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When my world of computers began (back in the early 90’s…before everyone received daily AOL CD’s in the mail and before it took less than 2 hours to download a photo), I bought my first computer…a Mac clone (remember those?) Yes, I loved my Starmax with it’s huge 2gb hard drive and speedy 14.4 modem. I taught myself a little Photoshop (version 3 back then), and learned a little bit about audio editing.

Things were fantastic. And I was a Mac junkie! My subscription to Macworld couldn’t arrive soon enough, and I soaked up the In’s & Out’s of System 7 and OS 8 like a sponge. I got my first computer job editing powerpoint files and tweaking presentations and had the sorry experience of occasionally having to work on the Windows 3.1 machine.Yikes! That was a pain! Crashes, confusing menus, sluggish performance…the whole deal was tough. I had drunk the Mac Kool Aid and was a devotee to the end!

Then life picked up pace…Got married, kid on the way, and we relocated. A new job was in order and the place I landed was 100% PC. We’re into Windows 2000 times now, and things aren’t as bad as Windows 3.1 or ‘98, but it’s a struggle. I make the best of it, and after a few months, find myself cursing the windows machines a little less.. I still miss life on a Mac, but the transition was less painful than I thought it would be…

Flash-forward 7.5 years. Mac has jumped to OSX and I’ve never used it. I’ve been plugging away on Windows XP for years and years and have a “flow” to say the least. I’m editing video, slamming through Flash & Actionscript, wheeling around Photoshop, and with the blessing of ‘Firefox‘, surfing the web like a maniac. I’ve integrated my computer experience into my everyday life and feel empty when my “connection goes down”, or a summer thunderstorm knocks out power for a bit. I’m a keyboard shortcut junkie, and every little free ware tool I use increases my work flow productivity to new heights!

So now it’s the fall of 2006, and a new job. It’s a Mac environment…. No biggie, I used to do this…Well, the first week was tough. Keyboard shortcuts all mixed up. Why can’t I click anywhere to resize my window! I’m tabbing through my open apps, but it jumped to something else! Oh, my mouse was over the wrong icon. That’s inconvenient… Hmmmm..Flash runs kinda slow. Wha’?..I can’t use SEPY to edit actionscript anymore? Surfing the web is cludgy and sluggish…

Okay… Maybe a few weeks will go by and it’ll get smoother. Everybody still loves the Mac. It can’t be this irritating forever, can it? Hmmm… I miss Winamp. I miss IfranView. Damn! I just clicked out of my app again because the desktop is showing through between these palettes. Ugh! And speaking of my desktop. Could ‘Finder’ actually be irritating me more than ‘Explorer’? I’d love to see the full name of all these files. Let me see when these were updated…Oh, Finder needs to refresh… Soon…Soon it will feel natural again… I mean, I used to LOVE working on a mac. I was a DEVOTEE!!

Wha? It’s been six months already? I still feel like I work slower on a day to day basis in this Mac world. That’s like 5 months longer than it took me to get comfy switching to PC in the first place!

I had a conversation the other day trying to explain my Mac frustration to a fellow computer user. I would best put it like this… Switching back to Mac to me was like being an artist (pencil sketch artist let’s say…) who draws all the time. I’ve gotten used to my favorite pencil and pad of paper. Now I’ve switched. I still have a pencil and paper, only the pencil is a little thicker and there’s this different weight to it. And there’s something sticky on my hand that I keep getting caught on the table as i draw. And the paper seems to slide every time I start to draw, forcing me to occasionally have to shift it back and readjust. None of these things are keeping me from drawing… They’re only mildly irritating and slow my process down. No biggie once or twice, but they keep happening all day…everyday.

So, thank goodness I’m switching back! Back to Windows XP! I know… I never thought I’d say it, but for me…Windows just works better…(I still feel strange typing that). It’s a comfort thing, a workflow thing. I know Mac runs a superior system. I know it’s a better graphic design machine. but for surfing, coding and all I do, life on Windows just feels right.

For all the crap I’ve heard about Vista, let’s hope I don’t have to switch to that mess anytime soon! (fingers crossed…)