Let me start by saying two things.
One, I make my living managing a few hundreds Wintel servers all running Windows2003, I engineer every server solution at our company and they all involve complex Wintel solutions. Second, I’m pretty much “ambi-OS” and can work on any operating system.
Two, I’ve always chosen to use the Mac for many reasons. 1 it’s much more elegant. The hardware just works. It’s rock solid. No virus’s. Every tool I need can be found on the Mac. (Well, except for Visio). I could go on, but suffice it to say, for personal use and personal productivity I’ve always found the Mac to just rock.
Here’s the saga…
A few weeks ago, the night after coming home from the Prater Cup in Crested Butte, I discovered that my Mac G4 laptop’s screen went dark. Looks like the back-light was not on as you could still see an image, but no light. After examining the back corner, it looked like it had been dropped while in my travel bag. So, I’m guessing somewhere along the way, it fell out of the back of the car. No one fessed up. Oh well, watcha gonna do.
Fortunately, the external monitor connection worked fine. I used it at the office along with my LCD without any issues. However, I knew I’d need to get it fixed. No screen on a laptop was kind of pointless.
So, there I was, sitting in my office, looking out at the Flat Irons contemplating what to do. We had one loaner Mac a little iBook G4. I decided to give it a try. 1 day and I realized I couldn’t deal, the screen was too small and the pixel depth was only 1024 x 768. Not enough screen real estate. I was ready to go blind. Hey… I am over 40.
After contemplating every option, I decided to use one of our DELL D800s. Hey, why not. I figured, I can work on anything and I�d never had any issue using my wife�s Inspiron. The D800 has a nice big screen, good battery, plenty of hard-drive, 1gb of memory. It�s considered a pretty decent system by most standards. It was 1 year newer than my PowerBook.
First hurdle I faced, getting everything from my Mac to the DELL. It took 3 days to get everything over and I’m still sorting out where everything is. Copying files wasn�t the issue, just getting organized again and forget moving email from Entourage to Outlook. (Entourage is Microsoft�s Mac version of Outlook.) So, I started fresh and kept the old mail and folders on the little iBook. In fact, I kept most of my tools and utilities on the iBook so I would have access to a Mac.
However, that was 3 weeks ago and now I’m missing my old PowerBook more than ever. In just 3 weeks, I�m trying to figure out, how in the world Windoze users get anything done. I mean, I’m all for using Wintel servers. Shoot, I make my living off of them. But, as a day-to-day workstation, it basically sucks. Big time. Might be cheaper as straight up hardware, but after dinking with the settings, slogging it back and forth from office and home and lugging it on an airplane, I’m convinced that it the biggest snow job in the world regarding being productive. I find myself wasting more time just getting it �Usable� and then, when it�s in a decent state, I found there were tons of subtle things on the Mac that just make life easier. I�m not talking great utilities or anything like that. I�m talking about basic Operating System and organization functions that are just plain missing or cumbersome on Windows. Granted, I�ve been on a Mac and know a lot of the shortcuts inside and out. However, after looking all over for something that resembles what I was use to on the Mac, there often times were just not any options.
Here�s my statement. While you can get things done on a Wintel system, I believe it takes a lot more time in the little things that just eat away at your over all day and make you ultimately unproductive.
Here�s why�
Moving the laptop around
Okay, what’s the main reason you buy a laptop? You have one to be portable, convenient and easy to use anywhere. Right. Well, I’m here to tell you it’s a major pain or at least not the most convenient.
I’m so use to my Mac, I duplicated my habits with the DELL and basically screwed the pooch every time I put it in “Stand-by” or just shut the lid. I learned my first lesson with a Wintel laptop. DO NOT SIMPLY STOP WHAT YOUR DOING and SHUT THE LID as if it’ll be right there when you’re done. It will hose the laptop every time. And.. I mean every time. I’ve yet to get a decent Stand-by to come back up from just shutting the lid. Pretty much forget the idea of this convenience and just shut-down the system.
Note: with my Mac, I’d simply be working at the table or my desk, or at the airport or where ever and be working along… bam need to stop working on what ever I was doing. All I ever did was…. now pay attention… stop and slam the lid. Put it in my bag or leave it sitting on the kitchen table, go get on the plane, eat dinner or what ever needed to be done. Knowing all the while that my work was sitting right where I left it ready to go, instantly. YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS LUXURY ON A WINTEL LAPTOP. So much for that convenience.
That alone should haves stopped me in my tracks. But…. noooooo I had to continue dealing with this as it was going to be a few more weeks before the new screen came in.
Networking
Next biggest pain. Networking on Wintel is, well, sort of a joke. Most I�m sure hope that they can just leave their settings as DHCP. Well, I have multiple network needs going from home to office and have specified addresses to provide support.
First thing, go get a network switcher. Do not rely on XP to have anything convenient built-in. Once installed, it helps, but still is a pain.
On the Mac, you can setup as many profiles as you�d like with protocols, ports, wireless etc� turned on or off depending on what you�d like. I have an Home and an Office setup. One change everything comes with. All wireless and IP settings are managed from the same place, not 18 various possible entry points.
XP�s wireless setup is a maze of confusion. Not enough space to go into this one.
Screen resizing and splitting
Getting the screen set is a major chore when moving the laptop from various environments. I often move my laptop from my docking station with an LCD, to sitting in the server room on the laptop screen only. This one always hoses me. The laptops screen is usually split in half and the Function to CRT/LCD buttons on the DELL are about a 50/50 chance of working. Most of the time I�ve given up and rebooted.
At home, I have an LCD and no docking station, so I like to have the LCD set higher up and the laptop open lower. Setting up every time I turn on the laptop is not easy. Lots of poking around and resetting the NVIDIA display settings or the built in settings, then moving the mini-2 under the 1 in settings so the mouse goes up and down seamless from screen to screen. Don�t even think about grabbing the laptop and quickly disconnecting and moving it upstairs. First, it wigs out the settings and second, it wigs out the laptop. Full shutdown and reboot is more appropriate.
Again, not to harpe, but with my Mac, I never gave it a second thought. Screen settings just automatically set themselves in the same profile as network switching.
Subtle things
Here�s where the real fun begins. Daily working and organizing your files, folders and generally using applications is klunky at best on XP. Here�s my list in no particular order.
One: Windows OS has no ability to colorize a folder for visual queus. This feature has been in some part of the MacOS since circa 1984. One might think this is a minor thing. However, when you have multiple nested folders for organization, color visualization to determine active work or specific type of work makes trudging through tons of folders a more efficient task. With File-Opens and Saves, this is also a help.
With colored folders, you can use visual queus to navigate quickly either through standard color schemes or just on the folders you�re working in during the immediate project.
Two: Adding a folder anywhere in the Explorer. This one is more personal preference, but a lot of little non-existent conveniences floored me. Like, to make a new folder inside a particular folder is not easy. You have 3 options. 1 � Using the mouse, click File, New and go to Folder. Or� 2 – using your keyboard, you can hit Alt-F, Alt-N, Alt-F, 3 separate key commands to get deeper in the menus, or 3 � you can do what most do, right click in the folder, drag over to the sub menu to New Folder.
On the Mac. Two options. 1 � click the �New� folder icon on the top of every window or Command-N. Voila�. No customize features in XP.
Three: Mousing around in general. I�ve found that most functions require a lot of mousing around. While there are key commands in most applications, they usually require 2 or 3 in sequence to get what you need done. So, I found myself resorting to lots of mousing and clicking.
Track-pad. This is the most annoying. There�s a setting on the Mac that allows you to set the sensitivity on the track pad so when your thumbs hit the space bar while typing and you graze the track pad, it ignores �incidental� and doesn�t jump your cursor to the top of the page. This is extremely annoying when writing long documents and your typing along extremely fast to discover half the sentence you just banged out is buried two paragraphs up. Stop, copy/paste, reset cursor waste lots of time. It�s happened at least a hundred times while typing this blog.
Some Microsoft functionality missing. Excel and Word are plain better on the Mac. For some reason, there are a number of features that are available on the Mac and just not there or cumbersome to use on the Windows version. Example: I use a lot of excel forms and like to merge fields and unmerge fields for aesthetics. On Mac, each is considered a separate function with separate icons and menus. On Xp, there�s �merge� icon. But, to Unmerge, you use the same button. Not very intuitive and it took 15 minutes of searching the help menus to figure out. More wasted time.
I could go on, but I�ll leave at these annoyances for now. I�m probably stuck with this ole 68� FORD for another couple of weeks and will be very, very ready to get back behind the wheel of my BMW with leather seats and all of the conveniences I�m use to.
Let the nashing, wailing and OS bashing begin. It�s been a while and now my Mac bigotry is starting to rear it�s head again.
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I should have taken my laptop in a long time ago??? What was I thinking???
