Why I love my Mac.

I'm not trying to write an advertisement for Apple or anything, but reading all the horror stories of lost data, viruses, and spyware from my fellow masters students' blogs has made me happy that my PC days are behind me. I don't really have any exciting stories. I did lose all of my pictures from a high school trip to Europe when a virus killed my Dad's PC my senior year. I also had my IBM laptop hijacked by the IT department at William and Mary for about eight days when I accidentally clicked a link I shouldn't have in an email. As soon as I clicked, the entire network kicked me off and would not let me log on to anything. Apparently I put the whole campus at risk! Oops! I've never seen such an immediate (and freakishly thorough) response to a technology breach since.  With a boyfriend eight hours away and my main means of communicating with him (AOL Instant Messenger) gone, not to mention having to go to the library to complete all of my assignments, it was a long week. I definitely learned my lesson. Not long after that I bought my first Macbook, and I haven't looked back. Not that they are perfect, but no one really writes viruses for them. It's a definite perk. My husband, however, has a great data horror story, and it involves a Mac so I can feel like I'm being fair. He was the first one of us to get a Macbook, and he got very good at using the programs and knowing the laptop inside and out. After all, they are (sometimes insultingly) user friendly. When he was in college, he impressed all his buddies with his "mad Mac skills" and would often help them with their own computers if he thought he could. One day he was helping a friend upgrade his Apple operating system, and I guess at this point he got a little overconfident. When he saw a button asking to reformat, he thought it was the way to upload the OS. He clicked yes expecting the computer to restart and reboot with Leopard now functional. Instead, he accidentally wiped his buddy's hard drive completely. It's bad enough to lose your own data; imagine losing your friends! The poor friend was absolutely stunned, and my husband jokes about being "chased with a shotgun." It didn't actually happen, but I'm sure Mac Pal really wanted too. Luckily though, my husband, being a very good person and feeling extremely guilty, managed to find a solution. He discovered that there was a way to get the data back. A different (extremely tech savvy) friend was able to re-cover everything. Not an easy feat, but my husband sure breathed easier and managed to stay buck shot free. :)