Musings of a Marketing Maven

I’ve now installed Windows Vista for the second or third time on a Mac, and I have to say – Vista runs better on my MacBook Pro than it does on some of my dedicated PCs. I’ve been running Vista on a MacBook Pro for over a year, and am still happy.

I confess to using Apple’s Bootcamp because I like the forced break when shutting down and restarting – it helps me shift my mental model from Mac to PC, and back again… It only takes a moment to switch when using a fast machine like a MacBook Pro.

I’ve tried Vista on what was then a blazingly fast Alienware laptop. Like many early Vista users, I encountered all the driver hassles and incompatibilities that made the V1 upgrade experience so intolerable.

To make things worse, the graphics board maker, Nvidia, never bothered to upgrade the driver to one that would work with Vista. Being forced to use a generic video driver destroyed most of the value this machine had offered in the first place – my primary reason for paying more for this brand and laptop model than the other alternatives. If I had the time or the inclination, I’d downgrade the OS to Windows XP. But compared to a MacBook Pro, the Alienware laptop is so heavy it’s just not worth my time to shift it back to XP.

As a customer I was very disappointed to pay top dollar for a premium brand and then discover that it wasn’t worth Alienware’s while to update drivers on a machine that was barely a year old. That’s the last time I’ll ever buy that brand!

Indeed, when the time came to buy another dedicated PC (to run my business’ accounting files), I went with a no-name brand from Washington called Quiet PC in order to get a whisper-quiet PC for my office. The company’s website is very geeky, and it was scary to configure the PC online, but I’ve been thrilled with the results.

After years of suffering with PCs that sound like jet engines taking off, I love sharing space with one that I rarely hear. Plus, I like its subtle but sophisticated black case – this PC doesn’t call attention to itself (except for its blinking blue LED lights). Because I run my business out of a home office, quiet good-looking computers are important. (Needless to say, my desktop Mac is also quiet and good looking.)

Why do I run more than one computer at a time? So I can multi-task and juggle multiple priorities – and be ready for those inevitable client phone calls. Having to juggle disparate tasks and different operating system models demands mental agility while calling for balanced attention… Like yoga for the brain. It may not suit everyone, but I like it.