No, not from Islam to Christianity (I’ve had many e-mail appeals to tell that story, and someday I will), but from Windows to Mac.
I bought a PowerBook G4 several weeks ago, in part because I needed a new computer for school this fall, and I am amazed at just how wonderful it is compared to the Compaq Presario laptop I was using. It has been 10 years since I used a Mac (I learned to compute on Macs at San Francisco State in the late 1980s, and later was stuck using a horrible MacLC at one newspaper job, after which I swore I’d never use one again ever), and mainly I wanted something that wasn’t made of plastic and would fall apart on me (the Presario is slowly disintegrating). I am also tired of the fact that to really run Windows anymore, you have to be sysop. Once I liked that, but no longer.
(I have a 10-year-old Compaq Contura Aero, much better made, still works fine running Windows 3.11 — I took around the world a time or two and had no problems with it. Once, Compaq made great, simple, rugged and easy-to-use machines…)
The PowerBook is fast, the OS is a little more intuitive (I miss some features, like the ability to use CDs like floppies in Windows, or changing the color of everything on the desktop), cleaner, nowhere near as fussy or fidgety. Switching was easy, since I use OpenOffice — the UNIX and OSX versions (NeoOffice) both work great. I couldn’t be more pleased with the little machine.
11:08 am on March 23, 2006
