“I’m not a PC and Windows 7 wasn’t my idea.” – Part 2

As you may recall in October 2010, I switched from a PC to a MacBook Pro. Five months have passed and I have to say, I’m pretty happy with the switch. The Mac is reliable, fast and really a pleasure to work on. I have added a 23” monitor to extend my display and a Magic Mouse. All in all, I give the experience a 95/100.

In my original post that you can read here, (http://www.netwhisperer.com/2010/09/21/im-not-a-pc-and-windows-7-was-not-my-idea/)
I spent most of the time being critical of the shortcomings of Windows 7. Once switching to the Mac, my disappointment with an operating system completely disappeared. In writing this post, I tried hard to think about something I really didn’t like about the Mac and couldn’t think of anything. Well, one issue with Mac Mail, but nothing other than that.

I’m not a PC, and Windows 7 was not my idea

I really had high hopes for Windows 7 when I migrated from Vista last summer. I have a nicely equipped Lenovo W500 laptop, a pretty ass-kicking PC at the time I got it. I went with the 32-bit version of the Windows 7 Professional Business Edition (since there was no Cisco VPN client for 64-bit OS at that time). The initial experience was mostly positive, except for one really annoying problem — the computer wouldn’t sleep when you closed the top. Instead, it would just hang and eventually reboot. If I knew this was going to be the standard sleep behavior, I would have just shut down and restarted to begin with. After searching online for a solution — only to find out I have some bizarre hardware conflict causing the problem with no solution — I decided to just shut down every time I needed to transport the computer. Ok, minor inconvenience #1.

The Palm Pre – One Year Later

I have had my Palm Pre for just over a year now. I got the phone within a few months after it became available on the Sprint Network in 2009. I upgraded from the Palm Treo 650 running PalmOS on the AT&T network, which for me was a serviceable smartphone at the time. But after all my friends and colleagues upgraded to slicker, next generation smartphones and razzed me about the boat anchor I was holding to my ear, I bit the bullet and opted for a cool new Pre that received good reviews and a lot of hype that year at CES. You could ask why I chose to move from AT&T who was offering the iPhone, a very nice product, to Sprint. Since Palm was one of our largest clients, I wanted to show loyalty, and Sprint was the only place I could get one. I also liked the tactile keyboard, and the geek in me liked that it looked like a photon torpedo from Star Trek. The usage plan was very attractive as well, $90/mo for all you can eat, $70 less than my more limited AT&T plan.