Madison? Are you Mac or PC? Tell Us Your Preference!

A number of years ago I volunteered at the , monitoring Mrs.VanBuskirk's third grade class as they learned keyboarding on computers provided by the school.  Things were different back in 1998.  Only a few classrooms had a PC, and the computers that the students learned on lined the hallway outside the classroom.  

Most were donated by friends and supporters of the school, and were barely functioning.  There were both  Mac's and PC's.  At 11 a.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the kids would stream out into the hallway and choose the computer they liked best.  Some went directly to the PC's but most of the children were drawn to the Mac's.  When I asked them why they liked the ancient Macintosh computers, they replied that they were more fun and that the screen was nicer.  The other group on the PC's said that they liked the word processing program it had, that it had more features.

Out of the mouths of babes, the basic differences were simple.

Fast forward to 2011.  Saturday I was having a cup of coffee at Drip with Paul's wife, Shana, and the famous Ed Vita, and we began taking notice of all the patrons and their computers. Almost every table had one or two laptops open and in use, some Mac's and some PC's.  The business types all had PC's, but the student types seemed to be equally diveded between both kinds.  I approached a table of five college students, and asked them about their preference in computer systems.  Three were on PC, and two were clicking away quietly on MacBooks.  The conversation became very animated right out of the gate.  The Mac users said that they loved their Macs, and that they would never go back to a PC (very passionate).  The other three seemed resigned to fact that they were stuck with a Dell, IBM or Toshiba.  The laptops were assigned to them by the university at the start of their freshman year.  All freshmen get a new laptop.  This coming September, the university will give the incoming freshmen a choice of a MacBook or a Dell.  That should have an interesting result. 

The Mac students claim that their laptops are trouble-free and fun to use, but do not interact perfectly with the internal network, servers and file sharing system at the school.  Things are getting better, and this past year there has been an iimprovement.  The PC students had more breakdowns and needed repairs more often, not a great thing during exams, or when papers are due.  Other than that they seem to like the computers that they are using, and resumed listening to music and surfing the web.

I believe that the business community is well served by the PC, and the advent of Windows 7 is bringing a nicer interface and better usability to the genre.   The business enterprise environment is slow to change.  The Mac is suited well for video, imaging and creative production work; the music production industry has been relovutionized by the Mac.

The techinical and marketing argument is classic, and Switched.com has a this great story making the comparisons clear.  The Technologizer site gives us the Straight Scoop in this Mac vs. PC article published in 2010.

The feud between Apple and Microsoft goes back to the beginning of the personal computer.   I could go on about the reasons for choosing on or the other, but I am more interested in YOUR reason for picking the computer you are using right now.

Tell us you preference, Madison. Use the comment section just below this post.

We are all ears!
ComputerGuy