It’s geek night here. Actually it’s been geek week.

First it was the decision-making process for my cell phone upgrade. Do I go with a Blackberry, Treo, Smartphone, or stay with the more traditional Razr? Given that I’m married to Cingular for another year until the kids’ contracts run out, changing services wasn’t really an option, but I was less than thrilled with their phone selection. Ultimately I went with the Razr, figuring that I didn’t need to be enslaved to my email and computer any more than I already was. It’s nice, but the video is really wimpy if I want to send it in MMS messages on up to YouTube. Oh well, on to the next decision….

I’m trying to figure out what to do about my office computer, which is very long in the tooth (c. 2001) and mostly just a slug. The truth is, when a new computer comes into my life that’s faster, cooler and sleeker, I begin to hate the old computer…and hate it and hate it. I’m a speed whore. I realized that I am spending more time at my home desk than my office desk because that’s where the horsepower is, which doesn’t really work very well for me and my clients. I tried to resurrect my Dell laptop as a processor/hard drive hooked to an external monitor but it didn’t work…I couldn’t trick the Dell into believing that I just wanted the monitor on and not the dead laptop screen. Besides, the Dell hard drive is 30GB which is just not beefy enough anymore. I’m a space whore, too.

The final undoing of the office computer was when I had to uninstall Google Desktop because it just slugged the machine to almost a halt (2006 technology just isn’t meant for 2001 processors). I guess I’m a search whore on top of everything else.

So do I get a new computer or do I just haul the laptop between home and office? It’s a pretty hefty laptop — the 17″ screen makes it less than immediately portable. Or does it? I have a flat screen monitor in the office so I could have my 2-screen setup at home and at work, and it’s no big deal to have an extra mouse and power supply in the office. An external hard drive would take care of keeping the office file clutter in one place and apart from the personal file clutter I keep on my home external hard drive — I fill up the 100GB internal hard drive on the Toshiba regularly because I shoot my pictures in such high resolution format, so I store them all on an external drive. Besides, it’s an automatic backup to the DVDs I burn with the RAW files on them.

My decision was made when I found a 200GB Maxtor external USB drive at Staples for $98.00. To have the same machine at home and work with external backups for each is just too delicious for the low, low price of $98.00. Oh and I did buy a neoprene laptop sleeve for $49 for transport, since I walk to and from the office.

So what does this have to do with Google v. Microsoft?

I was reading Scoble’s blog post tonight about bloggers having a double standard when it comes to Google and Microsoft and it got me to thinking about whether he was right or not.

Until last year, I was a devout Microsoft junkie. I was an Office 2003 beta tester and wanted to test Office Live, but never received an invitation from Microsoft despite sending them requests many times. In that same time frame (October 2005 or so), I decided to give GMail a whirl, and I’ve never turned back, even after the nasty business in July with my account lockdown. (I have a fail-safe in place for that now, so it should no longer pose a problem…)

I use Google Desktop, Google Calendar (but not as my main calendar…30Boxes still works really well for me) and GMail. Google Desktop incorporates kickass search for my local files, and GMail does the same thing with my email. No more guessing about where that email string from 2003 is — it’s all indexed on my hard drive or my mailbox, with no synching or other stupid software installations that chew into my available memory.

Robert Scoble lists some reasons for bloggers’ loyalty to Google and bias against Microsoft, but none of them really apply to me except possibly the web-centric Google approach. MY reasons for preferring Google over Microsoft have to do with the leanness of the applications, the speed with which they operate, the utility of what they do, and efficiency with which they do it.

Because GMail is such a lean client, I can read my email from my run-of-the-mill Razr when I’m not near my computer if I want. Yahoo! Mail requires installation of a Java client to the phone. Microsoft has that silly MSN Mobile which was AWFUL. They may have something better in mind with Windows Live, but it doesn’t do me any good right now. I aggregate all but two of my email addresses into GMail, and am able to read and respond just about instantly. One of the non-aggregated addresses is a corporate behind-the-firewall address; the other is my backup address known only to me where GMail forwards everything I send or receive so that I always have online access if I’m locked out again for some weird reason.

My reasons are web-centric because the web has become what Microsoft envisioned YEARS ago — an extension of my desktop. Unfortunately, Microsoft faltered when it approached that extension as a part of the operating system and then had the lawsuits and PR that came with trying to make the Internet a Microsoft-driven environment instead of using open-source established foundations for their development.

However, still having vestiges of the Microsoft early-adopter junkie in me, I went ahead and downloaded Windows Live Writer. I was completely bummed when it insisted on installing .NET apps and an Internet Explorer-only toolbar! For this Firefox user, it’s pretty much a non-starter. I’d rather use Flock to blog. (I have tried Writely but am unimpressed with it)

This is what Microsoft doesn’t seem to get but Google does: Make your apps work across all platforms. Let me stretch across the divide from home to office EASILY and SEAMLESSLY using open source apps and code that isn’t all bloated with extra stuff. Let me choose my extra stuff with plug-ins if I want.

Like I said, I’m a speed whore, a space whore and a search whore. For the moment, Google is pimping for me, for free. If Microsoft comes up with free stuff that’s useful, doesn’t require a bunch of downloaded crap to be added to my computer and allows me to cross platforms where I wish (I really want a Mac someday in the future…), then I’ll be their whore too.

I may be cheap, but I’m not easy.

Technorati Tags: Google, Microsoft, mobile Internet, cross-platform compatibility