So I’ve made a giant leap and said goodbye to my shaky old Dell Inspiron 1525 and purchased a brand new, shiny MacBook Pro. So just in case you were sick to death with switching to Mac stories, here’s another one.

There are a few reasons that I decided to buy one, which stems back to quite a few years ago. It was a time when Mark and I decided we’d try our hands at podcasting. You might not recall ever hearing such a thing, that’s probably because we never got it off the ground. In all fairness to my Dell it wasn’t designed to be a multimedia machine, it was just supposed to do the basic things very well and it did. However when I tried to get a bit creative we just fell on our arses. The soundboard wouldn’t recognise the microphones we bought and all the drivers I could find didn’t work.

It took about 2 hours to find that we’d have to use the installed microphone array, which created a lot of noise. When we managed to record a semi-decent podcast I had to edit with audacity. Now don’t get me wrong, for a free programme audacity is simply fantastic, it just crashes far too much to be reliable. Combine that with difficulty to meet up it was but on the backburner.

After that I was quite happy with my PC. Every now and again I’d look at the apple website and price up a realistic laptop for me to find that, no, I couldn’t afford it. However that all changed last easter when I found out that as a university student you get a discount on apple computers. I could get on board with that, but I still couldn’t afford it.

Cue just short of a year later when my PC, for the first time in its 18 month tenure, blue screened on me. A list of instructions came up and before I could finish reading “if this is the first time you have seen this message…” it turned itself off. “Not to worry” I told myself “this happens from time to time, I’ll just load it up and it will still work”. 30 minutes later I realised it wouldn’t work. After a summer of work I could have probably afforded a Mac then but that wasn’t the issue for me, the issue was fixing my PC.

One 500GB backup hard drive and a copy of Windows 7 later I had a working PC, and I was very pleased with Windows 7 and that hasn’t changed. Windows 7 is a great operating system, I’ve only had one problem with it since I installed it in March. I’d recommend an upgrade to anyone currently running Vista, you’ll be very pleased. So if I’m happy with my PC why did I shell out for a Mac? I’m glad you asked. It all happened with my first trip to an Apple Store a couple of weeks ago and my first talk with a “genius”.

I asked myself, “What is the most mind-numbing, pedestrian job conceivable?” and three answers came to mind: tollbooth attendant, Apple Store genius, and what Penny does. Now since I don’t like touching other people’s coins, and I refuse to contribute to the devaluation of the word “genius”, here I am.

Sheldon Cooper

Nice interlude there with something I agree with, Apple store sales assistants aren’t “geniuses” they’re just very good sales assistants. But then again when their competitors are the generally unhelpful staff at PC World then it’s a bit like Germany playing Australia¹. However I digress and for the next bit of my tale to make sense you need a bit of a back-story. Quick version: I might be spending next year in Nice, Fance. Okay let’s continue. I was very apprehensive about taking a PC to a foreign country that had already broken once and showed no signs of not breaking again². I don’t buy into the whole “Macs don’t crash” because I know for a fact that they do, so I was going on the whole “who will fix my computer easiest if it breaks”.

I only needed 2 pieces of information: 1. AppleCare Protection Plan is only £47 for students; 2. “AppleCare is international, even if you’re on a pacific island and can get access to a post office, we can fix your Mac”. That last little sound bite came from the “genius” I spoke to³. I told him I’d think about it so he gave me his card. I was hoping it would say “genius” on it but to no avail. Needless to say the next day I was walking through Leicester city centre crapping my pants that this wouldn’t be the first time I was mugged.

This morning I got Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. I wanted to use that of the iWork mainly because I think that Office 2007 is a great piece of software and didn’t see the need to change on that front. From the first look it scared the crap out of me. The tab style that you get in 2007 is gone and replaced with a photoshop style “formatting palette” and overall doesn’t look as good as 2007, which surprised me seeing as image is all for Apple. Maybe this was a dig by Microsoft. On second look I notice that you can do a lot more creative things with the 2008 suite, especially on powerpoint so I guess you win some and lose some.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to totally get rid of my PC. I don’t particularly want to, it works fine and I doubt that I’ll always use a Mac for the rest of my life, particularly when I start working. But until then…

Nick

1. ohh, current events [↩]
2. it had that windows sign when I logged on, BAZINGA!! [↩]
3. I liked him, he looked a little bit like Frank Turner [↩]

June 15th, 2010 | Tags: apple, dell, genius, mac, nick, office, PC, windows | Category: off-topic | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL