I've never considered myself a "die hard" Apple fanboy. There are a few things I don't like about Apple, mainly pertaining to customer service and the whole bogus "Apple Care" "Product line". If my friends are complaining about their computers I'll make some tongue-in-cheek or off-the-cuff remark, but that's pretty much the extent of my fandomism.
However, I'm really starting to think that I
should be more die hard, thanks to my recent experiences. I'm no stranger to XP or PCs in general, I spend 8 hours a day on one at work, writing code and typesetting financials. While it's been a while since I've had to configure one, I'd say my PC knowledge almost rivals my Mac knowledge, and my PC experience easily outweighs my Mac experience.
I recently installed Bootcamp with XP to play Half Life 2. The hardware runs like a dream, I'm able to play even Lost Coast with my graphic setting at full and nary a hiccup to speak of. But, even getting to play was a hassle. To start with, I had to hunt down and disable somewhere around half of the "functionality" XP has. This is something I haven't had to do on my Mac. Since I bought it a month and a half ago, I think I've changed two of the settings from default -- I've turned full keyboard support on, and recalibrated the monitor. I customized some icons to give the computer the "look and feel" I wanted it to have. I spent more than twice as long slogging through XP settings, and not to make XP more sexy, just to make it
work reasonably well at all.
Oh, that's not true. I've changed three settings on the Mac. I changed the default start disk to the XP partition -- since if the computer is off, it's because XP crashed, and I have to change boot disks a whole lot less frequently. XP has crashed 4 times since I installed it. OS X, zero.
Now for some bullets!
- I've gotten in the habit of using Ctrl+X instead of Ctrl+C because Windows seems to have a habit of not actually performing the task, and Ctrl+X provides a visual of all your highlighted text being deleted, sucked into the inky black void. This is one of many "quirks" I've attributed to a history of crashes and inconsistencies, there are many more.
- I used to run tech support for my folks about once a month for their PC. When the Mac Mini came out, I talked them into buying one, even though they insisted they were computer illiterate (and rightly so), and couldn't adapt. I took 20 minutes to show them the very basics, and I have been called once about it. Even though they've had it for only two years tops, they're much more proficient with it then they were with a PC, which they had had for almost ten years. They were so thrilled by it they bought one for my little sister as an apartment warming gift.
- Macs are fookin' sexy.
- Using XP now at home has really cemented the idea that OSX truly does "just work". When you're not having to configure XP from scratch you tend to forget just how much of a pain it was to get the darned thing to work properly in the first place. I think the reason we have so few probles at work is because everything has been disabled and locked up by administers.
Note: I'm typing this on a PC running XP, IE6.0. IE crashed once while typing this; but I'm so used to that I've been backing up into a notepad file every couple of paragraphs.
I'm in the market for a new laptop. I've been considering a MAC. I've had a PC all my life. My first piece of equipment was a Commodore 😱 then IBM, then HP, and now Gateway. I would use the laptop mostly for research/writing, not necessarily games, although I do enjoy Tetris.🙂 
