All right, so here’s the plan…for me to keep track of my transition from the Windows world to the OS X world. Keeping track of what I’ve done, software that I’ve used, things that I learn, how my data migration went, hardware components I used to do the migration, and hope to wrap up the totatl transition in 2 months. I’ve set a goal of 2 months, just due to the fact that I won’t be able to do EVERYTHING I want to do in a weekend, so I’ve set a realistic expectation of 2 months to NOT HAVE TO USE THIS WINDOWS GARBAGE ANYMORE!

Don’t get me wrong…I’ll still need to use a Windows XP Operating System for work (thanks to VMWare for providing the engine to do this!), but I’m must sick and tired of problematic things in the Windows world. Now with the appearance of Vista, I’m all set. Talk about double-talk and screwy licensing aggreements, and whatever they want to call that Windows Genuine Advantage On-Steroids thing. OK, so Windows don’t be gone from my world, but I’ll be using it at work for work specific function, and only when I have to. Oh…and I don’t plan on giving up my MCSE as I find it to be a valuable certification to have since I work in the IT world.

I’ve been seriously thinking about switching over to Apple’s OS X as my primary Operating System for about a year now. Seriously enough to have had a couple of Mac systems as a loaner to beat on for a month or so total. I had a Mac mini about a year ago for a couple of weeks. I liked it, but I just didn’t have time to dedicate to learning a new Operating System. I spent about a month running a developers copy of OS X in a VMware Virtual Machine. It ran dog slow, and had no internet connectivity. Even with those (major in my opinion) issues, I was still intrigued enough to hunt down a loaner system to try to use it as my main system for both work and home. In August, I borrowed a Macbook (not a Macbook Pro) from a friend for 3 weeks. It was the most painful experience for me to wipe it clean, and hand it back to my friend after my time with this laptop was up. (I would have bought the unit, but it had this ‘wierd’ random shutdown issue…hmmmm). Still…I noticed that my hand/wrist felt a lot better after using the Macbook for a few weeks. When I went back to using my IBM Thinkpad T-42, those wrist cramps started coming back.

Now, after using OS X for some time, I found myself longing for the system, as I was now without. To be truthful, the use of the Macbook during August was the turning point. So why wait till November to make the change? I was waiting for the 64-bit release of the MacBook Pro hardware. This way, my Virtual Machines, which I use on a daily basis, would be able to load the 64-bit versions, like Solaris 10 x86 64-bit. OK, maybe Windows Vista or Longhorn 64-bit too, but that will be to keep up my MCSE only.

I’d lay out the chapters that I plan to write here, but I’m gonna completely wing this one. I’ll add my notes to the blog as I go along. I do know that my next entry will have to do with how my home and office setups work, what I use a computer for at work, what I use a computer for at home, and the benfits that I’ll find when using a MacBook Pro as the only computer in my arsenal.

I plan to keep this up on MY MySpace page as a blog as well, so for those of you interested, click the link above, and check out my page.