Ed Bott's side-by-side Mac and PC experiment
ZDNet's Microsoft reporter Ed Bott is switching to a Mac. It's not forever and not in the way that you may be thinking, but for the time being he has decided to get serious about a side-by-side Mac and PC comparison he started over a year ago. Using a Mac mini and an HP Pavilion Elite desktop connected to dueling 24-inch monitors and sharing a single keyboard and mouse, he's not so much switching (wonder if he has watched the Apple "Find Out How" videos yet) but rather working towards his goal of being "comfortable enough to move between machines and use the best tools on each one with as little friction as possible." Using Synergy, open-source software that allows the use of one keyboard and mouse with both machines at once, Bott can move between them at will throughout the day. While this first installment in his "switch" is mostly about getting everything set up correctly, future discussion will include any hassles of platform switching and a comparison of the latest Office versions on each. Sure sounds like a much more complicated way of switching than the method I used with my Mom, which was to ask her to please just listen to me and buy a Mac.
She's been thankful ever since.
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ZDNet's Microsoft reporter Ed Bott is switching to a Mac. It's not forever and not in the way that you may be thinking, but for the time...
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I use Synergy both at home and work as I use a PC for some tasks and a Mac for others. I can tell you that getting used to the keyboard changes is really easy and you get used to it really fast. The reasons Bott gives for the not using two separate machines or VM are completely valid, and this is coming from someone who's been using Synergy 50+ hours a week since March 2010. It is one of my most valuable apps and completely changed the way I work. If you don't believe me, I used the Mac only for over 2 years and then added the PC, used it as the host machine, and don't feel like I'm missing anything by having the Mac as the client.
November 17 2010 at 10:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySynergy sounds like a good application, but using a Windows keyboard on a Mac or vice versa is irritating. Two keyboards take up space but it's worth it.
November 17 2010 at 10:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI will call it fair if the computers used cost as much.
November 17 2010 at 1:19 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHow passé. Anyone who hasn't permanently switched to the Mac by now is stuck in the last decade and shouldn't be writing for any tech magazine.
November 17 2010 at 12:12 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyDoes this idiot know that you can run Fusion in its own Space in full screen and you can't tell the difference? All the Spaces hotkeys work while you're in fusion, so it's pretty seamless.
Stupid Windows users. Figures.
From the article, regarding why he didn't want to use a VM for this experiment:
"I love virtual machines for test scenarios, but they aren’t a fair way to compare Macs and PCs. For starters, using virtualization requires that I use an Apple-branded Mac as the host. Apple won’t allow OS X to run in a VM, so using another host OS and hardware is not an option. Virtualization always penalizes the guest—my PC gets to use my new Nvidia GTX 430 GPU for some tasks, and it doesn’t have to go through virtualized hardware for routine tasks."
It's actually a good (if geeky) read- it's not a pro MS or anti Apple post at all, imo.
November 16 2010 at 9:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWouldn't it be easy to buy an iMac, put Paralells on it, put Window 7 and then use any of the OSes.
Oh, wait! That's the easy Apple's way of doing thing!
Let do it convoluted and complicated!
Have you used Parallels? It sucks. I've used it most recently on a 2010 model MacBook Pro. Windows under Parallels takes forever to boot, and once you've got two OSes running on your machine, both are slow. It may be simple, but it's not pleasant.
November 17 2010 at 10:49 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHuh? Parallels 6 is flawless on my 2-year old MBP 17" with 8GB RAM. Loads in seconds, no performance hit, and lets me open and export crappy Publisher files that people often send me, or access work-specific apps I'm forced to use.
November 20 2010 at 3:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI think a real test would be for him to just dive right into a Mac for 6 months.
November 16 2010 at 7:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI switched and before I did I watched the funny apple videos so I could hit the ground running... Best thing I've ever done...
Now I only have one little problem... I develop lots of applications both single machine and wan using ms access, lots of hospitals use it, as do insurance companies... And way before word press I had my users using access and asp to post data dynamically on to the web way back in 2000...
If only I could run access just like I do on my pc then I'd be in heaven until then I'm only 8 out of ten for switching...
the ease of videochatting & screen sharing through iChat has been a godsend between me in CA and my tech-phobic parents in MI.
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