Mac

Like most people married to their computers, I spend a portion of my time wondering how I can do things faster and how I can stay better organized. When I made the decision to move back to Mac, I put some effort into researching various productivity tools. The time I invested in research and running trial software has more than paid for itself. The tools described below have literally changed the way I use my Mac.

If my move back to mac was going to be successful, one of the first hurdles I had clear was getting my mail in order. As a consultant who spends a fair amount of time on the road, the communications piece of my tool kit had to be tight and tidy.

I had been using Mozilla's Thunderbird for quite some time. Unfortunately, for the past 7 years my email had been spread between two systems: Thunderbird and Outlook. I was forced to work on Outlook in two different office environments and in both cases thought it was one of Mr. Bill's cruelest jokes. (I mean come on, mail is basic and essential! For god's sake get it right!)

My first Mac was an original Macintosh 128, purchased in 1984 in a vain attempt to equip myself with tools for law school. It served me long and well. Somewhere along the way I found that funky screwdriver thing it took to crack the case open and crammed in another 128K. Man oh man. Then I hit the big time -- moved up to a MacPlus and bought my first external harddrive. The drive came in at a whooping 30 MB. Life was good.

But, the Mac charms didn't stick. The price tag for portability in the Mac world was just too high and eventually I bailed out on Apple and moved in to the PC world. Got the smallest notebook I could find (this was at the beginning of my wandering the world years), learned DOS and turned my back on Mac.