Is it finally time to switch to an Apple Mac ? YES

Nothing has more neatly divided the five siblings that make up my family than the old Mac/Mike debate (Mike being short for Microsoft). Over the years the political lines have been drawn, erased and redrawn, along with other issues that cause debate. But the division between those of us who own Mikes and those of us who own and swear by Macs has always been clear and unchanging.

The two oldest siblings, perhaps wiser, have been Mac owners and have, to ad nauseum degree, reminded the rest of us at every family gathering of the Mac's (and implicitly their own) superiority. I learned to tune them both out years ago when it came to the Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates history because, no matter how often I explained how little I cared about either man, I was regaled with the same old story of how poor Steve Jobs had been taken advantage of by Bill Gates way back when. Whatever. I didn't care.

My reasons for owning machines that operated Microsoft Windows had nothing to do with misguided loyalty to some huge corporation who could of course, care no less about me than they already do. For my purposes (let's be honest here...my purposes = inexpensive + capable of surfing the web and word processing), Mike machines comfortably fit my needs. Okay, I suppose we could assign the word cheap to this story somewhere.

And then as my children became teenagers, it actually almost became important to own the Mike version of personal computers available to us today because of gaming needs. What 17 year old wanted a Mac when they could immerse themselves in the World of Warcraft for 12 hours straight on a Toshiba laptop (except for all those times we had to send the Toshiba off to get the power fixed yet again).

For the first time in twenty years, the lines that divide my siblings and I most definitively are about to shift. As I said, I harbour no illusions that loyalty to any product will somehow be in my best interest.

Just recently it has become abundantly clear that my Mikes are more problematic than their cheapness, excuse me, their inexpensiveness warrants. That's right. I'm ready to switch to the Mac. What has finally pushed me over the line?

Microsoft, in their persistent lack of trust in their customers, has gone one step further in trying to weed out the unpaid for copies of their software and as they encourage, nay invasively push customers to constantly update their Microsoft software, ostensibly to keep Mike machines running properly because of the inherent system flaws, most Mike owners feel they should update to avoid the vulnerabilities that plague Mike machines. And so.....this shouldn't be a problem if you own a legitimate copy of Windows, right? WRONG.

My laptop has Windows XP on it that I installed from a properly paid for disk. But recently it was tagged by Microsoft as being an invalid version of Windows. Because of that, I was unable to update my virus software. Because of that my laptop has a virus. Go to Microsoft's website and you will be told that you need to purchase a "real" version of Windows. Ehrm, I have the legitimate copy of Windows XP that I paid for myself in person. I didn't go to the flea market and buy the Korean version. Too bad; according to Microsoft, I am not trustworthy. My laptop has been, for all intents and purposes rendered useless.

My brother (another Mike user) has the same problem with his computer and bless his heart (as we say in the south to soften the blow), he went out and bought a new version of Windows XP and still has the same problem.

So in order for me to keep running Mike machines, I am going to have to bend over backwards to get my legitimate copy of Windows to work. Since I first got a pc with Windows 3.1 on it, I have never loaded any copied Microsoft software on any of my computers. I have paid for Windows through 3.1, 3.11, Win95 (remember the headaches?), Win98, Win2K and finally Windows XP. I won't even go into the headaches of trying to load my office software on new computers, etc. That's another story. But suffice it to say that I am now officially fed up with Windows by Microsoft.

I can't help but wonder if this latest assault on Microsoft customers by Microsoft is an effort to get people to go ahead and move to Windows Vista. If so, I can only hope that I'm not the only one who has decided to say no.

When Apple asks me who they can thank for sending me, a new customer, to them to buy my new computer, I will be happy to tell them they can thank Microsoft.