During an end of year review in 2018 it was my role during this meeting with the VP from USA and a number of other attendees from USA and UK to present an overview of Physical and cyber security within the UK and our French sites.
I was at our site in Cambridgeshire for a couple of nights to attend this meeting. This company was solely using windows machines. While at work I had to tolerate using windows OS at home since 2005 I had been firmly switched over to using macs.
I had a few sniggers when I put my macbook pro on the desk for my presentations, as they didn’t think I could run a powerpoint presentation on it……..
My mac was not a fashion accessory as they are often found with users. I used my mac to run my business when I was self employed. (I am back at being self employed again now…)
I moved to Indonesia with a brand new IBM laptop which at the time was top spec with a great (or at I thought at the time) OS of windows 98. I had a fax, printer, Digital Camera, a modem / mobile phone (GSM)which allowed great speeds of up to 256 kb/s
After 3 years this laptop was becoming painful to use crashing daily, the outlook database had become over 2 GB and needed constantly rebuilding which cost me about 4 hours of work each week which I could not afford to do.
I went out shopping for a new laptop, my needs were pretty basic, office products, internet, digital camera GSM modem.
I always had liked the look of sony vaios, the shopping experience in Indonesia is always a long process. I settled on a top of the range Sony Vaio with the new operating system of “Windows Vista” which had been out for around 6 months.
This laptop was an essential part of my business.
I got back to my home/office in West Bali and unwrapped my new Sony Vaio and went through the laborious process of installing all the software and hardware I needed.
Problem 1: No available driver to link my camera
Problem 2: No available driver to link my printer/fax/photocopier
Problem 3: Outlook didn’t allow a database over 2.2GB
Without being able to connect my digital camera I couldn’t sell my products
Without a printer I couldn’t let staff have their weekly job printouts
Without access to all my customer emails my business could not operate
Things were looking grim, did I just buy an expensive paperweight?????
That evening I was discussing this with an artist friend who had been a staunch mac user, he explained to me macs don’t ever need device drivers you just plug the device in and it works.
I was desperate to get my business running smoothly URGENTLY.
There is a mac shop in Ubud which I went to the next day and purchased my first ever macbook pro (year 2008), I also hooked it up to a 27 inch LED display.
I got back to my home/office and went through the same process
Everything worked well.
Outlook was much improved on a mac no database restriction size, over the next month or so life was a real luxury, I dint have to rebuild my outlook database every week. I just sat at my desk and used my mac.
I have never looked back since.
I have never looked back since.
