Macworld Forums

Are you new to the Mac, have you been away and come back, are you planning to get a Mac soon, or did you have a Mac and ditch it for a PC?

karenhaslam,
Since '92
Have used PCs extenively at work in the meantime but have always had a Mac either at home or at work since then.

karenhaslam,

I have been a mac user since 1994. Started off with a Performa 200, 40mb of hard drive and 4mb of ram. My only use of a pc these days is at work.

karenhaslam,
Purchased my first Mac - an iMac Rev C - in 1999 but had been given the use of an old Macintosh II - I forget the exact variant - for a year or so prior to this. Have never owned a PC.

My first one was an LCIII with 40Mb hard drive, the NEW system 7.1 AND 256 colours. Tell you what...its was the best Apple Keyboard I have ever had. They have all been pants since then.

karenhaslam,

Can't remember exactly (old age!). At work, Mac Plus I think, around 1987. then an SE30 with maths co-processor no less, Quadra, G3 Beige, G4 dual MD.

At home, first one was a G5 20" iMac about 16 months ago.

karenhaslam,

Since 1986 (or possibly 1987)

The company I worked for bought a dozen Mac Pluses to do Kitchen Design. I remember the demonstration. It was extraordinary. I fell in love, then discovered Excel, MacDraw, MacPaint, Microsoft File.

I bought my first Mac in 1991, an LC.

(I was the only one that managed to plan any kitchens with it, from what I remember. I did my own kitchen on it!)

karenhaslam,

Had my first Mac around 1984 (?) it was an SE. I have never owned a PC although I do use WindowsXP on Parallels Desktop for several odd tasks and for troubleshooting problem files that my Mac clients get sent from PC users.

karenhaslam,

May 2003, with a G3 iBook. So 4 years. Switched after playing with a friend's Powerbook. Have to use PCs at work all day, but have then I have four work colleagues who switched to Mac at home under my belt so far.

I keep an XP machine at home for the kids to play crappy old games on, and for the CDROMS they get out of cereal packets, but I wouldn't let it near the net...

karenhaslam,

Since Late 2002. The company I was freelancing for was entirely Mac based and were running Quicksilver G4's with OSX 10.2

At the time it was the dock scaling animation that did it for me. I had always imagined that computers in the future would do that kind of thing. Then after using for a while I realised that OSX was brilliant. Never looked back since. Switched many others too.

karenhaslam,

My name is Nicintosh and I was a PC User...

I was actually quite good with PCs back in the 90's but after going to Uni in '98/99 and seeing the new Bondi Blue iMacs and G3 Towers I was really hooked. I got a G3 iMac (still going strong!) and then my mum got an iBook. I've got an iBook and my dad wants either a 24" iMac or MBP. 2 of my friends bought iMacs and MBPs too.

I used a variety of PCs in my old job for 3 years. (all 4 are dead now)
Now I'm back on the Mac with my current job.

I had my first Mac when I was at university, my brother brought me a Mac SE, i am not sure if this is the correct model. It got a build screen with floppy drive as one big box. We pay £100 for it in 1992-1993. Before that, I had G3 B/W, BBC Master, PC 8086, PC 80286, PC 80486 and Pentium. But my first ever computer is Apple IIe, in 1982. That would be the only computer I ever kept in the attic. The rest of PC and BBC are in the skip or use as door stand or footrest. Still using G3 B/W for 8 years and it work brillant for me and when I need it since my PB broke down.

89' ish with a Mac II, SE30 and Mac II Ci at my first job. First personally owned Macs were LC450 and LC630 (both of which are still in the loft and, as far as I'm aware still work). Had a multitude of them since but never been at the cutting edge with the top of the crop - one day maybe!

Never had a PC.

Bought my first Mac in about 1990: a second-hand SE -- 9" black and white monitor, 8Mb RAM,a 40Mb HD and one of the new-fangled 1.4Mb floppy drives -- for £2,700! Bargain!

Going way back, I started with a ZX81 then a Commodore 64 (heady days) then went PC in 1995 when Windows 95 (finally) came out. Fast forward to 2005 and by that time I was rather disillusioned with the OS. The launch of the Mac Mini was too good an opportunity to pass up so I bought one - a first generation G4 machine running Panther.

Just over two years down the line and I've dumped Windows totally (don't have a PC at all now), got a MacBook when they launched last year and have just upgraded from the Mac Mini to a Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz with 3GB RAM.

I played with Vista at a friends house the other day and am convinced more than ever that I made the right decisions switching to Mac. No going back for me!

karenhaslam,
It looks as though I have been using my own Mac the longest - since the original Mac came out in 1986. I had the first MacPlus upgrade in Europe, courtesy a friend from Palo Alto who was seconded to Mac Europe - that machine still works, with an addition floppy card reader, OS 7 and its original dot printer.
Since then four other Macs, the latest of which is a G4 PowerMac, 1GHz, with 1.25GB ram; still fast enough for my needs.