Swimming with Windows

I'm delving back into the world of Windows after a hiatus. This blog was started almost 9 years ago now with the intention of experiencing Windows instead of Mac for at least 1 year. It didn't pan out that way, and while I've jumped back and forth a few times between the two, I've always ended up back on a Mac.

This time, I'm trying something a little different. I'm keeping my MacBook Pro and getting a high end Windows machine to do work on.

The Mac will primarily focus on my personal stuff like novel writing and photography while the Windows Machine will be for my professional side of things, including my ad writing and tech roles that I do from home as well as beginning to stream on Twitch.

I want to see what happens to my preferences as I'm more able to bounce back and forth between the two. Will I still gravitate toward the Mac for all my stuff, or will I move more to Windows for everything?

One of the things I have always been impressed with from an Apple standpoint is the integration of their ecosystem. I love how easy it is to move from my phone to my laptop or my laptop to my iPad and so forth. Everything is available everywhere and easy to get to.

Android and Windows has some integration happening, but Android's messaging has been abysmal since inception, and Google has only made it worse and more confusing (and for some reason avoids creating something privacy focused).

I'm also a pretty big fan of Apple's views on privacy. I feel better with my data in Apple's hands than in the hands of Google or Facebook, but since I use Facebook, they have my info anyway. At least Apple makes it more difficult for them to figure me out.

Microsoft is decent with privacy as well, but not as much.

But honestly, this is less about that than it is about user experience, especially with Windows 11 making a debut. I'm very excited to give it a go. I was one of the few people in the world who really thought Windows 8 was a new direction for computing. I was sad that it was so panned and still feel it was rejected because it was such a departure from what people knew, even it was well built, and looked good.

Most of the flaws with Windows 8 were obliterated with Windows 8.1, but then everything was walked back with Windows 10.

Windows 11 looks like another leap forward, but trying to do so a little more gently than Windows 8 did. I won't have anything more to say about that until I have it sitting in front of me and I'm putting it through its paces.

Anyway, it's time to expect more updates from me (for the 1 or 2 of you that might be following this). Guess we'll see how it goes!

For those interested, the new system is a Razer 15 Advanced with an 11th gen Intel i7, 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and the RTX 3080 with 8GB VRAM. The display is the 360mhz Full HD.

Let's see how well this flies...

It should arrive next week.

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