem, though!

All I had to do was install VMware Fusion, and I could have Windows XP on a relatively small portion of my Mac disk. The best part was that it was so easy to do that I never felt like I was “boldly going” anywhere. The XP portion of my disk was what I used for programs such as Microsoft Money, Legacy Family Tree, and eWallet; on my MacBook Pro, running XP and OSX together in Fusion was a beautiful thing.

I did try to give the native Mac information managers a fair shot, but I never felt that the experience was as fully-featured as what I had when I was using Microsoft Office Outlook 7. No problem, I could just buy the Microsoft Mac Office suite and its Outlook substitute Entourage…right? Ugh, it just wasn’t the same. In the end, on the Mac I would up using a combination of Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. For the most part, my needs were met.

I could come up with many metaphors about this, but even when things got a bit tough – all I had to do was look at my laptop’s hardware…the glorious and sleek aluminum MacBook Pro. For instance, it had a generously sized and responsive touchpad. I had always used a mouse with previous Windows laptops, but with my Pro I never felt the need for a mouse! My MacBook had a remarkable backlit keyboard which was the ultimate in convenience for a on-touch-typist like me, someone who doesn’t always work in the best light. And another thing? The power connector was magnetic! How many times have you accidentally yanked the power cord out of your laptop? With a magnetic connector, there is no harm done – even if the biggest klutz trips over your cable and rips it out.  Hardware-wise, in my opinion, there was nothing on the market that even came close to the MacBook Pro. That was until the MacBook Air arrived, of course.

Don’t get me wrong, once I started using one, the Mac experience wasn’t quite as perfect as I had been led to expect: there were crashes and lockups, and I did experience annoying waits. But overall it was pretty positive, and I was happy with my purchase. As I wrote in May 2008, “I have heard how the Mac will hardly ever freeze up, how the whole user experience is much more satisfying, and how everything is so much “easier”. Well give me a break…none of that has necessarily proven to be true. I suppose if you are someone that just surfs, emails, and blogs then it might be. But I have experienced driver incompatibility issues – particularly with wireless printer routers, problems finding comparable software to the Windows versions that I am happy with, occasional freezes as well as other quirks that have led me to conclude that the Mac OS is no more a simple solution than Windows. It is just a “different” solution with much nicer hardware than I am used to.”

Then came the first real bump in the road: I was at a Microsoft sponsored Mobius event in Seattle, and my less than three month old MacBook Pro’s hard drive took a dump in front of a room of my peers and Microsoft staff; irony much? Needless to say, I was a bit freaked out, but I was also forgiving. Hardware failures can happen to anyone, right? Although I’ll admit that I had never experienced such a spectacular and potentially devastating FAIL on a Windows laptop. Since I had to send my MacBook Pro in for warranty work, I “consoled” myself with a brand new first generation MacBook Air. heh.

By the time my MacBook Pro returned from Apple with a brand new hard drive, I was so enamored with the Air that I didn’t want to give it up. I used my MacBook Pro as the heavy duty “desktop” (though in truth it didn’t get much use at all), and my Air became my day to day as well as travel laptop. When the second generation MacBook Air appeared, it took about five minutes to debate whether I could or should, then I placed my order for the new and improved SSD model.

Since I purchased my first Air, there has never been a time when I didn’t feel I had the sexiest laptop available sitting right in front of me, but there were little niggling things that made me think that maybe it might be time to consider another laptop…things like the way the Air would totally bog down when I had 20 tabs going in Firefox (typical for me), how YouTube would stutter when playing videos (I still don’t understand why), and how my system was starting lock up more and more regularly- requiring either a restart or at the bare minimum leaving me looking at suddenly words appearing  after a a huge lag from when I had typed them out…or even worse – the spinning marble of doom.

I knew that there was a disk reformat and OSX reload coming up again in my near future, and it wasn’t going to be something I could easily use Time Machine to restore from. What I really needed was a more powerful system, and I’ll be the first to admit that I was expecting much from this system. Moving back to the MacBook Pro wasn’t really an option anymore, because I had given it to my fiance, Kevin. Buying another MacBook wasn’t an option because to do so would be pretty silly.

Unlike the few other times when I had needed to reformat my Air for performance issues (yes, I had been in this boat more than once), this time I had a 12″ HP dv2 laptop available to use. I’ll admit that it took me a few days to even pull it out of the box and do the unboxing video; even then, I let Kevin load his favorite game on it and I figured I’d get to reviewing it shortly.

I tinkered with the dv2 a bit, thought it was actually a very well specc’d and good-looking laptop, but didn’t seriously start using it until the day came when I was editing Gear Diary posts, and my MacBook Air simply could not keep up. Firefox crashed several times (version 3.5.1), and even with only one tab open it was doing the whole typing and lagging routine (while I tried not to pull my hair out!). I needed to put something into my Microsoft Money program, which meant waiting no less than three minutes for XP to boot in VMware and once in I could only slowly enter the data. I knew then that I couldn’t put off reformatting my Air any longer, but I simply didn’t have time to do it.

That’s when I pushed the Air across the table and pulled the dv2 over to me. I opened it up, loaded a few of the programs that I knew I would need (including Money, natch), transferred a few files, and started to get through the day’s work.

Almost a week later – with a few more loaded programs added, I realized that I hadn’t touched the Air once…and I honestly did not miss it.

By the time I had finished the dv2 review, I had decided that the things that used to bother me about Windows Vista were no longer as much of an issue as they had been before; that’s not to say that things were perfect, but by now I knew that there was no such thing. The dv2 was a smallish laptop with enough RAM and a strong enough processor that there were little to no lags, programs ran smoothly, and nearly every issue I’d had with Vista back in the day was no longer an issue.

I was actually having fun using a Windows laptop, and one loaded with Vista, no less.

Then the opportunity arose to review the HP dv6, Mini 110-1036NR and Syncables software in conjunction with the HP and Microsoft Back to School and Better Together giveaway. The idea behind using this set of two laptops was that the 16″ dv6 would basically serve as a portable desktop replacement, and the 10.1″ Mini 100 would be the “grab and go” notebook – with documents perfectly synced between the two, thanks to the Syncables software. I had already been exposed to the HP mini when I had been part of the Vivienne Tam program, so I already knew that the mini was a good travel laptop, although certainly not anything close to desktop replacement. But in a setup like the one HP was proposing, the mini might actually shine.

Maybe it was time to give Windows a second chance?

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About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She started in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie is best known for her device-agnostic approach, deep-dive reviews, and enjoyment of exploring the latest tech, gadgets, and gear.

10 Comments on "Moving Back to Windows from Mac: Why I made the Move to Mac"

  1. Great read Judie.

    I have said for many years that there is room at the table for both Mac and PC. I don’t think it is an all-or-nothing scenario. If you find the one that works best for you, go for it. In my case, it has always been PCs although I fully admit that my son’s MBP is an amazing piece of kit.

    Just wait until you try out Windows 7. It is awesome – simply awesome.

  2. I cannot believe this… OMG, I am in shock! Well not really since you told me about this a few days ago… but still, you going back to a PC is like me looking into an Android handset because I’m so ticked at the stuff Apple has been pulling lately… oh, wait, I AM looking into Android handsets… never mind.

    In all seriousness a GREAT post.

    A couple of thoughts…

    The Air is an ultralight and, as a result, brings frustrating performance issues with it- especially when someone is trying to use it as their main machine. This is especially the case for someone who does the degree of serious computer use that you do. To a certain degree you were hoping/needing it to do/be something it isn’t really designed to do or be. It was why I got rid of mine too. The Air was primarily made for Mac-users who travel a lot. For them it is great. For you or me… not. (BUT– I still miss it as it was the “sweetest” notebook I have ever used but it was too limiting for my needs.)

    So it is no surprise that the HP won you over. It looks like a nice machine and, even though it too is a small notebook that travels light, it is clearly built with the goal of having the power someone needs in a “main” computer. (That 4GB of RAM compared to the Air’s 2 is a big difference! Not to mention the graphics card in it.) It is a lot more power but, at a pound more, it also weighs a good deal more than the Air. Your computing needs befit a full, powerful notebook NOT a super light one. And so the Air needed to go. Now you even get the best of both worlds- powerful notebook for real work, light but frustrating netbook when on the run. That’s not a bad combo.

    At the same time comparing the Air and the HP is, to a certain extent, like comparing Apples and Oranges. The real comparison (at least if someone was out shopping fresh and didn’t HAVE an HP right there to use) would be between the HP and any one of the MacBook Pros. The MacBook Pros would have all the power of the HP and something the HP doesn’t- the ability to run both OSs.

    Other than cost, I personally do not see why anyone would NOT get the Mac these days since, with it, you can run BOTH Windows and OS X. Want it for Windows full time? No problem- it can do that. Want it for OS X full time? That too. Apple machines give you the best of both worlds now. The HP (or any other PC) doesn’t.

  3. Vanessa Knight | August 8, 2009 at 12:21 am |

    Moving Back to Windows from Mac: Why I made the Move to Mac http://bit.ly/Q0sf5 (via @GearDiarySite)

  4. Thank you Clinton. I have tinkered with 7, but just a Beta version, so I know I am in for a treat. 🙂

    Dan, I honestly think this is the longest thing you have ever written that wasn’t its own article or review. 😆 Let me see if I can hit the highlights…

    Yes, I was very aware that the Air was an ultralight, and that it was basically meant as a travel, surfing or blogging laptop. Guess what, though? That’s exactly what I was trying to do with it. Okay, maybe the average Mac surfer is happy with Safari and won’t install Firefox, and maybe they won’t have 20+/- tabs open at any given time, but it didn’t seem unreasonable to me. I wasn’t processing video on it (remember? I would send those to you?), I wasn’t doing major photo editing on it (iPhoto more than met my needs), and I wasn’t even using it to watch DVDs or listen to music.

    So at the end of the day, what you’re saying is that the Air is only meant for light surfing at Starbucks, and I shouldn’t have expected it to meet my needs? I disagree. For the most part, the Air was able to meet all of my needs, but there were some issues. For the most part, fixing permissions, reformatting, and tinkering with a few other utilities would take care of things – but that process did get old.

    This time I didn’t have to go through the process since I had other options, you’re right. Perhaps this time would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back and I would have sold the Air and bought a 13″ MBP…or not. But since I had other hardware to try, I did.

    I guess the point I am trying to get across here is that I dragged my feet going back to Windows because I didn’t really think that there was anything there for me, and it turns out I was wrong.

    On a side note: there is something to be said about the fact that you can get the entire package that I am now using, the dv6 AND the mini for under a grand – even substantially less with certain specials – while the 13″ MBP starts at $1200.

    If you have some jingle in your pocket and you want a Mac, then you will pay the premium without thinking twice, and I certainly wouldn’t fault anyone for that. Believe me, I am still a fan of the OS and even more a fan of the hardware; I’m just looking at other options. 🙂

  5. runningman | August 8, 2009 at 2:32 pm |

    Judie, one of the things you have always said is that you are OS agnostic; you want to do what you want to do in the best, most efficient manner possible. You like cool, fast hardware, and you are not afraid to change. To me, you are just being true to your word, although a little melancholy I think since those doggone Apple people should be doing a bit better (and they could) with the Air line. You gave me some great advice on my 15″ MBP, and I love it, but I am also waiting for a much smaller, faster machine that I can throw in the briefcase for short trips. The dv6 and mini are new, fast and refreshing. So enjoy – guilt free. It’s certainly not forever – remember the gadgetheads at Apple never sleep . . . hoo-ha!

    Bill

  6. Ha! Thank you, Bill. And since you never know what the little fairies at Apple might create in their shop while we are sleeping, there is no telling what I try next.

    But for now, I am enjoying this experiment with the latest HP equipment and the Windows Vista OS very much. 🙂

  7. I’m having fun using Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One Netbook – but I am not ready to give up my MBP or iMac. I’m actually seriously considering replacing my Dell desktop in the office (about 5 years old) with an iMac.

    I’d have to say other than the lightness factor I have not read a lot of other great things about the MBA.

  8. I’ve been extremely impressed with Windows 7 since I first tried Beta 1, and it has just gotten better and better in the subsequent versions. I’ve got the RTM version loaded to my Media Centre and in Boot Camp on my 13MBP, and it runs beautifully on both.

    Best example of how much better 7 is to Vista was demonstrated to me on the Vaio P, that thing ran like a dog on Vista, and as soon as I loaded 7 RC1 it was smooth and nice to use.

    Finally Microsoft have an OS that feels good.

  9. Drew Guttadore | August 9, 2009 at 11:05 pm |

    WoW! To be sure.. I hate to say it, but for the most part an HP Mini-Note will do what the Air does without all the panache of a Mac Air. We do need to look at our needs/costs in computing as much as our more subjective desires.

    Having just been through this sort of debacle I went with a Mac Air, but knew my boss would want it as soon as I got back from the US.. 🙂

    Now to wait a bit until Windows 7 comes out on the netbooks.. ;_)

  10. William Bates | June 30, 2012 at 8:37 am |

    failmac

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