I've done it. I stopped in at Simply Computing on Broadway in Vancouver last week to get an uber-cool skin/case/battery pack by Konnet for my iPhone, which has quickly become as integral to my work habits as my desktop and laptop, and came out with a 27" quad core iMac on order for Friday.

This is not my first time with Macs, it must be pointed out. The first time was at a college newspaper, putting out a 16 page paper every week on the ridiculously small screened MacPlus. You haven't lived unless you were doing 5 college courses and working until 4 am with Pagemaker on a screen the size of an appetizer plate.

The second time was an absolutely brutal week in the community newspaper industry, when we switched from PC to Mac - platform, software, recreation of all standing ads and classifieds, in one 100+ hour workweek. I literally slept with my eyes open learning Quark on a totally new platform.

The last time was on the newer generation iMac of the early 2000s, the cute G4 with the half globe foot and swinging monitor that was simply a colossal waste of money as it was almost useless for anything Internet related and quickly became a really expensive paperweight.

Three bad experiences have kept me away from Macs ever since, but three compensating factors have finally overcome the bad memories:

1. New functionality on the Mac combined with big screens and great resolution makes the Adobe CS environment I work much more productive
2. A growing market share means as a web designer and online publisher I need to be experiencing business online on both platforms
3. I can run Windows and PC programs on a Mac without having to reboot - critical factor to save time & money in replacing software

Plus the iMac is just plain a gorgeous machine and can double as a media centre. Add to that increasing piggy and sluggish anti-virus management and program freezes on the PC and the Mac looks like a prescription for some really bad business headaches.

So follow me on this blog as I go through the metamorphosis to becoming a Mac user, chronicling the improvements, pitfalls, time investment and more.

Use this information to look hard at your own business platform decisions. Just because you've had the same system for a decade or more doesn't mean you're stuck with it... and that goes for converting in either direction.

Tips for reviewing your own business platform needs:

• Track your time from a computing efficiency perspective. How long to boot? How many crashes and what kind? How much time spent in installing operating system updates? (PC fans say my computer is stable if I religiously install updates; considering it can take an hour or more and I need to be present and the machine can't be used for anything else = a lot of lost billable time). I've discovered through this kind of intelligence gathering that time savings can pay for my monthly leasing costs.
• Track functionality. What do you have in your current platform environment that you can't live without? What does the other platform have that would have a significant positive impact on how you do business? (I've spent about 25 hours searching for and evaluating flash movie creators for the PC when iLife comes resident on the Mac.)
• Total cost of upgrading. How many computers are in your small business network? Does everyone need to change or can you do it slowly? Do you have to make any software upgrades at the same time? Do you need to buy a standalone Windows or Mac OS (your copy of Windows OS that came pre-installed on a machine won't work for Windows-within-Mac computing)?

Next post: inventory your existing machine, back up, disaster management recovery planning.