Well it’s now been about 2 weeks since my Mac Mini arrived. And things are going well.
I overheard Gorgeous telling a friend that she doesn’t hear grumpy noises eminating from my office anymore. I take that as a good sign things are going well.
Before I got the Mac I was at the point where I was loosing about 20 minutes out of every hour on my machine waiting for things to process or rebooting. That doesn’t happen anymore.
One Hitch
Well, there was one morning this past week. For some reason my mouse laser stopped registering clicks. It would track around the screen fine, but wouldn’t click on anything.
The scroll function wasn’t working either.
I fought with it a bit to see if I could get it reset easily. I was hoping to figure out if it was something screwy I did or not. Smart money is on operator error.
Finally I just did a hard shut down of the computer, turned off the wireless mouse and keyboard, and powered everything back up.
Things have been purring along nicely ever since. One hitch in two weeks is so much better than the several times a day that I was dealing with that
MS Office Work Around
I don’t yet have much need for MS Office with what I do here on this machine. But occasionally clients will send me a Word document from time to time.
I’ve found a serviceable work around with Google Docs. It is right there alongside my Gmail account and can import and export Word documents just fine. It isn’t perfect. But it does work for those occasional documents you need to get out.
Eventually I’ll probably get MS Office for Mac, although I hear Open Office is pretty good too. Maybe I’ll try that first.
A Mac Resource
Was pointed to a great resource for news on things Mac by a friend. If you are interested in that sort of thing, check out Think Secret. It’s chock full of insider info.
Before I check out this morning, let me leave you with a little PC vs. Mac humor.
Enjoy!
We have been using Mac almost exclusively for the past few years in our business. I actually wanted a Mac as far back as 1988 when I used them in my journalism class in college but alas the price point at that time was out of my college student budget. Current Macs which still having a higher price point that some Windows based computers I have found in the long run their is a better total cost of ownership in terms of time saved, business tax deductions and with programs like VMWare, Parallels, Bootcamp or even Crossover Mac a small business can basically have two or more computers for the price of one. That being said while one has to have an Apple computer to run OSX if have more than one Mac in your business it’s a LOT cheaper to upgrade to the next operating system version if you need to.
I also appreciate the fact I can get my work done faster because of greater system stability and less cluttered use interface
Chris – the one thing I didn’t like about my Mac was the mouse. I changed the original mouse out for a wireless one and have been much happier.
Patrick, you make great points. I think many business owners do themselves a disservice by looking only at the cost of purchasing computers without including the total cost of lost production time and upgrading down the road.
I bet if lost opportunity costs and time wasted were figured in Mac might come up on top more often for business owners.
Char, I’d heard that about the mouse (mouses? mice?) and went for the wireless one at the start. I wanted to keep my “scroll wheel” feel.
The one challenge I’m having with it though is the screen is so dang big I often run out of mouse pad before I get things dragged where I want them. But then, perhaps I was just spoiled with my trackball.
I have also found that when I send Windows users a Word doc that I saved on my Mac, they have to actually download the file, open Word, and then open the doc…otherwise it opens as a text file which is hard to read…But I figure that it’s their problem.
Congratulations on making the switch.
I have found that the cost of maintaining a 10 usr PC network at approx $18,000/year to have a engineer maintain and keep he network and desktops functioning.
The same 10 user Apple network costs about $500/year for consulting/service.
I have been using a Mac since 1995 and the current Apple configuration and feature set is unbeatable.
Chris,
On Open Office, if you’re a Excel power user with cell formulas and making mathematical masteries with it, just like Google Apps as well.
My PC mouse has a Hello Kitty Sticker on it. It greatly enhances my computing experiences.
Meh, who am I kidding?
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much for writing about all this stuff. This is really making me feel a little better about the purchase I’m about to make–my first Mac! It’ll be an iMac, and like you I want/need the biggie screen!
I wonder if iWork is compatible with MS Office users? Like if I make a document in iWork, and then email to someone who has Windows, can they open it?
Hmmm, I don’t know, but I think I can work around it. I too use Google Docs and Spreadsheet, so I could potentially just create the docs and spreadsheets there.
Anyhoo, it is very exciting to know that a Mac is on the way. I’ve heard such wonderful things about them, and your experience has helped reassure me that it’s a smart decision.
Cheers,
Sharon
iWork now includes ‘Numbers’ a spreadsheet application and the newest version which came available yesterday includes the ability to export Microsoft compatible documents.
You will love the new iMac and when Leopard comes out this fall, it will amaze you.
Chris,
Full circle… You’ve come along way since your Apple II (or was it a IIe?). Surprised it took you so long to go back.
Matt
Sharon,
You’ve probably already discovered this, but iWork comes with a great program called Pages. Pages will open Word documents and will also let you convert a Pages doc into a Word doc. When I first got Pages, I didn’t trust it, so I went ahead and also got the MS Office Suite. Since then, I’ve come to like Pages so much better than Word that I now use Pages exclusively and just save my docs as PDF files if I have to e-mail them to someone.
Hope this helps…