The big 'Switch'

[gothic]

Here is part one of my "Switching over to Mac OS X" story.

Very brief history; I have always wanted a Mac, I even tried the "Mac-Mini" a year or so ago, but simply too slow for any real work to be done! and real Macs were simply too expensive.

Along came "Intel-Mac" --- and so the story accelerates.
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a forum where members claim to have installed a working version of Mac OS X 10.4.8 Tiger on an x86 (bog standard) PC, boy was I interested now.
I obtained a copy of said operating system and experimented. I managed to install it successfully onto my PC and what a revelation.
As soon as I realised this was a viable proposition I purchased a license for my copy of Tiger. (I actually brought a license for Leopard, but thats another story.)

It installs easily but slowly, and it recognises all my hardware. I had to install drivers for the sound card and Graphics card to get the full benefit of them, but thats simplicity itself.
I knew my way around a Mac, so the interface was not at all alien, and was able to download and install the essentials like Firefox and Thunderbird

I then had to sit back, take stock and consider a couple of important issues.
1: Would I be able to replicate a viable workflow on a Mac
This means are there Mac equivalents for all the softwares I use under XP...... answer YES!

2: I use some pretty fancy stuff to share one mouse and keyboard between two (sometimes three) computers. Will this be possible on the Mac...... answer YES!

3: Would I be restricted by having two file systems within the same machine (NTFS and HSF) answer NO! I found software called MacFUSE/NTFS-3G which enables Mac to read/write to NTFS partitions.


The interface is just so sexy. Things get done in a more rational and timely manner. It is just so nice to use.
Switching to the Mac as opposed to Vista has been sweet, easy and pleasant.

I will have to keep the XP installed and duel boot, mainly for Spearhead.

Part two to follow