You can get in anytime you want but you can never leave...

So said a very dear wing-mate of mine on Yahoo Messenger a few days ago when I informed him that these days I have switched to a Mac.
I must admit that I feel the same.
I have always used a Windows/MS-DOS PC. That's how I came to know computers. I remember very vividly my confusion the first day in IIT Kharagpur's Communication's Lab when the LINUX machine there refused to entertain my 'DIR' command.
Before that I did know that there is this thing called the operating system and that there are varieties other than MS-DOS and WINDOWS.
I first came across a Mac in Georgia Tech where a maverick professor installed only Apple computers in his lab and threw the other machines out. Then the difference did not hit me.
After that first brush, I just heard bits and pieces about Apple Computers. And all those bits and pieces were not very encouraging for me to even consider a switch. Most of the times people brushed off Mac's with the argument that once you buy it, you are stuck.

"You have to buy software for it all the time since free/pirated software is not available"

"Any documents you make on a Mac will not be compatible with any other types of machines and since most use Windows, stick to it"

I heard a lot of arguments on these lines.
But one fine day, I decided to buy a laptop. I also decided that I don't want something that everyone else has. I wanted something different.
So I plumped for a Mac. (Besides all that, it also turned out to be one of the cheaper lappys on offer)

Four months after making that decision, I don't regret it at all. My Mac is a wonderful piece of work. It works great. Its user-interface is mind-blowing. It looks gorgeous and has a very long battery life. Also, I did not need to buy any extra software. All the stuff I needed was available for free on the net. My Boss did hand me a "gray" copy of iWork but I have not used it much. I am quite happy with OpenOffice. And you know, in the four months this baby has been with me, it has NEVER hung on me!
Not that it has been entirely plain sailing. I have had major problems with my chat clients. Yahoo messenger for Mac OS X does not have voice functionality and there is no Google Talk client for Mac. I have had to do with iChat configured for Google Talk and it is less than perfect.

Having said that, I still would plump for a Mac any day.
Today my room-mate brought home his newly purchased Dell with Vista. While he sat beside me and I set it up for him, I had some difficulty hiding my distaste. Its slow, it has a lot of flab (the AERO interface), the 3D view, widgets and search look like direct copies of ideas pioneered by Mac. Plus for all this you have to put in 2 GB of RAM and it still works with hiccups while my Mac OS zips along with half that RAM.

I have never been a computer fanatic. I could never figure out what made people queue up in front of computer stores waiting for the new software/processor release. I know now. The new version of Mac OS "Leopard" comes out in less than a week and though I will not be in the queue on the first day, I will definitely buy it in a couple of months after it gets released in Singapore.


And yes, I got in the Mac band-wagon when I wanted, but now I cannot and will not leave...