Is it fair to impose your technological faith on others?
A dying Windows box presents Adam Turner the opportunity to convert his mother-in-law to Mac, but should he inflict his beliefs on the Microsoft faithful?
My mother-in-law, Julie, runs an old XP machine which is on its last legs. It's already on its second power supply and its second motherboard, but the recent heat wave has brought it to its knees again.
My father-in-law John is an avid Mac user and, over the dinner table, John and I regularly conspire to move Julie across to a Mac "for her own good".
I know our plans for a technological intervention are more due to our prejudice against Windows than Julie's need for change, plus I know John is always looking for an excuse to buy an iMac or one of the sexy new MacBook Pros. I'm happy to go along for the ride because I love to play with shiny new toys, even if they belong to someone else.
If Julie was your stereotypical Nana who only used a computer for email and the odd spot of websurfing, John and I would have moved her across to Mac a long time ago.
The problem is that Julie is rather tech-savvy, having taught herself how to use a PC so she can run advanced software for her sewing and embroidery machines, such as Buzz Tools and PE Design.
You might laugh, but computing and the internet have revolutionised many segments of the craft sector. Forget pedal-powered Singers, today's modern sewing and embroidery machines are really computers in disguise, complete with flash card readers for loading complicated patterns designed on your computer or downloaded from the web.
Of course with functionality comes complexity and Julie has been forced to come to terms with the issues that plague all computer users such as proprietary software, upgrades, backwards compatibility, multiple formats, compression, file corruption, digital rights management, spam, malware, compatibility issues and the importance of backups.
The problem is that most of the craft hardware and software Julie relies on is Windows-only. Many of her friends have Vista horror stories, with pathetic customer support from some of the big software vendors, which is why she's stuck with XP.
She has no love for Windows, but she's found XP Pro is reliable and meets her needs in a way Mac can't. She's not totally averse to change though, I moved her across to Firefox a few months ago and now we're talking about migrating from Outlook to Thunderbird.
If Julie is reliant on Windows, then moving her to Mac means relying on either BootCamp or virtualisation such as Parallels or Virtual Box. BootCamp would seem like a handy option, but she really needs to use her email and the craft software at the same time - which means Windows. If she's that reliant on Windows, why would she ever bother booting into Leopard?
Virtualisation could be the answer, allowing Julie to run the Windows-only software on top of Leopard. John and I are going to run a trial to see if it will work, particularly the proprietary USB card readers.
Still, it seems like a lot of mucking around when we have to admit that XP Pro meets Julie's needs. Meanwhile swapping out the power supply seems to have revived Julie's old XP machine for now, so John and I might need to put our prejudices to one side and leave her be.
Like it or not, sometimes Windows is the right tool for the job.
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