As the Saying Goes, Once you Go Mac.....

Let me start out by just cutting to the chase...I'll never go back to Windows again!

Those that know me know that I've been weaning myself slowly off of Microsoft-based technologies.  It started off with moving off of MS Exchange, then Outlook, then Office...the last holdout being Windows itself.  But after my recent job switch I decided I needed to finally bite the bullet...plus I was envious of seeing all the "cool and hip" people toting their Macbooks around from place to place while I was still lugging my uncool and unhip Thinkpad.  I was told by several friends that the switch from Windows to Mac was going to be initially painful - one buddy of mine told me that "you will hate the damn thing for the first two weeks".  Plus, every time I would walk into an Apple store and start playing around with a Mac it would last less than 5 minutes, as I would get so frustrated not being able to right-click,  not figuring out how to resize a window, looking for the "file" menu, etc.  The other complication is the fact that for the life of me I could never get used to touchpad-style pointing devices - I was a firm believer of the Trackpoint and even preferred it over a regular mouse.    Anyway, I definitely had my work cut out for me.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was only completely frustrated on the first day, and after the second day I already knew I had made the right decision and knew that I would never go back to a PC again.  I think there were a few reasons why the transition was not as painful as I had anticipated.  First off, the fact that I've owned an iPad for awhile has conditioned me to "think like a Mac user"...if that makes any sense. There are a number of similarities between Mac OS and iOS, and with the recent Lion release the two operating systems are even more alike than ever.  Secondly, I don't use a ton of keyboard macros, and the ones I do use are all the basic ones and so it's simply a matter of remembering to use the "command" key instead of "ctrl"...so I had a much easier time of it when compared to the MS Office super-user types who get thrown off by all the keyboard macro differences between PC and Mac.  And lastly, though I still miss the Trackpoint I've come to appreciate some of the benefits of the touchpad, particularly some of the multi-touch gestures that Mac OS provides.

Compared to Windows, Mac OS does seem to be a lot more stable and efficient in its use of system resources, and I've rarely run into issues that have caused me to reboot the machine, let alone encounter a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) equivalent.  With Windows I would periodically need to do a "therapeutic reboot" in order to free up system resources, or Windows itself would do that for me by blue-screening on me every once in awhile. And the hardware design of the Macbook Pro is so well thought out and the build quality is second to none.  I can't even hear my hard disk spinning unless I press my ear against its surface - you would think there was an SSD inside of the machine.  And all the little touches, such as the magnetically attached AC adapter and the little clips attached to the adapter that you wrap the cord around.  It's no wonder Apple has won all those awards for design excellence.

But despite all of the improvements, far and away the best thing about my Mac is the fact that I now have suspend/resume that actually works!  With Windows this has always been a crapshoot.  I've had so many occasions in the past where I shut the lid on my laptop, commute home or to the office, get there and discover my laptop is still burning hot because it never went into suspend mode.  Equally frustrating are the frequent occasions where you open the lid and wait for 10-15 minutes until you finally see the screen, all the while your hard disk is spinning away like crazy.  I remember at one of my startups when we were fundraising and seeing VC's on a regular basis.  We would go through this routine where we would open the lid on one of our laptops while parking the car,  and carry it with the lid still open while walking into the VC reception area.  We must have looked a bit silly, but we wanted to ensure our presentation/demo went without a hitch and didn't want to take a chance on the laptop screen staying blank.  It's so comforting now to be able to just shut/open the lid freely anytime I need to and know that my machine will just work.

Is the Mac perfect?  Heck no...there are a number of little things that still annoy me today.  Why Steve Jobs doesn't allow you to cut-and-paste files is beyond me.  And the fact that you can only see the "file" menu for the foreground app is a real pain in the butt. But overall it's been a great move for me, one that's been a long time coming.  I'm also relieved that my multi-year quest to divorce myself of all things Microsoft has finally come to end...well, at least until the Skype acquisition is complete.  I guess I still have a few months of freedom before needing to tackle this again!

Windows 7 - Nothing to Write Home About

A few of my co-workers had been playing around with Windows 7 for the past few months, so I finally bit the bullet myself and upgraded one of my machines to the RTM code, specifically the 32-bit Ultimate version. Before the install I had to make the always difficult choice of performing a fresh install or upgrading from my current OS (Vista Ultimate). I decided on the latter, because I was feeling lazy and didn't want to bother with figuring out all the apps that needed to be re-installed, configuring them correct post-install, etc. This actually turned out to be a mistake, which I will talk more about in a second. I was also disappointed to discover that there was no option to upgrade directly to the 64-bit version of Windows 7 from my 32-bit Vista, although I guess in putting on my techie hat and thinking about this more I have to admit it would be a difficult process for Microsoft to pull off.

The actual upgrade process itself is easily the most straightforward and hassle-free upgrade that Microsoft has ever come up with for any of its operating systems, so congratulations are in order here. Once the upgrade begins you're asked just a minimal amount of questions and once the process gets going it's pretty much hands-off until it completes. One of the really nice things it does right at the beginning of the process is take inventory of all your applications and tells you which ones it thinks has known issues and what the workarounds might be, along with other warnings. For example, even though iTunes is compatible with Windows 7 it reminded me that I should deauthorize my machine from iTunes before the upgrade and reauthorize it afterwards. I've often forgotten to do this, so that was a great reminder!

Anyway, I began the upgrade around 11pm and things were chugging along pretty well, but at around midnight or so I hit upon what I thought was a major snag. The upgrade was in the final step, which was titled something like "transferring program files and settings". The progress bar had gotten "stuck" at 42%, and didn't move at all for the next hour and a half or so, though you could still hear constant disk activity on my machine. Feeling a bit panicked I did a bunch of Google searches on the problem and found that a number of other users had come across the same issue. Some of them decided to just abandon the process and reboot their machines...fortunately, the install process detects this and restores the prior OS properly, according to the reports I read. Others claimed that the upgrade will actually complete given enough time and patience. Since it was nearly 2am by now and I was getting sleepy, I decided to take the "hope and pray" approach and went to bed.

Fortunately, when I got up the next morning my prayers were answered and the install completed successfully - all I needed to perform was one final reboot. So now this begs the question...Is Windows 7 really worth the upgrade? I would have to say that generally speaking the answer is no. Probably the biggest benefit I've seen so far is that fact that the OS loads a fair amount quicker and generally speaking apps seem to be more responsive when compared to running under Vista. It seems like Microsoft devoted much of its efforts to streamlining the OS and making it less resource intensive. Outside of the performance improvements I think the other changes are relatively minor and are mainly UI tweaks...In fact, I can't even think of a single "must have" feature that the OS provides. Check out Engadget's Windows 7 review for more specifics on all the new features.

The other problem I ran into is that several of my applications no longer worked correctly post-upgrade. These were mainly shareware-type applications that installed their own device drivers, and for the most part all it took was a simple uninstall/reinstall for the app to begin working correctly again. Some apps require being run in "compatibility mode" in order to work correctly, and Windows 7 provides a nice wizard to help you select which mode to run in. I only have one application, Acronis TruImage, that doesn't run 100% correctly.

In conclusion, here are my recommendations for those of you considering the upgrade:

• If you are already running Vista and are happy with its performance, stick with it unless you just need to have the latest and greatest.
• If you're stuck on XP and haven't upgraded to Vista because of its stiff hardware requirements and/or were concerned about performance, Windows 7 might be the ticket here.
• If you do decided to upgrade, do so by performing a fresh install. Even though you'll have to hassle with reinstalling your applications, I think at the end of the day it will be less time consuming for you.