Jay Currie

A week ago my very old and very PC died. I had inherited it from KMG (thanks) and installed various new things over the two years it served as my main work computer. Mercifully, it was two old to run Vista so I kept it on the old, but reliable, XP. Even so, it was buggy, crashed a couple of times a day and ready to be replaced.

In the background I had been picking up Macs. A G4 laptop, a G5 desktop for the kids and a dual G5 in anticipation of my Mac conversion. (Lest you think I have come into money, these were all second hand and very reasonably priced.) Mac hardware did not especially impress me. The G5s simply seem to be better engineered versions of PCs.

What I really liked was the OS 10 operating system. I ran my G% in background as a web computer and photo editing machine as I tried to find time to make the swtich. I never turned it off. It never crashed, it accepted the external drives I attached and seamlessly integrated the assorted utilities I was downloading. It simply worked and worked fast.

A week after the PC death, the Mac is my work computer. No fuss. I have to search around for a copy of Photoshop but that is all I am missing.

For me, a long time PC user, the strangest part is that to do relatively simple things I just do them rather than having to perform strange little PC rituals. Install a USB card – well, you plug it in. I kept looking for drivers. I didn’t need any. That sort of experience repeated five or six times a day means I am never going back.

Ever.