I love my Tablet PC.

I hate my Tablet PC.

I’m about five seconds from buying a Powerbook.

First, some background.

Rewind to early 2002, when I started a contract job doing Windows development. After working in the server room for a few days (no empty desks in the office), I realized I’d need a laptop so I could work in the relative comfort of the conference room. I had seen and drooled over Apple’s Titanium Powerbooks for awhile. I’d also heard of this little application called Virtual PC, which would let you run Windows applications on a Mac. Time for an experiment. I bought a lovely TiBook from a nice fellow on eBay, grabbed a copy of Virtual PC, and installed a few small apps: Windows 2000 Advanced Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio. I proceeded to work on a large web project in Virtual PC on my Powerbook.

It was a miracle (or at least a testament to Apple and/or Connectix) that this worked at all. I was debugging an IIS application in Visual Studio, running on Windows Server, in a little window on an Apple laptop. It was also like working on a 286. It took Studio ten minutes to compile the app and another ten minutes to attach the debugger. It would be tough to justify my $90-per-hour paycheck at this rate. With a heavy heart I sold the masterpiece that was the TiBook, and picked up a Sony Vaio. A little bit of color left my world that day.

(to be continued)