Thank you so much to your informative article, "Buy a Mac, Get a PC" in the September 2008 edition of PCW. As a software developer, developing cross-platform solutions, I have for many years developed on Windows and tested on Macintosh. Over the years I have invested a considerable sum of money in software for Windows, thus prohibiting a complete change to  the Macintosh. My office has always been Windows-based with a lone Mac laptop for testing. The laptop actually has a Windows installation using Parallels, although this is rarely used.

My main development PC was getting a bit long in the tooth and an upgrade was required (as the boss, I think I'm entitled to a new PC every now and then). A few months ago following a review of some powerful PCs in your magazine, I purchased a blazingly fast quad-core PC with Windows Vista 64-bit. For a few weeks I was delighted with my new purchase, as I gleefully installed lots of software and set all the preferences to make it work the way I wanted.

Then it all started going wrong! The screensaver stopped working, it just never came on any more. Then the computer refused to hibernate. Then it began to restart randomly at any time of day. On a couple of occasions my Outlook file became corrupt and the database I was
developing was damaged; luckily I had backups. On top of all that, I didn't find anything new in Vista that offered any great advance over XP; in fact I found quite a lot of annoying differences - many of which could only be changed with a registry hack. The supplier,
Chillblast, were very helpful and gave me lost of tests to run, but in vain, the computer just kept going wrong. In the end they agreed to take it back and offered a refund.

Then I saw your article about Apple Macs. Until then I had never considered using a Mac as my main development machine, but the time was ripe for change...  and so off I trotted to the Apple store in Brent Cross. The staff were extremely helpful and, although knowledgeable about everything 'consumer', there were definite gaps in their knowledge when I started asking my more technically complex questions. Nevertheless a bit of research on the internet found the answers to all the questions that Apple staff couldn't answer, specifically how to transfer a complex Outlook file with hundreds of folders and hundreds of thousands of e-mails to Mac Mail & iCal. One solution, 02M,  didn't quite work for  my complex outlook PST file
(but should work for most situation), but a conversion via Mozilla Thunderbird did what I needed.

I thought I'd take a look at the free 'Virtualbox' Windows virtualisation tool from Sun that you mentioned and was impressed by how closely it matches the features offered by commercial alternatives such as Parallels and VMWare. It was unnecessary to install much of my Windows software because a lot is already supplied as part of the Mac operating system, so my virtual copy of Windows XP sits hardly used. I also installed a virtual Vista PC, which I have not yet needed to touch at all. Some of the new features in Mac OS X Leopard make Windows Vista seem like it is still playing catch up and will be for some time. Furthermore, my desk looks much tidier because I no longer need speakers (built into the iMac), a WebCam (built into the iMac) or even a network cable (built-in wireless).

There are a few minor niggles that I haven't yet got used to / found a solution to, but by and large, I'm delighted that your article convinced me to make the change at the time that it did. Not only can I get on with my work without worrying if my machine is going to
restart at any moment, but my new 24in 3.06GHz iMac looks beautiful on my desk and is the envy of all my staff and colleagues. Apple even had a £60 printer rebate offer at the time of my purchase, so I got a new wireless printer for free.

Hopefully you'll write more articles about the Mac now, so I won't have to question my subscription to a PC biased PCW :-)

Chaim Bacon