A Month Using a PC Almost Exclusively

Spoiler alert: I'm typing this post on my Macbook Air at home.

But that doesn't mean I hated my PC experience. 

After using a Mac almost exclusively for most of my career (even for most of college), I went back to using a PC for the last month. I realize a lot of hard core Mac users may quit reading this post right now - and that's okay. But feel free to hear me out. 

I didn't hate using a PC

At least the one I had. The Lenovo I used had a touch screen, which I ended up finding surprisingly useful. I got so used to using it that I found myself trying to swipe the monitors of the workstation at my desk. I haven't seen a Macbook do that, unless you use an iPad as your overall workstation, something I know

ToDoist: A Better Experience In Windows

The biggest advantage the PC had over my Mac? Being able to use the ToDoist inside of Outlook. For whatever reason, the ToDoist Outlook plugin is only available to PC users, which is a huge bummer for Mac users of ToDoist but a huge win for the PC. 

Inside of Outlook, you can have a "Save to ToDoist" clipper in your inbox. That way, you can automatically add any emails as a future to-do. So, as an example, if I send a note to someone requesting information or a to-do item, I can clip that sent message as a task and set a reminder to follow up at a later date. I love that the to-do item hyperlinks to the exact email and will open it up automatically instead of having to hunt down the email I'm supposed to follow up on. That feature alone has helped me keep track of little things I may have normally let fall through the cracks. 

 

While this is a device-specific thing and not an operating system comparison, my Lenovo was considerably lighter than my Mac. Sure, I had a huge Macbook compared to my small Lenovo. However, since the biggest file I have to create is the occasional PowerPoint deck, I don't necessarily need all of that computing power. Moving from meeting-to-meeting on different floors at North Highland give the PC a leg up with its portability. 

So what will I stick with moving forward?

This blog post was typed using my 11" Macbook Air. However, for work purposes, I'll be sticking with the PC most of the time. When your entire company uses Microsoft-enabled products, it makes things remarkably easier if you're on the same system. Things like accessing the company server, using our IM system and flowing between different Microsoft tools (which aren't terrible except for PowerPoint) have been considerably easier on a PC. 

While I still prefer a Mac operating system at the end of the day, the PC is growing on me. Outlook is one of the better email apps out there for iOS. There are other great Microsoft apps growing in mobile. Throw in Microsoft's newer product announcements, I'm becoming more bullish on Microsoft. Until then, I still prefer the Mac for personal use.

 

What about you? Mac or PC?

 

Drew HawkinsComment