Scot Finnie, an editor at Computer World, has spent hundreds of hours with Windows Vista and wondered if it was the best operating system for consumers. He decided to give OS X a try and decided on a three month Mac trial. Well, his trial period is up and he has made The Switch (tm). Here is a quote from his third article covering his trial with a Mac:

Bye-bye Windows! My three-month Macintosh trial has ended, but my permanent gig with the Mac is just getting started. Apple's MacBook Pro and Mac OS X are now my computer and operating system of choice.

If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either. The hardest part is paying for it -- everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny.

I recently made the switch as well. I purchased a MacBook before CES because I needed a laptop and the MacBook had all the features I wanted at a price I was willing to pay. I made the decision knowing that if I didn't like OS X, I could just use Windows via Boot Camp. I set Windows up and had all my important applications and information, allowing me to do my important work without worrying about what I would be able to do with OS X.

After CES, I started playing around with OS X and really came to like it. I decided to look around to see if I could find OS X applications equivalent to what I was accustomed to on my PC and found several open source applications that do exactly what I need to do. I have now come to prefer the OS X applications over the Windows equivalents, just as I have come to prefer OS X over Windows. However, I am no Apple fanboy, I do acknowledge that OS X, just like Windows has it's own pros and cons and while I do like many of the features and characteristics of OS X, there are certain things that Windows does better (not counting Direct X support for games, which is a big issue for gamers, but I don't play games).

I wholeheartedly agree with what Scot says about giving the Mac three months, but I don't agree that everyone will prefer OS X over Windows after three months. Many people could spend three years with OS X and it still wouldn't be right for them. If more people had the ability to give OS X a chance (heck, more people should give the various Linux distributions a chance), we may see a more level playing field when it comes to the various operating systems. OS X is a great OS, but very few people use it. Linux Distributions such as Linspire and Ubuntu are also making Linux much easier to use for the average user, but getting people to try something other than Windows is tricky.

I haven't had much Linux experience (aside from using the terminal to manage a couple servers) and will be trying out Ubuntu shortly. I haven't had a chance to try Vista yet as I had other priorities during Vista's beta phase, but I am really looking forward to playing with that as well. I wish more people had the desire (and the resources) to check out the competition, but unfortunately not everyone is in a position to do so. I'm glad I am and I wish I would have taken a look around sooner.