1. Windows & Linux suck!
I was fed up with Microsoft's poor desktop OS releases. I tried running Vista two different times on my old laptop and eventually ended up switching back to XP because of application & hardware compatibility issues. Windows XP is nearly 8 yrs old now; how sad is that? Windows 7 looks promising but too little too late for me. Linux just didn't cut it for me either. I tried Ubuntu and a couple others but this was even more challenging. I did a dual boot scenario to try it out and always found myself back in my XP installation mostly because of hardware compatibility issues. I don't have a heavy Linux background so trying to recompile drivers, etc. was just too much and I didn't care enough to learn.
2. The MacBook Pro is first class baby!
I was sick and tired of crappy laptops. My previous laptop was falling apart on me. The screen had a line running through it and would start to flicker in and out until I would bend and flex it. I had replaced the hard drive & battery both twice, the power adapter, and DVD RW drive. Now granted this was a cheap consumer grade laptop but the commercial grade one I had before wasn't much better.
The MacBook Pro's thin aluminum unibody and LED backlit screen really impressed me. You can tell they put a lot of engineering into every piece. I'll have to wait and see on the reliability of course but if they put this much engineering into the design surely they wouldn't fill it with crappy parts would they?
3. The Mac virus got me!
Several of my colleagues were switching to Macs and they would just go on and on about how great their Mac was. Sometimes after struggling to explain their experience they would eventually say, "You just have to try it for yourself." I guess this eventually got to me so I finally decided to take a leap of faith.
The cost of a MacBook Pro was hard for me to swallow for sure. Furthermore, I had to do some creative salespitching to get my wife to let me burn $1700 on one (the free iPod Touch offer and 0% financing helped). But if you compare it to a professional grade PC laptop like HP's EliteBook the price isn't that far off. That's really what it boiled down to for me. Did I really want to spend $1300-1500 on a pro-grade HP and then still have to deal with a Windows OS? Like I said, it was a leap of faith for me to switch because I had never previously owned a Mac. I'm sure glad I took that leap, though, because it's been great.
It's kind of funny when I think about it actually. When I worked for Office Depot 14 years ago selling "business machines" I think I only sold two Macs the whole 1.5 years I worked there. I used to tell people back then, "I'll be surprised if Apple is still in business 5 years from now. The PC has overtaken them with all the hardware and software options available. So I wouldn't recommend a Mac unless you have a specific reason to buy one." Boy was I ever wrong and thankfully so.
Well, I'm not going to make this blog just a marketing pitch for Apple. So in my next posts I'll dive into the good and bad experiences I've had in making the switch. Hopefully my experiences will help someone else................
So...the Windows laptops you bought in the past, did you spend $1700 on them? And what about your software compatability issues...so your telling me you can run on your Mac EVERYTHING that you couldn't on your Vista machine??? I bet some good $$$ there are things you still cannot run. I am not saying that Macs are bad, but I have to tell you I have found few things I cannot do on my Vista system. Very few things indeed. I have an HP DV6000 that I spent $650 on and I have had for 1 1/2 years now without any trouble what so ever. I am even running the dreaded "factory load" that everyone always thinks they have to blow away. All I did was uninstall some programs, a few tweeks and it boots and runs great. Absolutely no problems what so ever.
ReplyDeleteAll I am getting at is, are you 100% sure your problems were all in the OS and hardware???
I'm typically a pretty frugal person. I spent $800 on my last laptop (HP dv5237) and it lasted 3 years maybe (with a lot of help). That's all I intended to get out of it though. I was tired of wasting my time reloading Windows, fixing hardware, & maintaining Windows so it would run decent. I did the same thing with the "factory load" as you BTW. I'm an IT professional so I depend on my laptop every day and really "put it through the ringer" so to speak. My old laptop wasn't up for it and let me down several times. So yes, I am 100% certain my problems were the OS & hardware.
ReplyDeleteAs far as applications go yes, there are some applications that I have to run on Windows. But I can count them on one hand. Most apps can be replaced by a Mac friendly counterpart. The ones that can't I just run on my Windows 7 or XP VMs (which run much better virtualized). Additionally, application virtualization is already a reality and I believe in the near future you will be able run any application on any platform by using client hypervisors. So look out, Macs are already getting a foothold in corporations and they aren't just playing towards niche markets anymore.