Saturday, April 23, 2011

Love.

This post could be entitled "I need to stop thinking like a Microsoft User".

I was getting sick of my old laptop. It was getting slower and ssllloooooowweeerrr. It was not entirely stable. At 7 years old, I knew that it wasn't impossible that I would need a new computer in the near forseeable and had worked out my game plan for which way I wanted to go.

Sick of Windows and remembering back to my student days when I had a robust and eminently friendly Apple Mac, I decided that it would be the way to go. A bit more expensive, but what you pay in hardware costs you save in software. Mr Swan being particularly generous with his tax refund when I got around to lodging it this year brought replacing a computer into the possible immediately category, which was very nice indeed (and meant that I could get the next one up from the one I initially looked at).

It arrived Thursday morning, just in time for me to get everything operational over the Easter break.

I am constantly amazed at how easy it is to do things.

For one thing, the CD/DVD drive works. Novel concept, I know, but if you put a disk in, the computer will read it. I haven't yet tried to write to a CD, but I'm fairly confident there's a way to make that possible.

I don't need to wrestle with Office programmes anymore. Don't need publisher, because the word-processing and spreadsheet programmes allow you to format very intuitively and not have to wrestle with making the wretched thing do what you want. Unfortunately I keep looking for a hard way to do things (the Windows Way), only to find that it's much easier than that.

JOY!

The only problem is that going from a 15inch laptop screen to the 21.5inch desktop screen is pretty mind-blowing. I almost need to sit half-way across the room. I've gone from having to scroll across webpages to being able to see two at once, side-by-side.

And the keyboard is ridiculously tiny. Based on a laptop keyboard, it is as ridiculously small compared to my old split keyboard and the screen is ridiculously large in comparison with previous.

And the chance that I'll ever find my new wireless keyboard and mouse if my desk gets messy again?

4 comments:

Emily Sue said...

I am JEALOUS! But this is also exactly what I'll be doing when I get back from visiting the family next week. Unfortunately I don't have a tax return payment to assist me so it will be going on credit for now. Not idea but I'm at the point where I'm afraid to take on paid work in case my computer crashes. Yikes. And get this - I investigated taking out a personal loan for the computer... and it turns out the interest rate on my credit card is actually lower than the rate on all the personal loans I investigated.

Emily Sue said...

*that should have read 'not ideal'

Hippomanic Jen said...

Emily Sue - I find it scary that personal loans have higher interest than credit cards. Ouchie. I hope your Mac is as good as mine and that all that work you end up doing helps pay it off in no time flat.

Emily Sue said...

I know, it's insane, isn't it? I do have a low rate card, but even so... only one loan rate came close (but still slightly higher)and even then only if I borrowed $2000 more than I need. No thank you.