Complexity. Again.
Have you ever tried to switch your main computer from one operating system to another? I’ve done it, when I went from Windows to MacOS in fall 2014.
It was a mess, but not as bad as expected. Sure, I had to deal with a strange keyboard with not enough keys, I had the usual troubles with Ctrl/Command, Alt/Option and the fact that the Mac has a Ctrl key as well. After some time I got sufficiently proficient and I didn’t have problems on Windows or Linux either.
All my main software is available on Windows 10 and MacOS. A switch back to Windows might be relatively painless as well. Or not?
Macs are extremely expensive. It would be nice to have an option to buy for instance a Dell XPS 15 or a Gigabyte Aero 15-Y9. Sure, they are almost as expensive as Macbooks, but you get faster hardware and/or better specs for your money.
The Gigabyte Aero 15-Y9 gets you 64 GB of memory, the fastest Intel hexa-core processor, up to four TB of SSD, plus the Nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q, the fastest notebook graphics processor money can buy, USB-A, USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, there’s even an SD card reader. You simply can’t buy that from Apple.
But … do we really need 64 GB?
Well, actually I could make use of it 😃
And what if I don’t like it? What if I don’t like Windows? What if I start missing the Mac?
In short words: I’ve bought a Windows laptop. It’s an experiment. I want to find out if I can work and live with Windows and still like it.
It’s not a top-of-the-line laptop costing 4000+. It’s still expensive though. I’ve bought a last year’s ASUS ZenBook 15. Quad-core i7, 16 GB of memory and 512 GB SSD. Slightly slower processor than my current Mac, no Retina display, but otherwise quite comparable. I’ll use it for a while, make my experiments and then sell it on with a loss. Still, it will be worth it.
I’ll keep you updated on my experiences.