I’m planning on getting Deb a new laptop for Christmas. (Yes, she knows about it already.)
Of course, I have been trying to convince her that what she really needs is one of the new MacBook Pros, because they really are excellent hardware. Unfortunately, even if I did get her a MacBook Pro, she would probably run Windows on it most of the time.
You see, Deb tells me she needs to run Windows. When I pressed her on this, she claims that she has a couple of programs Quilt-Pro and Stitch Painter that she uses regularly — read “occasionally” — which she can’t live without. I told her about the joys of Parallels Desktop and how she could still run her Windows programs at the same time as Mac OS X, but she wasn’t convinced. Hm…
Well, if you didn’t click on the above crafting software links, I’ll let you in on the punchline: Both programs are available for Mac OS X. I ran the demo of Stitch Painter, and it seems to run fine.
So, I got to thinking… All you Windows users out there, what do you actually still need it for? For me, I can think of only one thing: Games. In fact, I still do have a PC, but literally all I use it for is gaming. (It has one 60Gig drive in it, since that’s all I need to hold my active game files.) There may be a day when Macs have as many games available as PCs — they certainly have the hardware to run them now — but as of today, there’s only so much WoW you can play.
Let’s see, what else do I use regularly… There’s Eclipse, or course. And Notes and Office at work. I make music with Reason and Logic Express. I run the GCW family of websites, and I watch TV.
That doesn’t include all of the free stuff that comes with your mac for personal productivity (iCal, Address Book), internet (Mail, Safari), and multi-media (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD), all of which I use regularly. The fact that my contacts, events, todos, and bookmarks are all automatically sync’ed between the G5 and my laptop makes them even sweeter.
All in all, I’m done with Windows. What about you?
I’m sad since I still do so much development on my ThinkPad (is that like a hygiene product for Nerds brains?) that I need windows. That said, likely I could get away with Parallels. However, it would be a hard sell to get my area to spring for a Apple product… bugger.
At home, I’m sold. I can’t go back to Windows…. I’m an artist now ;->
The only product I “need” is Quicken. They do make a mac version but it was designed for the US market although they say it can be “converted” to be used by Canadians. Otherwise I am a Windows user by default. I use it at work exclusivly and almost everybody else I know, and support, uses Windows so it helps if I use it at home. I suppose I could add a mac to my environment at home just to round things out 😉
Sadly, you’re right. Their website cons you into thinking there’s a Canadian Mac version, but there isn’t. I sent them a polite email requesting support on the Mac, on the theory that, if you don’t attempt to fix a problem, you aren’t allowed to complain about it.