OMG! I Switched from Mac to Windows!
Windows is … okay
I never thought I would do it. But it is done. I’m working under Windows now. Here are the history and the result.
In 2007, I bought my first laptop computer, a cute little HP PC with Microsoft’s latest and greatest OS called Vista. So half of the problem is obvious right there: Vista was a turd. It was New Coke. It was Google Glass. It was Facebook Metaverse. It was a turd.
On top of that turd, the laptop had some hardware problems for which I had to send it back for service. My experience with the HP support people was terrible.
And so I bought a MacBook Pro and vowed never to use Windows or buy anything from HP again.
I started my current job which involves working remote on my MacBook Pro. I do web application development, so the OS flavor wasn’t particularly important for work. In fact, most of my work was in Ubuntu virtual machines running under VMware, decoupling it even more.
The job got more complex. I started working full stack, running lots of Docker containers and lots of VMs. Time for an upgrade! The 2019 16" MacBook Pro was just out and I could get it with 64 GB of memory and 4 TB of SSD. (I could have had 8 TB but there was no need.)
It was the first MPB that offered greater than 16 GB of memory. I’d been anxiously awaiting it. This was the last x86 Macbook Apple ever released, because the M1 chip was soon ready.
I paid about $5,000 for the MBP which would be too much for a personal computer, but it didn’t bother me to spend it for a professional development machine.
I probably could have gotten my company to pay for it, but I have a policy of owning my laptops so I never need to go through the hassle of returning them to the company. I did that once and that was enough of that.
This “monster” MPB was great! It handled everything I threw at it.
But the new M1 Macs, and soon M2 Macs, came along, and they sounded so sweet! I really really really wanted one. I want one now. However, some of the software I deal with is compiled for x86 Docker containers, and it was just too much of a hassle and a risk to try to run the stuff on the new chips. Even if I could get it to work, having a non-standard environment was bound to cause questions and problems. It was too big a variable to introduce. I was stuck with x86 professionally.
I could and should run the x86 stuff on a separate Windows or Linux box networked to my MPB. But it is so much easier when everything is on one machine.
Or, I should work on a desktop PC. But I prefer to work with a laptop, reclining on my couch with a pillow under my failing back. Besides, we are in the 21st century!
Anyway, MMBP (Monster MacBook Pro) was still doing the job… until recently when it began thermal throttling. I thought I broke my software, performance wise, until I figured out that I was throttled down to 1 Ghz! I opened her up and blew the dust out of the blowers, etc, but the old gal just doesn’t have the oomph anymore. It has charging problems as well.
I’d used Windows 10 in a VM for compatibility testing, and also when I remoted in to some lab computers, and I was impressed. It seemed fine, albeit it was still Windows. Windows 11 got pretty good reviews too. Then I found this little Windows laptop from WalMart for only $300. A Verge writer gave it a good review. I picked one up to see what it could do for me.
I had a diabolical theory. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is supposed to be very good, especially in W11. Maybe I didn’t Ubuntu VMs at all. I would just install Ubuntu in WSL and use it that way.
I did that and it worked great … 99% of the way. But some little stuff was biting me. For example, Ubuntu keeps the server serial number in a file /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/product_serial, but in WSL I need to do a Windows call to get it. I was having some networking issues too. I decided this was exactly where I did NOT want to be, in an environment that can probably work but would always be just a little different. It was probably not worth it.
But VMware Workstation Player is free and it lets me run my exact same VMs, just copying them over from MMBP. The performance was good and the laptop wasn’t overheating. It seemed pretty solid.
However, my development VMs are big: 100GB and 200GB. There wasn’t going to be enough headroom for them on the little laptop’s 512GB disk. Its 16 MB memory was also easily strained. Except for that, it seemed like a workable solution.
So I got an Acer Aspire 5 laptop with 36 GB memory and 2 TB SSD for about $900, and that’s what I’m working on now. It’s very similar to working on MMBP because I’m mostly inside those Ubuntu VMs or a browser.
The Walmart computer went to my partner Misha. Being clever, she immediately popped in a 1 TB micro-SD card, solving the disk space problem. But the memory would still have been an issue for me.
The Acer PC is … okay. The keyboard and touchpad aren’t as nice as a Macbook, but they are … okay. The 15" 1080P screen is … okay. But it is nowhere near the quality of the MMPB retina display. The tinny little speakers absolutely suck. I hate the little stickers on the case next to the touchpad (you know how Intel likes to stick them on), but I can live with them. I guess I could get them off but it seems like it wouldn’t be easy.
I shouldn’t really complain about the hardware, though. I’m sure that if I looked around and was willing to pay an extra $500 or $1000, I could have found a similar machine with better hardware. Dell, maybe? On the other hand, one nice thing about Apple is that you know you are getting superb hardware no matter what you buy. (And you pay that extra $500 or $1000 or $4000.) In fact, one of the things that kept me from pulling the trigger on a Windows PC sooner was that I was intimidated by the shear variety of makes and models available. (In the end, Misha picked out the Acer for me.) Anyway, the Acer hardware is … okay.
What is important is that the Acer is not overheating when running my full workload (although it is spinning up the fans and they are pretty noisy). And it doesn’t have any charging problems.
It is really nice not having to go back and forth between using the Ctrl key and the Command key depending on whether I am in Ubuntu or the Mac host. (It is somewhat configurable but I never found a 100% compatible configuration.)
Windows 11 is … okay. Most of the things that used to annoy me most about Windows are gone. In fact, the Mac and Windows UIs seem to have converged quite a bit. For example, multi-desktop spaces work very similarly. I keep pleasantly discovering that some of the little features and affordances that I thought were unique to Mac are here as well.
The Edge browser is pretty nice, and it gives me access to the GPT-4 AI. Its vertical tab system is almost as good as the Mac Arc browser that I have grown to love. Edge seems to be entirely compatible with Chrome, which is our company’s reference browser, because, of course, it actually is Chrome under the hood.
I needed to reboot the machine only a couple of times setting it up, whereas I recall it always taking at least a half dozen reboots in the past. I have not had to go into the registry at all, thank goodness. The registry is still around, isn’t it?
I may even start using the Microsoft Visual Studio Code editor/IDE instead of Sublime Text/Merge.
In conclusion, for an … okay … experience, I can tepidly recommend the Acer Aspire 5 running Windows 11. It is not superior to the MMBP in any dimension, but it is in all regards … okay.
Come to think of it, the Acer is superior to MMBP in one dimension: It is very good value for price.
I really wish Apple had allowed me to keep working with their equipment, but they fucked me. Oh well. Maybe I’ll trade MMBP in on an M2 Macbook Air. They are supposed to be soooooo sweeet!
— Lannie Rose, May 2023
preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
GPT-4 (bing.com/new) used heavily for research, but not at all for writing.
