Published Jun 29, 2004
I did it. I broke down and bought a Windows laptop for my forthcoming business school experience. At the end, I just felt that the easy interoperability with my classmates and access to all of the desktop and web apps used by Marshall was worth it. Plus, I’m very hopeful that it won’t be so awful now that Microsoft has had 20 years to imitate the Mac OS in some little way.
So today (only a week and a half after ordering!) I recieved that laptop. A Dell Latitude D600. The out-of-box experience wasn’t bad, althoughDell showed clearly nothing like the care Apple puts into packaging. The box was at least easy-to-open and the contents easy-to-get-at, despite the brown cardboard.
I’d ordered Office and Norton Anti-Virus pre-installed, and those worked just fine. Everything — even the OS — came with install CDs. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were pre-installed, and worked with no fiddling around.
Of course, the machine doesn’t look as pretty as a Mac. But all parts seem to work fine thus far. And, just as naturally, it feels weird to use. But a lot of that is just getting used to it as well. So, we’ll see, over the next few weeks, just how big a mistake this was!
(hopefully neither big nor a mistake)