Chords Of Life

My first ever new year resolution was to start taking Guitar/Singing lessons and commence Yoga. Almost at the end of Jan and I haven’t really made much progress on either. However, fair amount of effort has been put into a completely unplanned (and indulgent) exercise – figuring out how I can switch to a Mac and what kind of potential issues I could face. As some of those who know me would vouch, dealing with these kind of tech and gadget challenges is quite a high for me.

Anyway, to start with, Why switch to a Mac? you might ask. Well, simple answer, sex appeal. God (and wife) knows I need some.

So have spent some time on Google and its results, chewing the brains of mac dealers in Mumbai, experimenting with a borrowed ibook etc. And I have to say, its really not as easy as Apple makes it sound.

My impression so far is while you can pretty much do everything on a Mac that you can on Windows, you can only do so at the basic level. If you are an advanced user, and use some of the less common features and services of Windows and its software, its difficult to let go. Compatability is not that much of an issue, you just have to work harder and may have to opt for workarounds. Some of my key obstacles:

1. I work in an office which runs a Windows  network with Active Directory and the Mac needs to join the domain, access its services, etc. While joining a Windows is no longer an issue, will I be able to access services like firewalls, proxies, play administrator, and manage things like security permissions etc from my client?

2. I use Outlook 2003. While Entourage provides all the basic functionality of Outlook, at first glance it does not seem to be as full featured as Outlook – the address card does not seem to hold as many fields, not sure how easy it is to create a distribution list, manage multiple email accounts and sending mails with chosen account etc.

3. One of the biggest issues is likely to be 3rd party applications – like sync for my Sony Ericsson with Outlook. Again, iSync etc will allow basic syncing of contacts, calendars and mails, how accurate and reliable will the syncing be – will it sync all fields, alarms, categories, notes etc? What about using my phone as a modem via Bluetooth?

4. And then of course there are the little utilities that are available for windows like password managers that sync with my phone – not sure how easily I will get that for a Mac.

All in all, I guess my problem is that I’m just too comfortable with Windows. Its like a marriage – you know there are problems, and the other women really looks appealing, but you’re just too cosy in the current familiarity.

And the final obstacle – for all the praise that Mac gets for being far easier to use than windows, I still haven’t found that one single feature about the Mac yet that makes a really strong argument to support that claim.  But I’m still waiting and haven’t given up yet…