I’m switching. I’m walking away from WIndows and bought a Mac. Since my laptop died and I’ve been using a linux box that I had around the house, I’ve seen even more clearly that what I really use a computer for is to manipulate data. In my case the data is papers and articles that I’ve written, email that I’ve sent and schedules that I’m managing. Windows (as I’ve been using it) locks me into proprietary formats for my data – and if I don’t have the exact version of software I used, I can’t get to my data anymore.

As a result of my hardware crash last week I’ve moved all my data to standard formats. Once I did that, I no longer have any reason to stick with Windows and all the related security problems. I’m spending way too much time taking care of my box and the boxes of my friends and family. I just want to write.

I bought an Apple Mac years ago when I found the same thing happening in grad school. The computers I used back then kept getting in my way. The Mac just let me work. So… here I come again.

(Here’s an article about the relative merits of operating systems. Think about it. If you could get to your data from any system, which system would you choose to use?)

DenverPost.com – BUSINESS: “Results show the Internet is a very rough place.

Over the course of a week, the machines were scanned a total of 46,255 times by computers around the world that crawl the Web looking for vulnerabilities in operating systems.

Once the vulnerabilities were identified, the remote computers launched 4,892 direct attacks with a staggering variety of worms, Trojan Horses, viruses, spyware and other forms of malware.”