The Inadvertent Mac Switcher
Two nights ago, at the (hopeful) nadir of several difficult weeks -- my desktop PC died.
Bricked. Kaput.
Fortunately the data survived, and I've begun migrating it to my trusty PowerBook G4 Titanium. For a five year-old, merely 1 gigahertz machine, I love it. It does everything I ask of it, it will probably run the new Mac OS X upgrade somewhat decently, and it can even boot into OS 9 if I'm feeling nostalgic.
Unfortunately, I'm an inveterate gamer and the laptop is more sluggish than I'd like. So while I'll be a Mac-only guy for the next month or so, ultimately a new machine is going to have to come into the household.
Modern Macs can dual-boot into Windows, of course, but to turn them into a truly modern gaming machine may be more than I can afford. (F'r instance, I don't think the current iMac has a powerful enough video card to support modern 3D gaming at its LCD panel's native resolution.)
I'm enjoying being in a Mac environment full time. However, for all of Apple's John Hodgman-driven marketing success in attracting PC users, there's that one category of user out there -- the gamer -- who isn't being served by their current mix of products. A comparatively cheap, scratch-built gaming PC may be in my future, sitting next to the PowerBook just as the dead one did.
Macworld Expo is coming up soon. Will Steve Jobs offer me a new reason to switch for good?