Hello everyone,

One of the sites that I often frequent is the TechBlog written by Houston Chronicle computing columnist Dwight Silverman.

For the past two months, Dwight (who had previously been using a Mac as his primary computer), has been testing Windows 7 on his main home machine in order to see whether he would continue using the PC or switch back to the iMac. The two month project was called Operation Switchback.

After drawing up a great chart which would aid him in the decision process, on August 23 in this post, Dwight made public his final decision: He is returning to his Mac!

As Dwight says, his return to the Mac OS X is not because he dislikes the Windows 7 OS (which he thinks is the best version of Windows ever), but because he wants to continue using the iMac as his main home desktop machine:

“Now, I really, really like Windows 7. But see, I also love Mac OS X. I don’t want to give it up. And if I use my PC as my main desktop, then my iMac gets relegated to secondary status on a table in my home office. Yeah, I still have my 13-inch MacBook Pro portable, but I don’t use it in the same way I use a desktop. It’s a traveling machine used for specific purposes – I tend not to experiment and learn on it, which is what I do with my home desktop system”.

And, by returning to his Mac, Dwight doesn’t have to loose his beloved Windows 7 OS. It’s the best of both OS worlds – have your Mac and PC too!

“Thanks to great improvements in both Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion, running Windows 7 on my iMac is a near-seamless experience. In fact, when I run Win7 full-screen in either program – with all the Aero interface effects turned on – you’d be hard-pressed to guess that Windows wasn’t running natively. The only stumbling block is games, but I am happy to walk across the room to where my PC will be sitting to do some fragging”.

Professor Randy says: Thanks Dwight for your Operation Switchback research, findings, and conclusion. May this information help us to decide and conclude on our own!