I’ve wanted to make the switch from Mac to PC for many years. Not because I’m unhappy with PCs and Windows (both have been very good to me), but because I’d like to experience life on the other side. I’ve always loved Apple design, and have been close to making a purchase so many times.
The software trap
In the end, I have always been trapped by software. My existing investment in Windows software was always too high for me to make the jump. I couldn’t justify the cost of a Mac along with the cost of replacing all my software with Mac OS equivalents.
Cloud comes of age
Now, cloud services are beginning to come of age at the same time as my Windows software is falling out-of-date, which is one reason why I’ve started to look at online alternatives. I’ve already made a start: a couple of years ago I ditched Outlook in favour of using Google Mail via the web interface; more recently I began the move away from Word and Excel to Google Docs.
Liberation
My aim is to uninstall Office completely within the next couple of months.
It’s starting to feel quite liberating, knowing that in future when I buy a new computer, all I will have to do is take it out of the box, and immediately start to access all the applications and data I use on a day-to-day basis without having to insert streams of CDs and go through endless installs and restores.
Vulnerability?
There’s a potential trade-off, of course – coming in the form of increased ‘vulnerability’ due to my data being in the cloud. This isn’t much of an issue for me though, as none of my data is particularly sensitive, so if the worst thing happened and one of my accounts was hacked, it wouldn’t be too big a deal. I don’t keep all my eggs in the same basket, and I export regular backups, so I could always restore everything fairly easily if I suffered a data loss of some kind.
So, that’s why I’m heading for the cloud. Computing nirvana. Freedom.
Has anyone reading this made the switch? I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please leave a comment.
