I Traded in my PC for a Mac
The other day I decided, after much prompting from Tara, to dump my PC and fully enter the world of Apple with a MacBook Pro laptop. Tara converted a few months ago and after a bunch of classes at the Apple store in Pacific Centre mall became convinced that her Mac is the only laptop worthy of using. She convinced me to make the change.
36 Hours Without a Laptop
One of the things I was aware of was that I was going to have to leave my laptop at Apple for about 36 hours for them to do a file and email transfer from my PC to the new MacBook Pro. To prepare for this I knew that the process would be easier if I cleaned up my folders, deleting some files, and deleted old or un-needed emails. Anything pre-2009 was gone! It was actually amazing how much stuff I had that would never again be needed. Computer files and folders might be the garage of you parent’s era, filled with broken hockey sticks and other ‘junk’ they thought they might need but never ever used again.
Personal Thing I Learned
I did learn a few things about both myself and the on-line world during my forced break from my laptop. Personally, it is amazing how much more productive you can be without a computer. Instead of email, Tweets and Facebook posts flying at you at the speed of light you actually have to stop and make an effort to retrieve those communications. This means that you don’t continually become distracted by them. I found myself focusing more on specific tasks and when completed I could quickly check into email and my social platforms using the iPad. The bathroom has been fully scrubbed and the floor vacuumed and I don’t feel I have missed anything during the day!
Businesses Listen-up!
On the businesses side for my 36 hour laptop break I was still armed with both my iPhone and iPad so I was not completely disconnected. Having said that I only checked email half a dozen times during the day, Twitter and Facebook a little more. What I did learn using only my mobile devices, (businesses listen up), is that it is horrible that so many businesses are sharing links of promotions, specials and news to their non-mobile optimized websites. I have been saying for about the past six months that if your website is not mobile enhanced it will be a useless marketing activity going forward. The last stat I read was that 54% of internet search and social media use will be done on mobile in 2012. If my 36 hours of mobile use taught me anything is that businesses should cancel all future marketing until their website is mobile!
Video
The other thing for business that I learned is that about 2/5 of the links I clicked through from social media sites during my 36 hours took me to a video (mostly You Tube). I never really noticed this before on my laptop. I thought it was interesting and pointed to the fact that our clients and Tara and I need to devote more time to producing video in 2012. Sounds like that might be our first business resolution of the New Year 🙂
Happy Holidays!
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