James Fallows Is a Full Cult Member
The Cult of Mac has him--and Kenneth Rhee--in its grasp. Resistance is futile:
James Fallows: No political content! #1: Back to the Mac? The message below is from my "friend" -- never met him, but corresponded for years -- Kenneth Rhee of Northern Kentucky University. We made contact long ago via a support forum for the nonpareil info-handling program Zoot. Zoot is Windows-only, so Rhee, like me, has done his main work on PCs.
Recently he made The Change -- after wrestling with a new ThinkPad that came with Windows Vista pre-installed. This week Rhee submitted the following report on the the Zoot forum, plus some passages from a followup email to me:
I switched over to the Mac last year after getting a bit frustrated with Vista (I still run Vista in my Thinkpad on a rare occasion if I want to get "frustrated-little joke here but it seems to happen every time I use it these days).
My experience goes something like this. I wanted to use a few Mac programs and bought a MacBook thinking that I'll probably use it 10-15% of my time. After a month, I noticed that I was using my Mac 85-90% of the time, and having more fun using it rather than getting more frustrated fixing things or waiting for things to happen. So, I switched over completely and bought a new MacBook Pro with Leopard to replace my Thinkpad and haven't looked back.
I also run Fusion with Windows XP in my Mac on those occasions I need 100% compatibility. The irony is Windows XP in my MacBook Pro (2.2G) with 1 G of RAM starts/shuts down and runs much faster than my Thinkpad (2.3G) with 2G of RAM with Vista. In fact, my initial MacBook (2.16G with 2G of RAM) runs circles around my Thinkpad, it's not even funny.
Perhaps if I had gotten my Thinkpad with XP, I might not have completely switched over, but I guess it was a lucky break for me that I didn't.
...Just the other day I had my MacBook Pro packed for a trip, and I had to do something quick at the last minute before we departed, and I turned on my hibernated (not sleep mode) Thinkpad check on one email quickly.
Believe or not it took the Vista laptop 5 minutes to wake up and restore for me to get the work. My MacBook Pro boots cold much faster than this! In the meantime, my wife was waiting for me to come down from my study and getting anxious
I don't want to tip my hand about what future installments of this series might disclose, but: I too have a new ThinkPad with Vista installed. I too find that it takes between three and five-plus minutes for that computer to become usable when coming out of hibernation. And I too have noticed that the new Intel-based Macs can be made to run the Windows programs I really care about, like Zoot. Hmmmmm. Stay tuned.
I could hardly live without Zoot, but it's an acquired taste. A new version is now near the end of its beta cycle. I recommend it, as I have for more than a decade, but if you try the free download, be prepared to spend a little time getting to know the program.
