# Switchers Stories



## RGrphc2 (Jan 12, 2005)

I'm just wondering, who here is a switcher?  Life long PC user, and then decided to try MAC and loved it?  What was that little thing that caused you to switch.

Me, it was a mix of the iTunes for Windows, and the Apple store in Menlo Mall in Edison, NJ.  I loved iTunes the second i looked at it, great user interface.  Then i played around with the PowerMac G5's at the store, and i was like, this is so much better than Windows.  6 Months later, i had a Powerbook G4, and soon i shall have an iPod, within the next 3 weeks or so.


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## smithy (Jan 12, 2005)

Im a Switcher. I had been using widnows since 3.1 with our first computer being a 386 when i was really young. We had other computers between then and the Hp Pc we bought. We bought a hp pc 800mhz 128mb ram and 32mb video onboard or something, we had all these troubles with it resulting in hp giving us a new computer. Then all the troubles started up once again with the totally new system ! That pc is really possessed. Now it has 384mb of ram and its still slow for some reason.....

Then it was time to get a new computer, i didnt know alot about macs then - i think i was anti mac from memory ??? And my sister said to get a Mac. At first i said no way, then i thought about it looked into it more and then after a couple of months of waiting for my dad to buy me a computer (but it was good wait, in the end) i decided to get either a custom built pc or a eMac. Well i got the Mac it worked out more expenisve over the pc but it was a good purchase. Oh yer and i got an iPod in that period of time, it didnt work on my possessed windows pc, even though yes i know there not designed for windows 98 SE.

I go  back now to windows now and then and i get soooo frustraded because of how hard it is to use. Honestly using Osx everyday, going back to windows is pretty hard if you ask me. I know windows in and out but Macs are just way simpler. 

Well thats it i think, in the shortest way by the way.. But im just so happy i got my mac - cause there will never be a big problem with it ....


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## symphonix (Jan 12, 2005)

Me too. I switched about 4 years ago and the experience just keeps getting better and better all the time.


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## Ceroc Addict (Jan 12, 2005)

My first computer was a MacPlus, which I loved.

 When I did computer science degree about 8 years later, I switched to PC (would have been in the Dark Days of no Steve Jobs, when Apple had lost its way - it seemed like you had to own a PC). Since that time, I've owned 3 desktops (Dell, HP) and 2 laptops (Dell, Sony). They were all worthless pieces of crap (more because of the OS than just the hardware).

 At the end of 2002, I was looking for a new mp3 player to listen to audiobooks with - the iPod caught my eye, but only the Mac version played audiobooks. Then the 15" Ti PB caught my eye (esp. the fact that it now seemed to have a linux base).

 Got the iPod and the PB. I expect to be selling the PB soon (so I can buy a Mac mini), but it's been an absolutely gorgeous machine (and brilliant OS). If I had money, I'd buy 10 of them.

      Kap


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## Reality (Jan 12, 2005)

I switched from PC to Mac because I hated crashes, crappy hardware, crashes, crappy software, crashes and um crashes. Here is a short version of my moved to Mac story.  

I was 17 and looking to buy a new computer. I had saved up about $300 but because I was doing just kinda odd jobs, getting the money was slow. So I had to make sure my purchase was worth it. At the time I was considering of just getting a Dell. I was seeing all kinds of TV ads for their cheap but convincingly good computers. 

Then one day I heard of OS X in Popular Science or something like that. Then like a light bulb, the idea turned on in my head I had never considered before, "Hey...what about a Mac?". I never used or seen OS X ever before but had to admit as a PC user I always was curious about the Mac platform.

I did some research and was becoming convinced that OSX and a nice Apple computer could be just what I needed. It took all summer and a liot hope it be worth it but I saved up the $1,200 I needed to go buy me the high end eMac (the best Apple computer I could get for that at the time.) I took the huge step into uncharted waters and came home with a Apple computer. Despite my PC friends telling me how much they suck. 

It's 2005 now and I had this thing for about 4 years and I love the Apple OS. It's easy, it's organized and in my opinion, a real computer. I can do everything I did before but this time I can do more just from what's in the Apple package. It might have took a few days to get the feel of how OS X works but I got the hang of it in no time and then really started to use it better then any Windows computer I owned before.

Now I'm a Mac fan.   I get MacWorld monthly and own a nice little iPod. I even got my Mom to switch. She now owns a iBook and swears against ever going back to the PC world.


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## Will_Richo (Jan 13, 2005)

My Story:
I have a friend who is always selling different PC's, he is a MS engineer. I went to his house for coffee one day and he had a 15'' Titanium PB on his table, at first i made fun of him having an Apple, but he said i could have a go with it. I started messing on the OS and found that it was real easy to use, then i played a movie from the HD and fell in love woth the screen and sound. I bought it off him there and then. I still use PeeCee's for some roles in my business but i am now trying to get as many Mac's as i can into my home and business. They are just so easy to use and reliable. I cannot believe how many things i have done in 12 months of owning a Mac that i have never done in 15 years on my PeeCee's

MAC's for life now.


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## Randman (Jan 13, 2005)

I've always used and owned Macs. At my current job, I'm having to use XP and Windows Quark and it sucks. .Mac and iDisk and FireFox help but it's still on the weak side (not really a switcher story but my [temporary] foray over to the dark side). Makes me wanna hug my PB17 when I get home.


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## powermac (Jan 13, 2005)

I first used Apple (Apple 11g-to first powermac all in one). Then I purchased a IBM Aptiva that came with winblows 98. After several crashes, installing linux, I decided that I must return to the Mac. Jobs just returned and the Imac was born. I purchased it and have not looked back. In a sense, no, I am not a switcher. I merely had a year of momentary laps of reason. I feel the Mac is getting better and better, love the idea of the future. When I purchased my Aptiva, the future for Apple looked bleak at best. Jobs was gone, and the company appeared to have no direction or vision. Now that Jobs is back, the possibilities are awesome.


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## nixgeek (Jan 13, 2005)

Does this count as a switcher story?

I used to own a Mattel Aquarius computer when I was a kid.  Commodore was where it was at, but my family didn't have the money for a VIC-20 at the time (I don't think the C-64 was out yet).  I was happy with it's 4K of memory, which I could easily expand with the included expansion cartridge for a whopping 16K or RAM.  I played Tron Deadly Disks and Night Stalker on it, as well as creating some BASIC programs for it and using the word processor and spreadsheet apps.  Everything was saved to the casette tape when I was done.

At school, I got into computers thanks to the Commodore PET machines (this was pre-Aquarius...pre-computer for me even!).  I fell in love with those machines and that wonderful green glow of the monitor, but my heart was still longing for something more.

When I hit 8th grade, I started taking classes in BASIC again, but this time they had Apple computers, specifically the Apple IIe.  I immediately fell in love with it!  Something about this Apple computer would bring me to a life long relationship with them.  Because of this (and my constant nagging to my parents from visiting Macy's with them), I finally received my first Apple computer for Christmas, an Apple IIc.

Just when I thought my love affair reached its height, my father subletted out his office (he's a commercial artist) to a client of his.  One day when I went to work wuith my father, he showed me a computer that his new "office roomie" had.  I was amazed at what I saw.

It was a Macintosh.

It was very intriguing to me, especially with the mouse and graphical interface.  I spent HOURS using MacPaint and using the system.  That was the first time I was introduced to that special "beep!" that al us Mac lovers know so well.  And to this day, I have been an Apple supporter, even though I couldn't afford a current Mac for the time.  As for that Mac, I believe it was a Mac 512, but I could be wrong.  Maybe it was an original Mac 128K.  I'll never know....

I do use PCs here and there, especially in the job that I have.  I also have them at home.  But my love for the Mac will always be there.  I currently own a Quadra 650 and a StarMax 4000 Mac clone.  I do plan on getting the Mac mini to finally have a machine running OS X in the house.  Hopefully I can convert the wifey over to the Mac side, her being a Windoze lover and all.  So taboo that I married her, isn't it???  Anyways, there is still hope for my two sons.


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## symphonix (Jan 13, 2005)

Haha, maybe more of a nostalgia story!  I had a Vic20 back in the early 80s, and my school owned a computer as well ... an Apple IIe.  In 1984-85 the school I was at managed to pick up 6 Macintoshes, and this signalled the dawn of the era in which computers became affordable and smart.

For the next 15 years I never really saw a Mac again, until about 1998, when a friend from IBM brought in a bondi iMac. Since I was a Linux user by then, he figured I'd be interested in checking out the newly released Mac OS X 10.0.0!!  I was impressed with the possibilities and over the next couple of years was slowly convinced that this was finally the system for me.


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## delsoljb32 (Jan 14, 2005)

my story is similar, started out using the commodore's and the Amiga'a. Then we went to Apple II, IIe, Mac Plus, PB 5300cs...

When I changed my major in college to Computer Info. Systems, I had to switch to the Dark Side :Imperial March Playing in Background: . I had always maintained my love for Apple, never losing sight. I followed its development as much as I could in the mags and online. Then in '03 it was time to come back, bought an iMac G4 FP (trying to sell it, any takers???), then currently the 15" PB.


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## Convert (Jan 14, 2005)

My Mac-hood has not been that long. I have owned a long line of PC's, running Windows 95, to 98, to 2000, to ME, to XP Home and Professional.

My latest PC was good specs, 3.2Ghz, 200GB Hard Disk, 256MB Top-spec graphics card (at the time), and 1024 GB Ram. Nice machine. Failed me too many times. I had to postpone the publishing of my first Poetry Book because my PC wiped out it's Hard Disk, and the External one that was plugged in. All my work, 200 poems, was deleted. ON the backup External Drive, all of it was deleted too.

This happened too many times. I had to copy it all up. So I went to Mac. All good.


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## DanTekGeek (Jan 14, 2005)

I, I am a switcher. I switched long before I got my iBook. I was fed up with widows and its horrible operating environment. Now, as you, I freaking adore my mac, and all macs, I stay up to date on all things mac. Mac love...you just cant beat it.


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## DanTekGeek (Jan 14, 2005)

Ok, now that Im done swooning, Ill expand my story. I have allways loved computers. When I first got my own computer, a thinkpad, about a year and a half ago, I fell in love. learned everything I could. tweaked, customised...and got bored. WIndows is slow, buggy, and over all a bad OS. Mac is beautiful and impeccably designed. It also helps that I am such an asthtetist. I knew i was going to switch for about 7 months, but couldent afford a mac. then i found a great deal on craigslist, and boom!, instant happy happy


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## CaptainQuark (Jan 15, 2005)

The first computer I ever used was a Quadritek 1200. I wonder if that could even be described as a computer! It did only one thing - typesetting. The software was hard-wired into the system. This, by the way, was in Rhodesia (now that beacon of democracy that goes by the name of Zimbabwe), and as we had been suffering from 10 years of sanctions by that time, I guess that it must have been fairly primitive even then. It was huge - the size of your average sideboard - yet had a paltry 16K of RAM and two tape drives that stored typeset copy on C60 cassettes! Its one product was bromide paper, upon which it exposed text line by line - as soon as you hit return, it exposed that line of text. If you noticed that you had made a mistake, you fed in a blank line and retyped the line. Whoever was pasting up the text had to cut the erroneous line and the blank line.

Zimbabwe wasn't a nice place to be, so I moved to Sweden, where I graduated onto the Compugraphic EditWriter 7200. Same principle - it typeset text - but was slightly more advance in that it had 28K of RAM and two 12" floppy drives, each containing 56K of data.

Then I got _really_ high tech and moved on to the first machine that could be described as a computer as we know it today. It was a long time ago, so I can't remember the exact model of the hardware, but it was made by Bull and had 128K of RAM and a 16-colour EGA graphics card. It ran the CP/M operation system, the precursor to MS DOS, upon which I used Ibis vector graphics generation software.

The "desktop publishing" started happening with the invention of Aldus Pagemaker. I got in on the ground floor of that bandwagon ('scuse the mixture of analogies). I ran Pagemaker 1.0 on Windows 1.03. When we bought the Wang 33MHz 386 to run it on and specced it up with 2.5Mb RAM, the salesman told us categorically that we were wasting our money 'cos we would NEVER need to have that much RAM!  ::ha:: Nor would we ever need a 40Mb hard disk.

In 1989 I moved to the UK. I had lived all my life abroad, so coming to the UK was like moving to any other 'new' country, but with the added advantage of being able to speak the language. That was when I had my first encounter with the Mac.

My first Mac was a IIcx. It had a 40Mb hard disk, 8Mb RAM and ran the very latest Mac OS - System 7. It was also my first encounter with my namesake - QuarkXPress. v2.0 was a complete dog! Although it was by far the best program of its kind on the market, it was so unstable as to be virtually useless. I had many an argument with the boss on that score. I wanted to use Pagemaker, but the boss insited that I design my books in QXP.

At this time, I would have classed myself as an 'advanced user' of PeeCees. Aldus in Sweden got in touch with me on a regular basis as I knew more about Pagemaker and its foibles than they did, so they used me for troubleshooting. The one thing I disliked about the Mac was that there was no command line. I liked having that kind of low-level control of the hardware. I soon realised, of course, that you have just as much control of the Mac and that it was much, _much_ easier!

Since then, of course, Macs and QuarkXPress have moved on, and ol' CQ has grown with 'em.

I have a PeeCee at home (I'm hacking this in on a PeeCee) - NASTY. It's just so illogical! For example, if I want to adjust the volume on my headset, I don't go to the Volume Control CP... that would be the sensible thing to do. No, I have to go to Windows Messenger.    WTF! Talk about STUPID!

Gimme a Mac any day! And if I ever had doubts, well OS X has laid those firmly to rest: what a great system.

I hope this qualifies as a switcher's story.  ::angel::


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## powermac (Jan 15, 2005)

I like reading switching stories. Interesting to see what has brought people over the macintosh.


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## Arden (Jan 17, 2005)

Windows Messenger?   WTF indeed!


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## TommyWillB (Jan 17, 2005)

I switched from a Kaypro XT clone back in 1989 after 2 years as a (Pre-Windows) DOS PeeCee user.

  Does that make me a Switcher or a life-long-Mac users? (Sort of assumes you're younger than the Mac itself.)

  <feeling old>


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## riccbhard (Apr 17, 2005)

Well it all started one day when windows decided to not work anymore. It did not even know what an .exe file was (for those of you that dont know about windows, an .exe is an *exe*cutable file -- An application.). Every time I tried to launch an exe..... It asks what program to open it with. Shortcuts also did not work. I got mad enough and threw the keyboard at the monitor. I then wished, hoped, and prayed i'd get a Mac for christmas because I'd been talking to my aunt about Mac. And finally I got the Mac Mini. I have had not one problem with it. It stills works as good as the day I got it.

The PC (HP Pavilion a320n) now sits in a corner collecting dust and running Slax Linux (a Linux distro based on Slackware) and rarely gets used.

As for the windows xp CD, it makes a lovely green coaster.


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## Carlo (Apr 17, 2005)

I was a PC person through and through. My first was a Tandy branded 386, followed by a 486 clone (both had windows 3.11. Then I got a pentium 100, then a cyrix cpu was put into that beast, then a new board with a 233mhz Pentium MMX. Following that I went for a Celeron 300A. I was very into clone hardware, and worked when not at school in various IT jobs. I started out doing final builds on workstations for a cheap and nasty computer shop (Australians might remember Fairstar computers from the mid 90's). At one stage I thought about going for a Mac Clone but they where just too expensive.

I didnt mind clone hardware, but the OS was my biggest gripe. I hated windows 98, and ran NT for most of my Windows life. I moved to 98 for a while only to get 2000. The OS was slow and boring.  I tried BeOS but found its lack of applications annoying (I was a early adopter).

My mate was a mac fan, had has a 7600/200 I think. The Sawtooth G4's where out and he had to show them to me. As soon as I saw how funky the hardware was I knew I had to have one. I took out a load for $5000 and brought my self the G4 450.

That machine served me well until just a few weeks ago when i brought my self another mac, the might Dual proc g5. 

My biggest reason for moving to apple was OSX, (i knew it as rhapsody then tho.) My mate dave spoke of it as a god send. Since turning on my apple for the first time I have become a mac nut. I love the systems and have 5 of them in my house (all in use by family members, and one as a server). 

In my book.. Apple > *


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## HomunQlus (Apr 18, 2005)

Well, mostly in my computer life I have been a Windows person, got my first PC when I was thirteen and it came with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. The games were nice, but not much more that could be done. I believe the Mac OS was already 10 years ahead like anyone else by that time... Anyway, so the software evolved as well as the computers, and 95 came out, the Internet available to the public, then 98 came out. Sometime later I have seen some Macs, running OS 8.something. It was already very easy to use!! But by that time I didn't have the money (well I didn't have any money at all) to even start to dream about having such a Mac. Then I saw the package of OS 9 in the shops, and I was only stunned by the features and the easiness of the system.

But then, in my opinion the real big problems began for the Windows world, mainly when the Internet got available and as Windows was already widely used. I have seen it all. Viruses smashing my data, crashes and blue screens (BSODs) smashing and crunching my data. It never worked fine for me, even when I didn't change anything in the system itself.

So it became clear to me that I need something else. I started off with Linux first, made some long-term tests (6 months and more) to see how compatible and usable it really is a desktop OS. It works well - when you know how to install things, when you're that Tim-Taylor-Tool-Time-Person, who likes to build things on their own. That was fun, it was nice, but not quite what I wanted.

So I've started to gather information about Apple and Mac OS and the history. By that time Mac OS X 10.1 was out, and I was just amazed. So I started to save money to get such a thing as I have learned that Apple sells its own machines, the Macs. So time passed by and finally I got a PowerBook G4 with OS X 10.3 on it, and a little later I got another iMac G5 which I use as my primary PC, the Laptop for the road.

I have not had ANY critical problem whatsoever with my Macs, IT JUST WORKS!! And that's how it should be. It is the easiest system I've ever seen, and the first OS that deserves the mark 'Real Plug & Play'. Everything works just fine, I will never go back to anything else again.


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## aicul (Apr 19, 2005)

I'm a camaleon, use mac at home and pc in the office.


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## CaptainQuark (Apr 19, 2005)

aicul said:
			
		

> I'm a camaleon, use mac at home and pc in the office.



I'm the other way round  Mac at work (PCs just don't do graphic design) and PC at home (the Mac's a great gaming platform, but Mac games are released 69 months after the PC version, if at all).


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## Scottfab (Apr 22, 2005)

I needed to buy a laptop for college. While expensive, and alittle behind the times compared to newer laptops, the G4 Powerbook had the combination of features I like the most. Plus, my PC computer had been seriously deteriorating over the past year and giving me constant grief. The fact that my brother already made the switch to G4 PB and loved it sealed the deal. I just waited until Powerbooks got their 2005 speed bump and Tiger was finally released (using UpToDate, im getting it legally for $10) to buy it. 

However, I'm definatley having issues. Maybe the release of 10.3.9 wasnt the best time. Once Tiger comes in, I hope its all better.


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