Monday, July 20, 2009

I’m on Jeopardy! And “I’ll take False Assumptions for $2,000, Alex.”

As I begin my consciousness-altering migration from a PC to a Mac, I’m like the kid in the candy shop configuring hardware: Two 2.66 GHz quad processors; 12 Gigs of memory; Two 1 TB disks; Raid; 30 inch display; and so on.  Risking mixing my metaphors … This isn’t Burger King, mister. I’m not going to “hold the pickle, hold the lettuce. ‘cause special orders don’t upset us.” I want a big Mac. But when I’m done, it’s just a lump of e-lec-tron-i-cal-stuff. It won’t do anything!

I need to remember, “It’s the software, Stupid!”

I assumed that for every Application I use on the PC, there was an equivalent Application for the Mac. Photoshop? Sure. Office? Sure. And so on. So I knew I might have to re-buy some software. It’s time to take inventory and tally the damage. In descending order by usage, here’s what I use:
• Outlook Mail -> Mac Mail – Cost: Zero
• Photoshop -> Photoshop – Cost $6 for new media
• Photoshop Pluggins -> Photoshop Pluggins – Cost: Zero*
• Lightroom -> Lightroom – Cost: $6 for new media
• Office -> Office – Cost: $129 for Mac version
• Quicken -> Quicken – Cost: $79
• Pro Series Tax -> Pro Series Tax – Cost: $250
• Norton 360 -> McAfee - Cost: Zero

Phew! I was worried about an $1,800 hit for Adobe CS4 (Photoshop et.al.) Hooray for Adobe’s intellignet approach to licensing!

Worst case, say, around $500. I can live with that.

False Assumptions Time: Pro Series Tax doesn’t have a Mac Version. And Quicken for Mac is incompatible with Quicken for Windows. Shame on you Intuit! Now I’ve got some serious head scratching to do. I need these programs more than I need to switch to a Mac!

Should I cancel my hardware order while I rethink this?

Posted by Digital Quixote in • PC to Mac
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