Today was the day that DG got to take all of her money gifts and make a decision: Mac or PC? It was a big decision, because if she could find a reasonably-priced PC, she might have enough money left over for the other much-coveted item — the iPod touch. We’d been going back and forth between which way to go — the Macs are unquestionably cool, but there are some PCs out there that have lots of the same features (built-in camera, nice display, thin form factor, etc) for less money. HP and Compaq were not options — I will never, ever wrestle with one of those PCs again, especially with all the proprietary setups they have. So we were looking at Toshiba, Acer, Gateway and the lower end Sony Vaio as options — all good machines.

I asked DG to keep an open mind and try both before making a decision, she agreed, and off to Fry’s we went, just to see and try, not buy.

First she tried the Macbook in its basic configuration, which was all she could afford. She loved the iSight, the way the keyboard felt, the way apps just popped up when she finally figured out she actually had to click rather than tapping the touchpad like she does now. Then we moved on.

Every PC in the place was running Vista. Several were password-protected, which meant getting a salesman rather than being able to try them on our own. However, we found a Toshiba Satellite A210 for a pretty decent price. A test drive was in order. DG hit the start button and then clicked “pictures”. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. 15 seconds or so later, a dialogue box popped up with sample pictures.

I couldn’t believe it. Seriously, that load was longer than anything I have on my 2 1/2 year old Toshiba Satellite M65! I figured something was just weird about the configuration, so I suggested we move on to something else, which we did. We played with the Samsung Ultra-Mobile PC just for the heck of it, and had an identical experience. The same with the Gateway and the Acer. The Sony Vaio was slightly better, but not much. Certainly not enough to redeem Vista.

At that point, it was almost comical. This Mac commercial began flashing across both of our minds.

However, I really did want to give the PCs a fair shake, so I suggested we go to Staples and try the Dells. Same result.

I am still having trouble believing that Vista was really that much of a dog. I still don’t. What I think is happening is that these machines are not linked up to the Internet, and they’re trying to phone the mothership for some reason before loading up the apps. Maybe because it’s a demo and unregistered, maybe Vista is just set up to run through some kind of verification process before loading an app? Whatever the reason, it was a horrible sales experience. My sincere sympathy goes to any poor sales person who has to sell these dogs, particularly when they get a customer that is deciding between a Mac and a PC, rather than two PCs.

DG’s comment: “PCs aren’t looking real good to me right now.” I wholeheartedly agreed, so we took ourselves to the Apple store where she bought her new MacBook. Vista made the sale, pure and simple. The Mac is lovely and I think she’ll love it as much as Sticks does, but it does mean waiting for the iPod touch until her birthday, or until she can make enough money from other enterprises to buy one.

Apple should be shaking Microsoft’s hand instead of laughing at them — Vista is selling more Macs than they are!

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