Am I a Traitor??

Not really a serious question... but at the same time, I can't help but feel like a traitor!

I've officially, and fully converted... I'm an Apple person now. For as long as I can remember, I've been all about Dell... But a Dell laptop, and two Dell desktops later, I bought a Mac Mini. And you know what... that Mac rocks!!

My computer was getting slow... scary slow. I had done everything I could aside from take it in for a 'professional screening and cleaning'... which didn't seem worth it. Eric and I had been talking about a new computer, if for no other reason, we needed a central 'server' of sorts at the house since it's all wi-fi. He had a gateway laptop with a broken screen, so that wouldn't work. And we both knew my computer couldn't handle it!

And then the iPad came out. Eric was instantly obsessed with it. I already had my iPhone, which I've loved for the past year. So we started throwing around the idea of doing a Mac for a base computer. We weren't quite convinced of it though. Then, for my birthday, Eric got me an iPad (for reasons other than him wanting to play with it - but we'll get to that in another blog). Well... he ordered it for me, anyway - it finally came this week. We happened to be at Best Buy around my birthday and saw that the Mac we had been looking at wasn't there anymore... and the employee had no clue! So we ventured over to the Apple store to see what was up.

Now the Apple employees are well trained... trained to know, and trained to sell... in a good way. They know exactly how to tune into your needs and direct their sales pitch in that direction. Needless to say, the guy we talked to was very convincing. But it turned out that the Mac we had been looking at just had an upgrade released... and it was smaller, sleeker, and faster. And of course a $100 more. So Eric and I walked away with something more to think about.

It didn't take long to realize that was what we wanted/needed. So last Friday, we did it - we bought the Mac Mini. I took my old machine in to do the data migration, which was the best bang for the buck considering it was our first Mac and things are just 'different' on a Mac. Plus, it included a year's worth of one on one training session, as you saw fit. Well worth the extra $99!

The migration was only supposed to take a day. Well... that's with a machine in good working order, because when they went to turn my machine on for the migration, they got the 'blue screen of death'. I hadn't seen that yet, but I knew it well from my last desktop when it did a hard crash. They eventually got it to work, though... it just took an extra day. But it looked like my timing was 'just in time' to get anew computer!

Finally, I picked it up on Monday evening. They gave me a quick tutorial on the basics, and I was off. I got it set up and from what I've payed with, I love it! The iPhoto is amazing, and I haven't even scratched the surface of what it can do. The other programs have barely been looked at yet. This is going to be fun.

In the meantime, my iPad got all sync'd up and running. Eric spent the night playing with it and I think he wants his own, now. That's a cool little gadget, too... Apple really has come a long way from the old Macintosh desktop word processors we had in elementary school! The user friendly aspect is amazing!

So maybe I'm not a traitor... just a convert. I still have a Dell at work... but it has a full IT department to maintain it. And I still like it. For now. We'll see how the differences pan out over the next couple of months and see what I like better. In the meantime, I'll just have fun with my new toys!