Category: Mac vs PC

Decision Time: Do unto others as was done unto me?

So the good news is, I get to hire a new person to my team. We really need the help. Oh boy could we use the help.

And I think we’ve found the right person for the job (after quite a long recruiting process), oh joy!!

So as the paperwork goes through approvals and I wait, I was given the go ahead to start outfitting the cubicle and equipment for this new starter.

Yay!

Now, let’s go back a bit in time. Cue the wavy lines as we go back over two years ago.

To the day when I started this job. I was fresh faced and full of optimism and enthusiasm and other words ending in m.

My new boss ushered me to my office. Hard walls! A window! A door!

Then he handed me a laptop. Ker. Thunk.

In my previous gig I had been blissfully using a sleek, speedy Mac and this…thing…that was placed into my hands was a Dell.

A Dell. *shriek!*

Not only a Dell, but an almost three year old Dell that was running, horror of horrors, Windows XP. In the year 2010.

I was told that:

1) The Company keeps laptops for three years. Three years exactly, no early upgrades. This machine wasn’t quite three years old so tough luck kiddo.

2) Windows XP was the only authorized operating system at that time.

3) The Company does a big bulk purchase once a year and we get smoking hot discounts during that time. So even if the machine was older then three years, I couldn’t get a new one until Buying Season.

So, I did what a new hire does. I made it work. It was the slowest, saddest, boat anchor of a machine I think I’ve ever known. I bitched incessantly as it locked up and had to be restarted again. And again. And again.

I waited long enough and was a good little girl and magically buying season arrived AND my machine’s three years expired and I was finally able to order a new machine.

A brand spanking new Dell that ran…Windows XP.

Oh fine. It was faster and the keyboard didn’t contain food and hair and skin particles from my predecessor (I so wish I was kidding about that), and the screen wasn’t cracked.

So I was happy!

The piece of crap I had used was dutifully sent to recycling. I hope they crushed it.

About a year later, I had to replace someone who left my team to work in another team within the same organization. My boss told her to take her machine with her. And so she did.

When I hired someone, it was not the Buying Season and I had to dig up a boat anchor of a Dell to give him that would take a coffee and a smoke break when my employee asked it to do simple spreadsheet things.

But he was a new employee and fresh faced and full of optimism and enthusiasm and other words ending in m, and he endured. Buying Season finally came unto him and he bought a new spiffy machine, and by this time the IT organization had approved Windows 7 so he was FLYING. Pivot tables! Moving graphics on PowerPoint. Weeeee!

Which brings us back to now. I’m still using the machine that was purchased two and a half years ago. As cheap PC’s are want to do, it has sloooooowed down considerably.

My PC will have a third birthday in about six months. The start of Buying Season is about nine months away.

I can make it last. Right?

At a recent group luncheon, one of my peers (who started right around the same time I did) talked about how he’d just hired a new person too. And how he’d ordered a new machine for them (we are currently in the buying season) and how he took the new machine for himself and gave his two year old machine to the new guy.

My eyes widened. “You can do that?”

“Of course,” he said. “I got a crappy machine when I started here. It’s a tradition.”

Which got me to thinking. You see, as mentioned, it is the Buying Season now and I ordered a new machine for my new hire and this year The Company upgraded the standard from Dell to Lenovo and it’s a pretty nice machine.

It was delivered on Monday and it’s in the box under my desk right at this minute.

So. Do I break the chain and give New Employee a new machine?

Or do I scoop that damn thing up and give him my not that old and not that terrible machine?

I have a few weeks to decide just what kind of person I want to be.







Cartoon vulture found on How To Draw Cartoons Online.



Electronic Confession

I don’t really consider myself to be a gadget kind of girl. I mean, I do like my electronic device (ahemiPadcoff) now and again, but I don’t tend to get every new device the moment it hits the market.

It’s just not that important to me. Fer goodness sakes! I still have a tube television! (*gasp*)

The iPod I use is the second generation shuffle, which is still my favorite iPod.

I do have an iPhone 4, but I bought that when I started this job almost 17 months ago. I had an iPhone 3 prior, but an OS update had rendered it unusable (sooo slooow), so I upgraded to a new device.

My iPhone4 works great. I’m happy with it. Nary a problem. Yep. It’s all good.

So I was looking in my work ordering system the other day, and lo and behold, it reported I was eligible for a phone upgrade.

And I thought naaaah, I don’t need a new iPhone 4s.

And I thought naaah.

And I thought some more.

And then I thought…well maybe.

And I thought. And thought.

And then without thinking, I ordered one.

(My employer doesn’t pay for the device, by the way. Only the service.)

Gah!

Maybe I am a bit of a gadget head. At least about Apple gear. I’m quite susceptible to the magic they weave.

Do you suppose Siri will take my confession?

Bless me Siri, for I have sinned. I have lust in my heart for a device I totally don’t need.

Now where is that delivery? Huh, huh? Where? How about now? How about now?

Siri, are we there yet?



Cartoon by Nitrozac & Snaggy from JoyofTech.com



This week’s Theme Thursday is: gadget


Oh The Humanity!

Side note:

I’d considered taking the week off from blogging because awkward commentary on awkward things seemed, perhaps, inappropriate after yesterday’s post.

But then I decided…well hell, writing this blog, no matter how trivial the topic, is what keeps me sane. I need to write something, anything, every day. And so, dear readers, despite my ongoing grief and my travel plans that will take me back to New Mexico for a few days, I’m going to try to keep on writing this week. Because it’s who I am.

Thanks to all for your support in comments and via email. Ya’ll rock.

And now, onward……

So I have a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while.

I’ve not brought it up before because, well, I was dealing with all the emotions.

It’s essential that I my footing on this and make peace.

I don’t think it is any secret that I mostly use Apple products for my computing needs.

I had the great fortune to be able to use a Mac for work in my last three jobs, a time frame of almost fifteen years.

I have Macs at home. I have an iPhone.

Yes. I’m a Mac person.

Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use the PC, I just haven’t had a lot of need to. Sure the occasional lookup on the PC at the library. Sometimes using my best friend’s machine to check email.

Not a problem.

Well. A month ago, I came to work on my first day, and into my hands they plopped….

A Dell.

Not just a Dell. A three year old Dell.

A three year old Dell that originally came with Vista but has since been blasted with some corporate approved version of some other member of the Windows family. I’ll be dag blarned if I can remember what it is.

(Because one click on the Apple logo in the upper left corner and it will tell me what OS I’m running, but I can’t find the similar on this machine. Oh wait…start….control panel….system…. Ah ha! Windows XP.)

The Good Man assures me that whatever the OS is on this machine is better than Vista.

Oh? So…ok.

I’m getting used to it, using this machine day by day.

It’s slow. It’s stodgy. It’s….well…it’s Windows.

I’m used to “hey, I wish this thingamabooper was over there instead of over here” and so I drag it over and off it goes, happier than anything, to its new location and it just does what it’s supposed to do.

Not so with my Windows. You have to find the thingamabooper in the right file and ask it nicely, maybe even coax it, to come over and perhaps make the transfer. Like a professional bureaucrat, it wants rubber stamps and approvals and nodding heads to let it know that, yes, it might be ok to be over there.

And it will go over there.

And then, later, it will go back to where it came from, without asking.

So okay. I’m adapting. It’s all just fine.

But I have a confession to make…

(I’m so ashamed.)

I find I really kind of like the ol’ right click. I never thought I needed more than one button on my mouse. It turns out…right click is pretty darn handy.

This whole PC thing is not so bad, really!

Sssh. Don’t tell Steve Jobs. He’d be so disappointed!

That which is taboo

Yup, I’m in love again. Painful, lustful, forbidden love with a steely, powerful object.

My new employer is a lot behind the times when it comes to IT expertise, but they are hip as hip can be with the portable crowd.

When I started work, I was asked “Would you like a PC or a Mac?”

Why, the answer was simple. Mac, please!

In fact, that was one of the go-no go requirements of changing jobs. Having used nothing but a Mac for the past twelve years, I would say I was reluctant to slip back to the Windows based environment.

So, my previous employer provided Macs, but they were refurb and a step or two behind the technology curve.

Not so with fascinating new employer.

No, I got to work and was greeted with a sleek, sexy, top of the line MacBook Pro. The 15-inch variety, 2.53GHz. Four beefy GB of memory. A roomy 300GB hard drive.

Yum!

It has this utterly awe inspiring, new crystal clear glass screen, the cool backlit black keys, and the glass trackpad with NO button. Nope, it’s all in one. You can scroll on that bad boy, click anywhere and whoa does it work nice.

The unibody design is light and compact and feels solid and well built.

This thing beats the crap out of my last work machine, an old style MacBook pro, that poor dented aluminum thing.

Then yesterday, I had occasion to work from home, and as I sat on the couch, caressing the keys of this hot young MacBook Pro, I looked at my VERY old, personally owned 17″ PowerBook (it dates back to, I believe, 2004) and then at my new work speedster and yes…I fell in love.

I mentioned later to The Good Man that I was in love, and that I may have to save our pennies (a LOT of pennies) to buy one of these. This might ensure that my writing projects are no longer in peril of going to the great bit bucket in the sky when my PowerBook fails…and it will. Soon.

He couldn’t hear me. He was too busy caressing his own brand new MacBook Air (well, new to us…he bought it refurb on a smoking good deal).

The family that computes together (on the same platform) stays together.

We’ll call this: Still life with Macsexy Beast. Taken with my company provided 3G iPhone.

_________________________________

Oh, a small bit of irony. My beautiful, glorious MacBook Pro machine……well my IT organization got a hold of it first to set it up. They also turned it over and used an old fashioned electric engraver to scratch the company name and identifying information into the unibody metal case in a shaky script.

I believe, when the tip of the engraver touched the silky nickel aluminum blend unibody, somewhere in Infinite Loop, Steve Jobs shuddered.

Who engraves stuff anymore? My *dad* used to do that!?!!?!?