I normally do not fight for the hearts and souls of individual users, but when an old college friend started talking about just hoping their XP system would make it until Windows 7 was announced, I could not help myself. Some of her other friends started chiming in, and when one started blathering about how much my friend would miss if she went with the Mac, I went for the throat.
First my friend was told that Macs and Windows machines last about the same length of time. I put that silly nonsense to bed quickly since the newest Mac that I have is 3.5 years old, and my wife uses one that is 7 years old. Then my friend actually figured out that her ailing HP system was only two years old.
Someone told her that MS Office was much better on Windows. I just had to point that I was no fan of the new Office 2007 ribbon which makes little sense and often drives Office 2003 users to the brink. I went on to list the things that I do with Pages, Numbers, and my ancient PowerPC MS Office. I also suggested that Neo Office can be a very good free solution on a Mac.
While all this was going on, Windows 7 was shipping, and the first of the Windows 7 commercials were hitting the air along with some of Apple's Mac & PC commercials. There were a couple of early reviews that I provided. One which said Windows 7 was not significantly better than Vista with all its service packs.
I detailed my experience with Vista, which seems to include more and more maintenance to keep it going. Just when she was about to make her decision, Best Buy came out with the $1199 PC Make Over offer. I thought we were doomed to lose at that point, but they were not ready to buy and their "old" HP was sent to the repair shop for an estimate.
While it was there she dragged out an old Ruby iMac that I had sent to them for their high school daughter when my youngest daughter got a White half moon iMac while in college. It still worked, and more importantly I think it convinced my friend that Macs have a long life. Then there was the repair estimate of two hundred dollars on their PC which was only two years old.
This past weekend a Mac Mini made it to their home from a Boston area Apple Store. A few days into the week, I got the first email from the Mac Mini.
That's one more person who will not be annoyed by Windows. I long ago decided that Microsoft is not evil, they just make operating system software that takes more maintenance time than either OS X or Ubuntu.
Actually Apple might be the evil one, but what matters to me is that I can get my work done more easily on a Mac.
My Vista machine locked up again this morning so if I am lucky that will be the only time this week. My Macs, they just keep on going.
There are many things, including boating, that I would rather be doing than coaxing a recalcitrant Windows box to run a few simple applications that have been around for years and which seem to be second nature to Macs.
Drop by my View from the Mountain Blog to read my post celebrating the beginning of my sixth year of blogging.
