I mentioned the other day how Luke gave me his old laptop. One thing I left out of that post is that the laptop is a Dell. Those of you who know me heard that right.

I am using a Windows machine.

In fact, I’m using it right now.

And I’m enjoying it.

umm….seriously.

When I was younger and had no sense, I swore by pc’s, although I thought the name was a little stupid. A “personal computer?” As opposed to what? The Cray-2 out in the garage? My friend Jason thought I was nuts. He was a Macintosh man, because his uncle had one, and it was cool. That was his word for it. Cool. We were young and stupid and thought we were cool, so that was our word for everything we held in esteem: “cool.”

Of course, neither of us owned a computer at the time, but that didn’t stop us from arguing the merits of machines we had yet to lay our hands on. If you can argue about such serious things as whether Star Trek was better than Star Wars, you can pretty much argue about everything, whether you’ve actually experienced it or not. Such in the essence of fourteen-year-oldness.

After college, I did get a job which involved the extensive use of Macintosh computers. This was when Mac still ruled the education market, I think. I found how just how awesome Macs were. They were so adaptable to whatever you wanted to them to do. And they never suffered from viruses or crashed or lost your data or any of those nasty things that pc’s were always doing. I’ve been using one or another Mac ever since.

And then this laptop fell into my life. It’s not new, and its last owner was a high school freshman, so it’s got a few dents and dings. (For example: two of the four USB ports don’t work because the little plastic tab in the center that holds on to your cable or device is just gone. How somebody can rip that out, I’ll never know.) But it runs, and it runs well, as long as you keep it plugged in, because the battery is a ghost at this point. But that’s a small price to pay for something that was free. I’m not complaining about any of this. If anything, it gives this little box a history. It’s not just some generic object designed, manufactured, and assembled by people who are completely anonymous to me.

I’m enjoying using it far more than I thought I would. It’s running Windows Vista, and while it still has some quirks that are peculiar to Windows apps, what impresses me most about it is that it’s pretty.

Back in the days of Windows 3.0 and Mac System 6.5, Mac was far prettier than Windows, mostly because Windows set the bar so low. It was just plain ugly, with utilitarian square windows and unappetizing color schemes. Working on a machine running Windows was like looking at any building built in the USSR during the 1970’s, whereas working on a Mac was like walking through a quaint village in Italy or France, the kind that shows up in the holiday brochure.

But I just can’t get over how beautiful Vista is. Maybe now that Bill Gates is no longer at Microsoft, the engineers are not afraid to be a little stylish. Maybe they’re channeling their inner Martha Stewart or Nate Berkus or some other annoying person who is making a living doing style. (Seriously, how do I get a hold of that gig?)

Vista actually looks like something you would want to look at. Old Windows was better than staring a concrete block wall, but just barely. Old Mac (pre OSX) wasn’t exactly a walk through the Louvre, but it was still better than spending time in a 1960’s Czechoslovakian prison. When Apple finally came out with OSX, it was much better than System 9, and light years ahead of whatever Microsoft was doing at the time.

If there’s anything that Apple understood at a gut level, and which eluded Microsoft for so long, it was that if you want people to use your product, it has to be easy on the eyes. Hugh Hefner understood this years ago, as did anybody trying to sell you something that wasn’t good for you, be it soda or junk food or cigarettes. Now that BG is gone (and he’s never going to win any awards for style because he dresses just barely better than I do) Microsoft seems to have embraced this ethos. Or maybe they realized that now that they have conquered the galaxy, it won’t hurt to pay a little bit of attention to Martha Stewart and Nate Berkus, and hang up some curtains around the Borg Cube they call a headquarters.

Yes, I know that sounds shallow. “You mean you’re judging a product based on its appearance? What if you did that with people?” Humans are visual animals. If we weren’t, all those things that we spend billions of dollars on because we like how they look or we like how they make other things look, like paint and parsley and ties and pornography, just wouldn’t exist. And I’m sorry, but we all judge people based on their appearance and especially their smell. Some of us try to rise above this and succeed, some of us try to rise above this and fail, and some of us just don’t even realize that we can rise above this.

So yes, I’m pleased with Windows Vista. If I had encountered this before I ran into a Mac, I might still be a dedicated pc kind of guy, you know? All those weird things that Windows is doing might be normal to me, and were I forced to use a Mac, I might end up scratching my head and cursing because I can’t figure out what that damned apple thing in the upper left-hand corner is for.

The weirdest thing about this machine is that it has a touchpad. I’ve used Mac laptops, and they have similar technology. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but when I use a computer with one of these, suddenly my hands are ten times bigger than normal. There I am, just reading through a web page, and suddenly I’ve selected half the text on the page. How did that happen? Or I’ll be working on a Word document (and don’t get me started on the entire ethos of running MS Office when I could be running OpenOffice or NeoOffice—dude, I’m already using Windows, so I think I sold my soul some time ago, and besides, I’ve been using MS Office for Mac for years, mainly because that’s what I learned to use when I was a computing noob) and suddenly this laptop is asking me if I’m really sure that I want to quit. What is up with that? Or I’m reading my own blog or website and suddenly I’ve gone back one or two or six clicks. How did that happen?

How did that happen? If you know me, you could probably justify my having that expression tattooed on my forehead. If I were McDonald’S, that’s the jingle you would hear on my adverts, instead of the lame and insipid “I’m loving it.”

Needless to say, some of the quirks I’m experiencing are because I haven’t used a Windoze machine in a long time, part of is because I’ve never used a Vista machine, and most of it is because I can’t figure out where to keep my thumbs. I’m getting better, and a little bit smarter, and things are working out okay.

Here’s the deal: for the longest time, I’ve considered Microsoft to be the antithesis of everything that was digital and creative and beautiful. To a small degree, I still do. Hell, I compared them to the Borg not so long ago. But that doesn’t mean that every once in a while they can’t get something right, or at least part of it right. Even Apple, although I am a Mac devotee, can still tick me off once in a while. And I’m sorry, but when I see Steve Jobs making a presentation, I am immediately reminded of that guy that led the Heaven’s Gate cult. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. It happens, and I don’t have time to lie on the couch and wonder why.

The fact is, I think I’ve made my peace with the Windows/Mac dichotomy. Once they seemed light years apart. In some small way, they are now converging. So am I.

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