**This post was originally published on Mar. 3rd, but for some reason WP wouldn’t list the post. Some glitch — who knows? I’m taking the lazy route and re-posting it today. thanks!I’m a reformed luddite — as of 3 weeks ago! I was using a 9 year old Dell and one of the original Blackberries, almost 7 years old.My rationale for technology circa 2003: I had too much time/money invested in software and systems designed to run (barely!) on PC based platforms. The fear of losing my systems/work/archives kept from making any changes for far too long!The new setup. New addition not in photo is Apple magic mouse, bye ugly green MS unit.
Then, finally, 3 weeks ago I couldn’t take it anymore. Nothing worked. The Dell constantly blue-screen-of-deathed and the blackberry barely worked. I had two different scheduling calendars operating and neither was accurate. My accounting / order tracking system was based on Microsoft Excel and was terrible.I took the plunge and got a MacBook Pro, iPad2, iPhone4s and iPod nano. Its been awesome. I use iCloud to ensure all 3 main devices (phone, laptop, iPad) are sync’d all the time. My company’s inventory/order/accounting is all moved to a cloud based program (more on commonsku.com later — it rocks!). One of our key salespeople at PBJ Merch Co. already uses Mac so now we are on the same wavelength.And, thanks to the good people at Adobe, I was able to transfer my licenses for expensive design programs Illustrator, photoshop, etc over to my Mac at no charge. Yay!For other small biz colleagues I hope you don’t wait as long as I did to finally wise up. The systems cobbled together on ancient laptops can be replaced with better, faster, more stable substitutes. And for less money than you think.– Rich Patterson
