“I’ve got a funny story this week. Some of you might recall that I told the story of my purchase of a gleaming new Apple iBook in last week’s column,” James Derk writes for Scripps Howard News Service. “Well, that column was picked up by MacDailyNews, which suggested that every Mac reader send me a note welcoming me to the Apple fold.”
“Nice sentiment, but I wasn’t aware of this welcoming gesture when I was sitting in my computer repair shop and decided to check my e-mail (using a Windows machine, naturally) and received so many e-mails that Outlook Express choked on its own lunch and died a horrible, flaming death,” Derk writes. “So thanks for the nice notes, even if I have to FTP in and manually retrieve them one by one someday.”
Derk writes, “I am enjoying my iBook and am undoing my years of Windows programming. I have found most of my applications, even. One of the first things I did was install a 1-gigabyte memory chip from Crucial.com, which triples the installed memory of the iBook… I also am experimenting with Virtual PC 7, which allows me to run Windows XP or 2000 on the Mac. I just got it installed and patched to the latest version and have successfully installed XP Pro. I do confess it’s pretty odd to see the XP desktop on the lovely Apple hardware. (A second confession: When you compare the two desktops, the Apple desktop is elegant and refined and the Windows XP desktop is pretty clunky looking.) Next step is installation of Microsoft Office, but I have to wonder if I need it given Appleworks, which I have not had time to fully examine. I am guessing it is along the lines of Microsoft Works — which I quickly outgrew — but you never know.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Er, uh, sorry James. Next time, check your email on a real computer, your Apple iBook with Mac OS X Tiger Mail 2. 
In response to Derk’s previous article, we wrote, “Not yet understanding that they are finally free, they stand dazed, blinking in the light of a new world. He still clings to Windows, yet now he bathes in the light of Mac OS X. The initial spark of disdain for Microsoft’s mediocrity is but a day or so away. This moment won’t last long, but Derk has captured it well for posterity.”
Already Derk is proving our prescience by writing things like, “the Apple [Mac] desktop is elegant and refined and the Windows XP desktop is pretty clunky looking.”
Of course, the “we” in the headline means all of us Mac users who emailed Mr. Derk. Thanks as always to all MDN readers!
Related MacDailyNews articles:
iPod Halo Effect strikes tech columnist, gets new Apple iBook after fifteen years of Windows – August 23, 2005
I wonder if he installed Office for Mac or Windows. It sounds like he still needs his XP crutch right now…I doubt that’ll last much longer.
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We should be proud!
It’s quite sad that it wasn’t even a virus in his mail that caused the crash… it was just trying to do it’s job and failed miserably…
Let us have a moment of silence for MicroSad….
hehehehe, I was one of them
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Yes.
Silence is what you will hear before the sudden onslaught of Windows Vestige.
Too bad he had to install vpc on it. I had to run a Windoze only app about a year back and tried vpc. The Windoze app I needed only worked via the internet. So in less than a day or so, the viruses converged on me and screwed up my Windoze HD partiton so badly that the entire hard drive began acting up, including my mac partition also. I ended up wiping the entire hard drive, totally dumped vpc and found another software company that made a mac version of the app I needed.
Hope vpc workes for him. Maybe it’s something stupid I did (or didn’t do?), but I wouldn’t dare run Windoze on my macs ever again.
MW= “there” as in, “don’t go there”
Someone should tell him to skip Office completely and go with NeoOffice/J And get that G*d Awful VP7/XP Pro off his beleaguered iBook! He’s just opened himself to all the viruses he just left M$ to get away from! What a horrible, terrible waste.
AppleWorks needs to be revamped.
“AppleWorks needs to be revamped.”
Apple’s working on it now. It’s called iWork.
I hope that when he says next step is to install Office that he is installing Office X on the mac and not his old Office copy on his Virtual PC partition.
I have absolutely no frigging respect for idiots who buy a Mac and then install M$ products on it when perfectly fine native alternatives exist.
JEUZ FSKING H CHIRSCO!!!
James D writes his ‘O’s funny.
“I have absolutely no frigging respect for idiots who buy a Mac and then install M$ products on it when perfectly fine native alternatives exist”
Hate to keep repeating myself over the years, but there are many industry specific Windows apps that cannot be avoided if you use your computer for a living. And I have used VPC successfully to run those.
And when you bring a Mac laptop with VPC into your work, you have the perfect opportunity to evangelize for Mac.
But with the degree of hostility that you showed in writing your commment, I think you would not be able to accomplish that, so please don’t help us Macevangelists out. We don’t want your help, Please!
Have a nice day, if you can.
Office X is a really nice app, and far more ‘native’ that OpenOffice or NeoOffice manage to be – and at a teacher/student rate not that much of a rip-off.
I’ve got it installed along with iWork (and NeoOffice) – I’d use iWork for anything presentation oriented (a lot of people have compared Pages to Windows and are missing the point – it’s an ideal companion to the Keynote audience). I use Office for other things (Excel connected to D/B via ODBC)
So OE Crocked on some email? Was he on Dial-UP? ..LOL
Give me a break. Ive seen OE handle 5000 + emails in an inbox with 100’s of folders with 1000’s more emails in them without a hitch…I think this guys system was already collapsed by all of the gay porn he looks at.