How I ended on the mac side of the force…

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k… Years later my Grandparents bought me an AMSTRAD 1640 with 512 kb. Ram and a 20Gb HD… this computer was the first one I gave some serious use… it ran DOS. I used Microsoft Windows OS’s since 3.1/3.11… I think my last MS OS at a corporate environment was Ws 2000 professional… or was it XP?

In 2003 at a certain point I started my own practice and I’m fairly sure I was the only crazy Lawyer in Madrid running around with RedHat linux installed on a laptop, using Ximian –at the time– Evolution for email/calendaring as well as OpenOffice for business related document exchanging… No viruses… no blue screens… and that cool oh-so-cool geek feeling…

Sooner than later I had to admit I was wasting too much time and driving too many people crazy with compatibility problems so I had to reevaluate the whole thing…

I think it was during a course from HLS in Rio that I saw John Perry Barlow carrying around a 17″ Powerbook. During the sessions he kept on working in his mac and I couldn’t help but to catch some intriguing glimpses from the ‘Dock’ floating around as well as from a couple of great looking apps…

That same week I attended a couple of sessions from the ICANN meetings that were taking place there at the same time and I couldn’t help but to realize about a relevant number of really good looking mac laptops of all sizes that were being used by the audience as well as from some ‘notables’ at the chairs on ‘stage’… The beautiful mac form factor had definitely caught my eye…

As soon as I arrived Madrid from that trip, I went to one of the computer stores that carry macs here… (no, no flagship mac stores here… yet…) to play around a bit with them. Finally in December 2003 I ordered my first mac –a beautiful 17″ Powerbook– at the online Apple Store.

I’m writing this at my third mac since… and couldn’t be happier… From time to time I reinforce my feelings about the mac vs windows experience… There is only one BUT –a big one indeed– here…

A couple months ago I bought a Tablet PC and have been running the latest MS OneNote 12 Beta… Boy I honestly have to recognize I’m really impressed about the whole Tablet thing…

But we’ll leave that for some other time…

All the best, tfserna