Bag of Bones

I’m no longer a PC, and I’m only 29 years old.

While wars have been started over less, the debate over Mac vs PC is one of the hotest topics on the Internet.  For the past 28.5 years, I have fought bravely on the side of the PC, but alas, I have pulled a Benedict Arnold and joined the Steve Jobs Infantry.  Don’t get me wrong, PCs have been good to me.  Some of my best childhood memories are my father and I continuously swapping 5.25 floppy disks in our first desktop PC setup in our dining room.  We learned DOS together, we  single-handedly won World War 2 by defeating the Germans in PT-109, and if it wasn’t for Math Climber, I still wouldn’t understand fractions.  I’ve made a good living off PCs, from a Student Technician in College, to a Network Analyst at a small town in Massachusetts, to Manager of the Production Engineering group at Monster.com, PCs have provided me with a steady paycheck for a good number of years.  So why, you ask, have I bitched slapped Bill Gates and crew and jumped ship?  Excellent question!  I do not fit the “typical Mac user” profile: I have never voted democrat, I drive an SUV instead of a Prius, I’ve never attended a film festival, I did not put the Apple Sticker on my car (it’s fruity enough), and while I do enjoy the occasional cup of Starbucks coffe, most mornings I make it myself at home.

It’s true, my reason for purchasing a laptop washed in unicorn tears has nothing to do with joining the social elite club, but rather, has some actual technical reasoning behind it, and as my wife will attest, also speaks to my inability to ever be fully satisfied with a single gadget I own (she’s a saint people).

Let’s take the second part first.  Hello, my name is Chris, and I’m a gadgetholic.  Unfortunately for this disease, admitting you have a problem does nothing but allow you to make up a word (gadgetholic for those keeping score at home).  Although the nice people at the New England Journal of Medicine will tell you there’s no such thing as gadgetholic, my self proclaimed disease combined with my appearant Adult ADD prove to be a lethal combination, causing me to purchase any piece of technoloy I deem interesting at any moment.  My average attention span for a piece of technology I purchase is anywhere from 3-6 months, and many of the “but honey I have to have this it’s just what I need this will be so cool” pieces of equipment that have passed through this house, ranging from video game consoles, to DVRs, to Cameras, to Home Theater Equipment to cell phones, have either found their way back to the place of purchase, or for the select few that make it to the 6 month mark, to Ebay/Craigslist/Amazon Marketplace.  Maybe I set the standards too high for the technology I purchase with my hard earned money, maybe I just have a problem, you decide.  To tie this back into the discussion at hand, again the average time a gadget holds my attention is 3-6 months, and again, I’ve been using PCs for over 20 years!  I mean come on, the math just works in my favor here, I was WAY overdue to try something besides Windows, so it’s not my fault (the disease talking).

I also mentioned there was a technical reason here.  Twelve years working on PCs expose you to a lot of the headaches and issues that come from working in a Windows environment.  Install a fresh copy of Windows, 400 patches to install, viruses, spyware, driver conflicts, and seriously, if you knew my father’s amazing ability to look at a computer and cause it to immediately burst into flames, you’d understand.  Too many nights and weekends I’ve spent at work or awake at home trying to solve some kind of technical problem at work due to a limitation or bug in Microsoft software.  I’m done.  I’ve changed career paths to sales, and while I am required to maintain some sense of technical ability, I no longer want to spend my time troubleshooting my home PC.  While I don’t fully buy into the concept that Macs just work and they’re the ultimate computer, I think it’s time to give it a try, I mean seriously, if the worst that can happen is I start purchasing more overpriced coffee, is there really a victim here?

Plus, I’m too much of a wimp to switch over to Linux

(For those who care, I purchased the 13″ Aluminum Macbook)