Win to Mac – Final Thoughts
This series of posts has followed a veteran PC Windows business user through his move to OS X on a MacBook Pro. This final column in the series recaps final thoughts on the move.
When I was done with the move from Windows to OS X, how did I feel? The process described in this series took me about a week, not pushing it and keeping up with the rest of my schedule. The move could be made in a day. Since then, I have been working almost exclusively on the Mac, only going back to the PC when one of the Adobe tools (mainly Dreamweaver) made the job easier on that side of the KVM switch. Since I do a lot more writing than I do development now, I have not logged much PC time lately.
After a month, I still truly appreciate both OS X and the MacBook Pro. Yes, Apple has some clay at the level of their feet; their support is not great and they are very proprietary. Yes, there are a few problems in compatibility, mainly the wireless networking problems, now solved. Okay, I have only done one major upgrade of OS X and OS upgrades always worry me. Regardless, this experience has been a pleasure. I am getting farther and farther from Mssrs. Gates and Ballmer every day, I like the operating system I am using, and I feel that much more free because of the move.
The move from Windows to OSX is not painless, but it is very close to it. Getting here was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. With the exception of replacing my Adobe software (which I had to do anyway) and replacing my old network with a newer one (which I had to do anyway), the cost was no greater than moving to a Vista machine. The learning curve was almost non-existent.
So now my another user has the Toshiba notebook running XP. I have the MacBook and a PC desktop that I don’t use much any more. The other PCs, running XP, are happy. Either my Windows box or my one of the others will soon become a dedicated Linux MySQL server. After the big Adobe purchase, the other one will become a dedicated Linux Web server. And that still leaves me with a couple of ex-Windows boxes for parts. Then the rest of the Windows machines, except for the Toshiba, get Linux. Or if fortunes are good, maybe an iMac or two will appear. 
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