Over the next 3 months, I carried both laptops, the iBook and the Inspiron. As after the first month, I found myself leaving the Inspiron in the bag for days. I still had this fear of leaving at home. I might need it for something. As time went on, I found I didn't. It took 3 months, but I had switched. Unintentionally, I had switched. Looking back I see why. The machine was a delight to use. The Operating System has it quirks, it's not perfect, but for the first time in a long time, I was having fun on my computer again, yet I was still writing Windows software, but I was adding some Mac OS development to the list.

I lived very happily on the iBook for about 8 months. The biggest constraints being the screen, at 1024x768, it was a little cramped. Not as badly as Windows with all of it's toolbars and menus in every window, but still cramped. The other was disk space. 20gig wasn't cutting it anymore.

So it was that 8 months after buying the iBook, I was replacing it, much to my wifes delight, because she was getting the iBook. I replaced it with a then top of the line tiBook / 800. At nearly $3000, it was expensive, but now 3 months into it's life, I'm going to again state that the perception of it's cost is inaccurate, you cannot appreciate the package until you spend some time with it.

For now, I'm happy, but I have some issues with the Operating System, issues that I'll discuss in the next section. Suffice it to say that I'm more pleased with the hardware than I have been with any x86 purchase I've ever made, and of those, I've made a few.

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