I built my first PC in 1998, the same year Apple released the iMac. I remember going to compUSA and checking out the iMac. It was cute and interesting. Didn’t really understand it, I asked the Apple guy there if I could install Mac OS on my PC and he gave me a snobbish “no”.

Since then I have been a PC user, secretly wanting to be a mac user and always making sure to keep an eye on what was going on in that part of the computer world.

In 2004 I bought my first imac, it was an indigo blue machine running Mac OS 8 with a DVD drive. I bought it open box at circuit city for $700. I liked it but I didn’t really know how to use it. I think I owned it for two weeks before I returned it. I need the money to buy a new DV camera (a Canon XL1).

In the fall of 2006 I bought myself a brand new white macbook for $1100.  It was the first brand new computer I had ever owned. One week later Apple released the new macbooks and that had me a little miffed. It was also nearing Christmas time and I was low on cash, so alas, once again I made the choice to return the mac. But when I did I kept the DVI adapter I bought for it, swearing that one day I would buy another one.

That same Christmas I returned my macbook I purchased two used imacs off of ebay. Each for $50. One for my 7 year old step son as he had been asking for his own computer, and the other for myself to keep fresh with using a mac. It didn’t work, so they sent me another free of charge and I gutted the first one just for fun. I didn’t use my working imac much and it ended up sitting in the closet not working, missing a hard drive.

In June of this year I finally got my mac, I bought a used white macbook off ebay for $500. Unlike the first macbook I bought this one was a lot cheaper, faster and with more features. Since then it has been my main computer and my desktop has taken a backseat.

I also bought a new hard drive for the old imac and gave it to my mom, it has been a great machine for her since she doesn’t do much on the computer.

As you can see this has been a long time coming, but its all been worth it. I’m so happy now with my macbook. I love it. And I’m never going back to a windows machine as my main computer.

So you might ask, why do I love it so much? here is the list in no particular order:

1. Everything just works.
2. No viruses
3. Everything looks great. As my girlfriend said even MS Word looks cute.
4. I love the way you use it, from the dock to expose to spaces and dashboard.
5. There are so many great little applications.

These are only a few reasons. But they are enough in my opinion.

It took me a good month to get used to working on mac. It’s a lot different then using a windows Xp machine. Probably the biggest thing I had to overcome was the way windows are laid out. On XP or Vista I tend to make every window full screen and switch between one full screen window and another, rarely ever seeing my desktop. On a mac, many windows don’t go full screen unless you drag them to that size and you end up seeing a whole bunch of cluttered windows all over the place. But with the tap of a button they are all spread out in front of me or they are all pushed to the side and there is my desktop. It’s messy, but it’s an organized mess. You can also use the dock with switch back and forth between one app and another which is really nice. I’ve discovered that when I go back to using my XP machine at work, I no longer make every window full screen, I’m so used to the mac now.

If you are thinking about switching to a mac there are a few things you should probably be aware of:

1. Macs are an eco system unto themselves. This means you have to run software made for the mac and you are stuck buying your computers from Apple, which means you don’t have as many hardware choices. The hardware choices you have tend to be a little pricey, but they are beautiful machines that will last you years.

2. If you’re a gamer, you should probably stick to a PC unless you plan to run Windows on your mac as well, which you can now. But make sure the mac you buy has a good enough graphics card. You don’t want to buy a white macbook like me if you plan on playing intensive games.

3. Macs keep their resale value better then PC’s.

4. Macs are too expensive. This is both true and false. Depends on what you are looking for. You can go out and buy a fully featured HP laptop for about $900 and it will come with a better graphics card, bigger screen and more connections then a macbook priced at $1000. But with the macbook you get a machine that’s designed to work beautifully and last you years. You’re buying into the mac eco system because you want a computer that is easy to use, will just work, and give you back the joy of computing you secretly hoped existed somewhere.

5.  The mac philosophy is a little different then the PC philosophy. When you buy a mac, you buy a computer that is ready to use out of the box. Apple doesn’t give you every option known to man like PC vendors like to do, instead they pick and chose what they feel is the best. The result is a machine that works wonderfully, but only if you jive with their philosophy on computing.

Like I said i have no desire to turn back now. In fact it’s the opposite, I’m trying to convert my girlfriend. :)