Mitchell and Webb do

AS this was a new PC, I couldn’t roll back to XP, which was a real shame as there was nothing wrong with xp as an operating system as far as I’m concerned. Yeah, it could get a little slow at times, but crashes and general hissy fits were minimal, and it allowed me to get on with running my web business.

There was the light at the end of the tunnel that Vista Service Pack One (brilliantly called SP1) might just solve all these problems. Release dates were given as Summer 2007. Then Late 2007. Then November 2007. And now, “early 2008″

Well, enough was enough for me – I would estimate that the lost hours (and work) I’ve spent rebooting and troubleshooting Vista have cost me thousands of pounds in lost earnings – certainly enough to buy a couple of top-spec PCs (with xp on obviously!). And then I stumbled across Apple’s website, and their tagline for the Apple Mac “it all just works” seemed like it was speaking to me.

Having never used a mac before, I wasn’t sure whether I’d get on with it at all, so I decided to get my hands on a second hand “mac mini” on ebay for a couple hundred so that I could have a play, see if I like it, and then decide later on whether to stick with a new mac, find Vista works after SP1, or get a PC with xp on.

So… it all just works does it? Well, of course I don’t believe this for a second. So I set aside a complete afternoon to set up, keeping the Vista PC handy just in case I need to flip back. Everything unplugged from the PC, and plugged into the mac. Press the power button, and then a miracle – literally 60 seconds later I’m surfing the web – Everything has just worked! Compare that with the 3 hour setup I had on my new Vista PC back in March!

After a week of using the mac, I’ve found a couple of things that I love, and a couple that I hate:

I love:

• It DOES just work
• In 5 days, it hasn’t crashed once – My vista PC would have crashed 15-20 times in this same period
• The Interface looks very slick
• Booting up is soooo quick compared to PC
• Magic Corners.. Love this feature
• It still works with MS Office, Messenger etc
• It is so quiet – you’d never know it was switched on

However, I’m also hating:

• It only supports IE5.2 (and that doesn’t work on this machine) – Some of the sites I use only support IE6 or higher.
• Napster isn’t available for mac, making my subscription (and all the downloads I made on the PC) useless.
• Roboform isn’t available for mac – I’ve used the Firefox “remember password” feature, but I don’t find it anywhere near as time-saving as Roboform.
• There are only 2 USB ports on the mac mini
• The leads for the keyboard and mouse are far too short
• It may not crash, but do something it doesn’t like (such as having two firefox windows open at the same time) and it will run really slowly, that you just wish it would crash!
• It thinks I am an Amercian, hence the @ symbol has been switched with the quotes on the keyboard, meaning I’ve been sending lots of emails out to name”mail.com whilst telling about a @wonderful quote@ lol
• It also doesn’t like the Affiliate Marketer’s most frequently used keystrokes Ctrl + V – I have to right click with the mouse to copy and paste, making setting up links and banners etc much more drawn out.

So, there are more annoyances than plus points, but you have to weigh up the importance of each one. I’d rather remember where the @ symbol is and use my own mouse and keyboard than have a computer that crashes three times a day.

For that reason, I’m gonna persevere with the mac for now (I’m sure I’ll find workarounds etc for the few problems) and then see what effect SP1 has on Vista. That being said, I’d still rather still be running xp right now. If it ain’t broke…

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