So today marks the 25th birthday of the personal computer—yes yes, Happy Birthday to you too, Ray—call me when you’re 40, okay?

[Ahem] So as I was saying… Looking at the above photo of the first IBM PC makes me lament the lack of innovation in the basic form factor of the PC over the years… Sure, there have been many updates to the basic set-up of monitor, CPU and keyboard—you can check out PC World’s 25 Greatest PCs of all Time for proof of that. But it seems to me that there’s a lot more innovation going on these days in the design of mobile phones… Maybe because they haven’t quite been standardized yet?

At any rate, I won’t argue for a second that personal computers haven’t changed the world, but I will point out that the ones I used have definitely risen in status beyond glorified calculators and word processors thanks to a certain series of tubes…

The graphic above is linked to a much more in-depth comparison of the two; I’m writing today to report my own real-world observations after four weeks of immersion in Windows XP (and a decade of using Macs). Here’s what I’ve found:

1. Looking into a Mac display is undeniably a beautiful thing. Even with ClearType enabled in Windows XP, Mac OS X does a better job at making dots on a screen look like ink on paper.
2. Web surfing on Windows is faster. A lot faster. I don’t currently have the means to measure this, but I would say from visiting the same pages on Mac and Windows that Windows is at least twice as fast at loading up a page in any browser than a Mac.
3. There’s a ton of fantastic software available for both platforms, some commercial, a lot of it free. The best free apps, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, are available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
4. Stupid people can break a Mac just as easily as a Windows computer. I have personally witnessed someone on a Mac surrender their browser to a screenful of pop-up ads, even with the pop-up blocker turned on! As for me on Windows, so far so good—four weeks in and no malware on my Lenovo laptop… Yet.
5. Apple Computer does make nice-looking machines, but as I’ve written before on the subject I can’t exactly call them reliable.
6. (The tipping point for me) Windows computers and accessories are cheaper, as in orders of magnitude cheaper. Case in point: Apple’s WiFi Base Station currently sells for $249 CAD. By comparison there’s a LinkSys wireless router on sale right now at CompuSmart for forty bucks!
7. The whole Mac vs. PC argument is ultimately for naught, as the web has all but replaced the desktop operating system, especially with this web 2.0 stuff. But if you really want to be a computer zealot you should know that all the cool kids are using Linux—I would be too if only Ubuntu would recognize my damn wireless card!

Anyway, desktop computers are sooo late twentieth-century… Smartphones are where it’s really at!

No really… This time I mean it!

I had written previously about Outlook being the gold standard for connectivity to all manner of smartphones; that’s still true, but I have to confess that Outlook’s shiny bells and whistles momentarily blinded me to the danger of its proprietary database format for storing my precious messages. And no sooner did I publish my gushing review when Outlook gave me a warning that my ten-year archive of saved email was in danger of being corrupted!

As the saying goes, fool me once…

Thunderbird has the distinct advantage of being the only email client available for Linux, Mac and Windows. If that’s not good enough for you, here are some specific reasons why it’s better than what you’re using right now:

1. If you’re using Gmail, don’t be so smug… Big Brother is watching you!
2. If you’re using Hotmail, Yahoo! or some other web-based client, whatcha gonna do when you’re mailbox is full, or when the powers that be decide to start charging you for reading your own messages?
3. If you’re using Outlook Express for Windows or Mac, you’re just asking for trouble…
4. If you’re using Eudora, be warned that it severs the attachments from your messages and puts them in a separate directory—changing your machine or even the name of your hard drive might forever break the link between the two!
5. If you’re using Apple Mail, you’ll be disappointed that you won’t be able to search your messages from the other overpriced Macs on your network… Or easily migrate to Thunderbird when the other cool kids do it!
6. If you’re using Outlook proper, you’d better have an Exchange Server along with an IT department to clean up the mess you’re gonna make. Oh, and prepare to defend yourself against the bulk of the internet’s malicious email attacks…
7. And if you’re using Evolution, KMail or some other Linux email client you’d best get your ass out to the sauna and check on that fondue, ya damned hippie!

Okay, I’ll admit that I know little or nothing about those last two, but all my other reasons for switching to Thunderbird are valid. I really do have an archive of saved email that reaches back into the last millennium, so I speak from experience when I say this:

For once and future emails, Thunderbird is king!

What you’re looking at is a utility from Fido that syncs data from my trusty hiptop to my new PC notebook. For the first time since switching to the walled garden of the hiptop OS I now have a current and complete local copy of my address book on a computer, and it’s all thanks to Microsoft Outlook, the killer app for Windows.

In and of itself Outlook packs a powerful punch, similar to Entourage for Mac but much more secure. Instead of lumping all your critical info into a monolithic database it allows you to split it up into smaller, more manageable archives.

But here’s the knockout blow: Because Outlook is the gold standard PIM for Windows, every conceivable smart phone on the market will sync to it—BlackBerries, hiptops, Treos, this thing… With Outlook, the universe of wireless devices is your to command.

And to a mobile junkie like yours truly, that’s great news!

A funny thing happened on my way to Linux…

When I opened up my new Lenovo laptop I was surprised to find that there was no backup software included. It’s apparently a common practice with these budget machines to put that stuff on a hidden hard drive partition instead of on optical media. But that wouldn’t do for me, as I was all set to wipe the drive clean and start anew with Ubuntu. I thought it prudent though, to hold off until I had the necessary recovery software in hand, so while waiting for my backup discs from Lenovo I made do with Windows.

And it almost pains me to say this, but honestly… It’s not that bad.

I’ll be reporting more on this in the days and weeks to come, but so far I can sum things up by saying that the general clunkiness of Windows is offset by the simple fact that more apps work better with it. For example, I can now say with some certainty that web surfing with Windows is significantly faster, even when compared to a faster, more powerful Mac. I’d never have believed it, but the truth is right there in front of me every time I open a new page!

In regards to viruses, spyware and the like I’ve installed some free tools that run in the background—that, combined with some good common sense, like not clicking on an attachment in an email promising free Viagra from a Nigerian banker, seems to be working for me so far.

Now to be perfectly clear here I am not switching entirely to Windows; I still have my desktop Mac for media editing and viewing, and if Ubuntu was able recognize my new laptop’s built-in Wi-Fi card I would most certainly be running Linux instead.

Thankfully, most of the good open source software is also available for Windows, making it a little easier for me to resist the siren call of cracked commercial apps. I think the lesson here is that so long as you’ve got a good web browser and office suite your desktop OS really doesn’t ultimately matter all that much.

So with that in mind let’s consider this little foray into Windows as an opportunity to go slumming…