Dateline>City of Angels

Thank heavens we’re well underway into 2008. For me, 2007 ended not so much with a bang but a crash — and then a whimper.

Early December, my old (a relative term when it comes to computers) PC suffered a catastrophic failure. Near as the hastily summoned technoid from Make It Work could tell, an internal short circuit somehow managed to fry both the on/off switch and the motherboard. The system was DOA.

The irony is, after quitting my magazine job in October, I’d spent all November setting up a home network, upgrading software and memory, adding VOIP and a computer softphone, scanning hundreds of searchable PDFs into the system and organizing all my files in an attempt to restart my home business and tackle my long-anticipated book. I was so proud of my do-it-yourself entry into the world of Geekdom. Now all that work was for naught. Instead I was faced with buying a new computer, extensive data recovery and starting all over again.

Then came the holidays, a very nasty sick-bug and an even more nasty allergic reaction to some medication my doctor prescribed, all of which further sidelined me. (As they say, when it rains it pours, but that’s another story.)

I’m finally recovering — not just from the holidays and my little “health crisis,” but from the Great PC Crash of 2007. I’m “all-Mac” now, and happier for it. Although I’ve been a Windows user for over a decade, I was never fully comfortable with Bill Gate’s dream machines. The design, fit and finish of the average PC always felt clunky to me. And application-wise, I hated Microsoft’s often counterintuitive attempts to “intuit” settings and/or what I wanted a program to do. Setup never seemed easy, and I always felt like I was walking on egg shells with “work around” solutions — like the whole thing was held together with rubber bands and glue.

While I’m still getting used to the Mac, I’m finding it far more user friendly. Microsoft loyalists will wretch, but Apple’s humorous commercials featuring the corporate PC guy and the hip Mac creative type perfectly capture my feelings about the two platforms. Corporate administrators and cubicle-dwellers may have come to accept inelegant, convoluted systems and their constant quirks and failures as part and parcel of the working world, but the rest of us don’t have time for such nonsense. We just want something cool that works.

Compare it to getting around town in a beater for years and then finally splurging on a brand-new higher-end auto. You may not be able to find your way around under the hood, but you don’t need (or care) to. There’s just nothing like the thrill of knowing it’s going to start every morning and be fun to drive.

Let auld PC acquaintance be forgot! Here’s to a happy, healthy and Mac-filled 2008!