Steve knows!

You might think I'm an Apple fangirl. I have used an Apple computer as my primary machine for about 10 years. I bought my first iBook in 2001. A few years later I upgraded to a Mac G5 which lasted me for several years. Last year, I bought a Mac Mini to replace my PowerPC G5. I also have an iPhone and an iPad. I have been very happy with the hardware, the software, and apps for a very long time.

So, it may be surprising that I recently finished building myself a new PC.

About 6 months ago, I realized that the graphics on the Mini were just not up to the task of playing World of Warcraft very well. WoW does not exactly stretch the limits of modern video cards, either. I was getting 5 frames per second in some zones that were really crowded. My husband was sick of me complaining about it and suggested that I should get a better gaming machine.

I looked at places online that will build sweet gaming machines for you, letting you customize the components. That was certainly the easy option, and there's something to be said for having a really cool computer arrive on your doorstep.

But, it had been long enough since I built a PC from components that I wanted to do it myself. We jokingly said I needed to "keep my street cred" in the PC hardware world. The only big misstep was buying an after-market CPU fan: the fan would fit, but the memory wouldn't fit on the motherboard at the same time. Doh! In the end, I used the stock CPU fan and it's working fine.

The funniest thing in all my components was the velvet bag around the power supply. I kid you not. I totally have a new dice bag now.

The install of Windows 7 was painless. The last time I installed a Windows OS was XP and it was fairly painful. (I won't even mention Windows 95/98 as I'm trying to forget those days.) Using Windows 7 is a very pleasant experience. It is clean looking, reasonable, and does what I expect. My other Windows 7 experience was that Windows 7 was slow, but functional. That was on a Netbook that was just barely capable of running it. On new, awesome hardware, I understand what people see in Windows.

While I'm not ready to ditch my Mac Mini or my other Apple devices entirely, I have been having a lot of fun re-discovering the PC and Windows world. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.