I've been a PC guy since high school (a sweet 386, 20MHz with an 80MB hard drive). Years pass, and I'm happy in the PC domain -- heavy word processing, surfing, a bit of home audio recording and the occasional game (usually an older RPG or strategy gem). Sadly, my current laptop PC suffers from chronic overheating issues (I blame Toshiba for a pretty crappy cooling design), and I've been muddling through with my work PC, which is a great machine but pretty heavily locked down by my employer.
For my birthday, my girlfriend gave me a MacBook Air. I couldn't be more grateful. Seriously. She asked that I spend a week with the machine, and we could exchange it for a PC. Aside from my irrational disdain for certain aspects of the Apple subculture, I want to give it a fair shake. And maybe, this is exactly the kind of device for my meager needs. Some additional info:
1. I own no other Apple devices (though my girlfriend does). I have an Android phone, Roku, non-iPod MP3 players, and multiple Kindles.
2. All of my digital content resides with Amazon and a bit with Google.
3. I have a decent amount of files on older PCs/removable hard drive (music, photos, Word docs, etc.)
4. I'd largely be using this to write, surf, record the occasional song idea/fragment and maybe play a fun game or two.
My many questions:
1. As a PC guy, what's going to drive me crazy about switching to a Mac? For one, I'm fairly adept with keyboard shortcut commands in Windows. Am I going to lose my mind?
2. What's going to be easier? Simpler?
3. How painful will it be to transfer files among devices?
4. Can I run older Windows programs (such as games, like Civ IV) through an emulator, or am I wasting my time? Certainly not a dealbreaker.
5. What cool programs/apps are out there?
6. How do I give it an adequate and fair trial? And ultimately, do I keep it?
Thanks so much for any advice. And forgive me, but I couldn't find a thread already dedicated to this.
For my birthday, my girlfriend gave me a MacBook Air. I couldn't be more grateful. Seriously. She asked that I spend a week with the machine, and we could exchange it for a PC. Aside from my irrational disdain for certain aspects of the Apple subculture, I want to give it a fair shake. And maybe, this is exactly the kind of device for my meager needs. Some additional info:
1. I own no other Apple devices (though my girlfriend does). I have an Android phone, Roku, non-iPod MP3 players, and multiple Kindles.
2. All of my digital content resides with Amazon and a bit with Google.
3. I have a decent amount of files on older PCs/removable hard drive (music, photos, Word docs, etc.)
4. I'd largely be using this to write, surf, record the occasional song idea/fragment and maybe play a fun game or two.
My many questions:
1. As a PC guy, what's going to drive me crazy about switching to a Mac? For one, I'm fairly adept with keyboard shortcut commands in Windows. Am I going to lose my mind?
2. What's going to be easier? Simpler?
3. How painful will it be to transfer files among devices?
4. Can I run older Windows programs (such as games, like Civ IV) through an emulator, or am I wasting my time? Certainly not a dealbreaker.
5. What cool programs/apps are out there?
6. How do I give it an adequate and fair trial? And ultimately, do I keep it?
Thanks so much for any advice. And forgive me, but I couldn't find a thread already dedicated to this.