TECH STOP: Making the switch to Mac
A couple of weeks ago I was in a Best Buy store. There it was, calling to me from an aisle shelf: a 17” Macbook Pro. Something snapped and I decided to make the plunge.
By THOMAS R. WILES
Truckers Connection
10/10/2008
It’s rather shocking to me when I put a year count to it, but I’ve been messing around with computers since the early 1980’s — about 26 years!
My first computer was a Tandy “Color Computer” that came from my local Radio Shack store. It came with a whopping 32 kilobytes of RAM, used a cassette tape drive for data storage, and plugged into a standard TV set through an RF converter for a monitor. In those early days of the home computer, there were magazines devoted to each computer platform. I remember spending hours and hours tediously typing in the “Basic” language programs they always had listed in each issue of those magazines, and then spending more hours troubleshooting them in order to make the programs work. Often the programs consisted of simple games. There was a certain degree of satisfaction to be had from spending all that time entering someone else’s program into one’s own computer and ultimately making the code work.
Other people were doing similar things on other brands of those early home machines. A home computer was pretty much a pure novelty back in those days.
The first IBM compatible computer I bought was a PC/AT Packard Bell brand “clone” machine. Back in those days, IBM machines used Microsoft DOS, and most of the programs for sale were character-based with limited graphics. Typically you had to type in the name of the executable file in order to start the program, running one program at a time. Those machines were somewhat more useful, enabling real-world practical use. Even so, in those early years, it was still pretty much of a novelty to have a home computer.
As time progressed, I remember getting my first modems and connecting to computer “bulletin boards.” I was one of the first 50,000 customers on a novel online service called “America Online.”
The years continued to go by, the modems became faster, the machines themselves became faster, and a program from Microsoft that had been around for a few years finally started to catch on in a big way: Microsoft Windows version 3.0. I started using version 3.0 of Windows as it started to become popular. Next came Windows 3.1, then 3.11, Windows 95, 98, etc., etc.
During those years I started buying parts and building my own Windows-based computers. Back in those days there was a certain amount of fun to be had digging around in the guts of computers, putting the parts together, troubleshooting and making things work.
Windows 95 and 98 worked fairly well for what seemed to be a long time, looking back on it now. Around the year 2001 or 2002 things started to go wrong — Internet-borne viruses started to become much more prevalent, and an entirely new category of computer threat came along known as “computer spyware.”
Fast forward to today. Spyware has taken over as the leading threat to Windows-based computers, regardless of the version of Windows one is using. Even the latest version, Windows Vista, is extremely vulnerable to Internet-borne spyware.
Whereas I once derived a certain degree of satisfaction from computer hardware and software troubleshooting, somehow I seemed to change in the meantime. Today, I derive a great deal of satisfaction out of what I can do with computers and interacting with people from all over the country and the world on the Internet.
Since December of 2004 I’ve been heavily involved with creating audio and video podcasts, including high-definition video. I’m more interested in what I can create with computers and the interaction with others that modern computers offer than I am with hardware and software troubleshooting. I just want the computer to WORK, and I couldn’t care less about jumping through hoops.
About two years ago I bought my first Apple computer running OS/X, a Power PC-based Mac “Mini.” Next came an Intel-based Macbook. I continued to use Windows XP and then Windows Vista most of the time, but I finally got tired of the frustration of having to jump through seemingly endless hoops just to keep the operating system functioning.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a Best Buy store. There it was, calling to me from an aisle shelf: a 17” Macbook Pro. Something snapped and I decided to make the plunge.
At this point, I’ve moved to the Macbook Pro. Since it’s got an Intel-based processor, I am able to use a program called VMware Fusion to run both Windows Vista as well as Windows XP in “virtual machines” for non-Internet software that I still need, for example mapping programs such as Street Atlas USA and Microsoft Streets & Trips. Running Windows in a “virtual machine” is an excellent experience, since it’s easy to make back-ups or “snap shots” to revert to in case something should go wrong. Otherwise I’m using OS/X for everything else, and am really enjoying the spyware-free/virus-free OS/X experience.
You can find me on Twitter.Com as “TruckerTom.” E-mail me with comments or questions at tom@truckerphoto.com. I do a mostly-daily MP3 audio podcast located at truckertompodcast.com where you can either listen online on your computer or download it to listen on a portable MP3 player.