Archive for September, 2005
PowerBook G4
Today is my 3 week anniversary…on August 28th I switch from PC to Mac. This isn’t the first time I switched platforms. Directly out of college, my wife and I took out our first bank loan ($2400) to purchase an Apple LC II (16 MHz processor, 10 MB RAM, 80 MB Hard Drive, using Mac OS System 7) This was the computer I used during graduate school and the first one on which I experienced the Internet (both through Gopher protocol [1992] as well as HTML via Netscape Navigator [1994]). 6 years later I got my first corporate job at Herman Miller, Inc. and switched to a cream colored Compaq desktop. Over the next 7 years, I would work on 3 e-commerce sites (hmstore.com, hermanmillerred.com, and ezconnect.com) and use 4 desktops and 7 laptops. Meanwhile, that LC II continues to be used by my father-in-law…as he sees no reason to upgrade since it still works for word processing.
Today I am using a PowerBook G4 (1.67 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, using Mac OS X)…and I love it! The transition could have been easier, but I was assisted by some inexpensive software and shareware:
- Outlook2Mac…converted my Outlook 2003 data (emails with their full extensions, calendar events and contacts) to Entourage.
- ecto2…my new desktop blogging client. I used to use w.bloggar.
- Adium…as Trillian only works in Windows, I switched to this great instant messaging application that allows me to consolidate my AOL, Google, MSN, and Yahoo accounts in one interface.
- Firefox…thankfully it works as well in OS X as it does in XP.
- iPodIt…Ok, so when I purchased the Mac I got a 20GB iPod too. This little application allows me to synch my Entourage data (contacts, calendar, etc.) with it. Now I have a PDA again!
- iTunes…pretty seamless. PC to iPod to Mac.
- Virual PC…and for all of those others things that just wouldn’t migrate well to Mac, I use this. Virtual PC gives me the best of both worlds by allowing me to run Windows XP in a virtual environment on my Mac.
If you’ve made this switch too…and have other great applications or tips that have helped you…let me know. I’d love to create a consolidated list here.
Need to catch up
It’s kind of a sinking feeling really…when you are 200 posts behind about every blog you subscribe to (and I subscribe to a lot of them). I’ve been a little preoccupied for the past few weeks (work, trip to Europe, damned painful back) and just haven’t kept up…with either reading or writing. Well, the hiatus is over. Anything interesting happen since I’ve been away?
