I always carry at least one laptop with me on computer service calls. It allows me to take notes, test network connections, research on the internet and back up data. My laptops have always been DOS/Windows going back to Microsoft 3.1 and DOS. Around ten years ago, I started configuring them to dual-boot to Linux and Windows so I could use either one. This is a cool secret weapon I use for troubleshooting client problems.

About 2010 I bought my first Apple laptop and started learning how Apple devices behave. This iBook has since been retired and last year I bought a brand new Apple airbook. This one was the least expensive model and it does a good job on the internet. A few months later, I discovered an older Apple airbook pro in my parts area of the workshop. It had some broken things on it like the hard drive and display. I reinstalled the Apple OS on a new SSD and it went well. Surprisingly, the cracked display is easily read and most of the time I forget it’s cracked. Apple laptops can read Windows hard drives and that makes them nice for data recovery.

My Windows 10 laptops and getting older and slow and my Apples are faster and newer. One reason I carry Windows 10 laptops around with me is Quickbooks is installed on one of them so I can enter invoices. Also, client histories are in the past invoices and this makes researching easier. And sometimes I need a Windows program for troubleshooting which won’t run on an Apple.

So it looks like my main laptops are now Macs instead of Windows and a few years ago this wouldn’t have been possible.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This