Switching to a Mac - not yet
© March 2009 Anthony Lawrence
I've mentioned before that I have only a few reasons for keeping any Windows junk here. One is for the occasional time when I need to test something I'm about to do for a customer. I can always do that with a VM or access their machine directly. Another reason is that I use QuickBooks for my business invoicing and accounting. They do make a Mac version and although it lacks some features that the Windows version has, none of them are anything I use. That leaves me with just one reason to have that stupid XP machine: my wife uses it.
Life would be so much better if both of us were using Macs, but she stubbornly clings to XP. She complains about it constantly: it's slow, it takes forever to shut down and start up, there are all those stupid updates.. but every time I bring up buying a Mac, I get a big, firm, "No".
Sure, part of that is that in this economy we don't want to be wasting money. Her machine is troublesome and annoying, but it works. Upgrading to a Mac will cost a significant amount of money, I agree. It won't exactly kill us though - we can certainly afford it. Yet both of us hate wasting money..
And then there's the psychic cost. She'll need to unlearn Windows and learn OS X. There will be benefits, yes, but I have to agree that there will be a period of time where she'll be confused and unhappy. It's an adjustment, it's very worthwhile because we'll both end up much happier, but there is that period of pain.
Last night Quickbooks balked at emailing invoices. That's something that we do a lot more often than we used to. I still send copies by postal mail to be sure the invoices get there, but the email function is great. Unfortunately, Quickbooks now wants me to spend a few hundred dollars to upgrade if I want to keep that feature.
Aaargh. I have no reason to upgrade. I don't need any of the new features. But they are going to cut me off from emailing invoices.. what to do?
CutePDF™ Writer is a free utility that creates a PDF printer - that is, a printer that creates a PDF file. It's free, it's quick and simple to install and it just works. Select the new printer for output and it prints the file and pops up with a "Save-As" dialog where you name the file. That's it - couldn't be easier. Attach that file to an email and the job is done.
In a way, I'm sorry that worked so well. It would have been another data point in favor of switching to a Mac.
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Inexpensive and informative Apple related e-books:
Take Control of Preview
Take Control of Parallels Desktop 12
Digital Sharing Crash Course
Take Control of Pages
Take Control of Automating Your Mac
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Fri Mar 20 16:24:52 2009: 5777 BrettLegree
This has happened in my household twice as well - the two times (so far) that my wife has purchased a laptop. I ask her if she'll consider a Mac, but no, she's a "Windows girl".
Sure, she'd have to get used to it - but she runs Firefox on her Windows machine, and iTunes, and that's about it - so how hard is it to click on an icon on the Dock vs. a shortcut on the desktop or the Quick Launch toolbar?
Oh well, maybe next time... :)
Fri Mar 20 18:46:28 2009: 5778 TonyLawrence
Does your wife complain about it while still insisting on using it?
Fri Mar 20 18:52:43 2009: 5779 BrettLegree
Oh yes, she sure does!
I think she has "Mac envy", especially when she sees my MBP resume from sleep instantly while her Dell is still grinding away (it has 2 gigs of memory so should be okay for what she's doing).
She even used my work laptop (booted into Ubuntu) for a while when I was waiting for a replacement HDD for her machine, and I never heard any complaints there once she figured out how to launch the browser.
Hmm...
Sat Mar 21 00:48:00 2009: 5782 sledge
My wife doesn't complain about Windows XP because she is using a Debian based distro on her laptop now! She used RedHat 5 when I used it until the Windows Terminal Server at work refused my expired license once and for all. It can do all she needs with rare exceptions (NCAA.com coverage of their tournament requires Windows -- no Mac, no Linux, no Amiga OS, etc.).
I remember when the argument against Mac went something like this: You have to learn a new UI, You have to buy new hardware, and none of your programs will run on it, so I was alternating between amused and outraged when Vista appeared on the scene because: You have to learn a new UI, You have to buy new hardware, and none of your programs will run on it
Good luck, mate. I get off easy in regards to computers because my wife just takes my word for it.
Sun Mar 22 04:25:34 2009: 5797 MikeHostetler
Check out (link) -- AFAIK it doesn't have Quicken/Quickbooks integration but other than that, it's a fabulous app.
Sun Mar 22 12:03:50 2009: 5798 TonyLawrence
Thanks - I'm taking a look..
Sun Mar 22 12:57:21 2009: 5799 TonyLawrence
Billings is well done but as its name implies, it is only invoicing - no A/P, no accounting functions, so it won't work for me.
Very nice though - if you have a Mac and just need billing, this is very good.
Tue Mar 24 22:28:15 2009: 5838 TonyLawrence
I laughed at this comment at (link)
I'll bet his wife keeps XP out of spite. Dealing with these people on the Internet is bad enough, can you imagine waking up next to one every day? The constant preaching, nagging, belittling? Also, imagine how his wife feels knowing that her husband could probably fix her problems in an hour or two but refuses because his hatred of Microsoft is stronger than his respect for her.
Of course they don't know how old and sad this poor thing is (the computer, not my wife). It has physical problems in addition to its built in XP defect. And yes, I have said we should get a new machine: preferably a Mac but Windows if she insists. But that will have to be Vista because XP is getting more and more dangerous.. she's not going to like Vista.. more to the point, she doesn't want to spend any money.. so we're stuck until it dies (I try to help it die).
Windows lovers: please go to (link) before leaving a comment, thanks.
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Switching to a Mac - not yet Copyright © March 2009 Tony Lawrence
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