My family home schools. That means computers are necessary and everyone in the family has their own. I have been running a home network of seven computers for the last five years. It has been a nightmare job.

One day I noticed that my personal Mac was never causing me troubles. It was older and slow, but always doing its job. Once a hard drive crashed, but I had backups (which are easy to do) and after an evening of work was back in business.

Vista (outside of the marvelous media center application) has been horrid. Only an eight year old computer in the network (now too slow for most functions) did not constantly blue screen or cause other problems. XP by the end was marginally better, but looked like a Mac from a decade ago and was horrible at networking.

When it was not slowing everything down, it kept my computers from talking. I tried all the solutions. I have well informed honor students to bail me out. Slowly, I grew frustrated. This was stupid. My network was stupid . . . even when I started buying only standard parts and “name brands” to avoid all problems with a “driver” (how I loath the word . . .once associated with the joy of getting a car and now associated with computer crashes).

With Vista even brand new video cards were destroying my system. I tried three different cards . . . and had troubles with each one.

Slowly, one machine at a time, I have broken free of Vista and XP. How has it gone? Really well . . . and for five reasons that would not have been true a decade ago when I “went windows.” Here they are:

1. Google.

Google docs, calendar, and email now rule my house. My kids network on Google’s server. We don’t need a fast computer, just one fast enough to get to the Net. I let them write on Google docs (no expensive word processor for most jobs!) and archive their email there. It saves hard drive space for multimedia. I assume soon we will get the ten or so t-bytes of storage for free that even that job will require. Then as bandwidth increases I will say goodbye to most drives in the house (curse them!) forever.

There is no reason for me to use a separate calendar program now. I don’t need a machine compatible with work, since everything works with Google . . . my phone (Treo) and any computer tell me what I need to know and they don’t care what OS anybody is running.

That eliminates one big reason to keep a Windows machine.

2. On-line games.

Many of the best educational games and programs . . . even most of their favorite games of the non-educational sort (Neo-Pets and Runescape) are on-line. Why get a Windows machine?

Educational software (which I spend the most money on) has always been Mac friendly.

3. Wii

Want to play other kinds of games? Get a Wii. The Wii reminds me of why I loved gaming in the first place.

4. The Apple OS is insanely friendly to Windows.

Having experimented for several years, I have discovered that Apple no longer hides from the present domination of Windows as it once did. All my Apple machines easily network with Windows machines (Vista and XP) and read their data. The same is not true of the Windows machines. Bluntly, a Mac Mini networks with Vista machines more easily than Vista machines network with Vista machines with fewer errors.

I wake up and no Mac has crashed overnight. When I had six Windows machines running, one of them was always groaning in pain.

5. Ipod and the Iphone.

Both are Apple. Both are the best at what they do. Both network most easily and elegantly with Apple machines. Why not switch?

Ipods dominate our house. We bought another product (less expensive and “bigger”), only to discover that less expensive meant cheap and compatibility head aches. I don’t want to think about my technology much, just use it.

Ipods let me do it.

I cannot afford an Iphone yet, but seeing them makes me believe the same thing will be true.

Functionally, there is only one thing left that Windows machines do better than the Apples. Oddly, given Apple’s multimedia reputation, it is a media function.

I have two Vista machines left. One is to stream our DVD collection to the home network and the other is to use as an extender in another room. Apple does not read archived DVD material straightforwardly. I will not go through the “re-rip” again just to “go Apple.”

Technology is not my religion, but my servant. I buy the tech that works best.

I have no more desire to hack around with the software of Apple Television (too much of that for one lifetime) using weird second party applications, than I want to hack DVD content.

I simply want to archive my own video and use it easily. Windows will and Apple will not . . . requiring me to “convert” my files from their native format to something else. We all know that this is a bad and time consuming idea whatever a product declares.

When Apple Television treats DVD material as it treats music, then the last Windows machine will vanish. When my DVD will go into a Mac, be ripped and stored in its native format, and then can play the same way, my days with Windows is over.

I am still not sure why this is not true. Why is Apple so video awkward?

(I can play the movies in the DVD player, but Media Center on Vista is easily modifiable to stream them to its wonderful interface and that is not true of Apple Front Row. . . yet.)

I am no computer expert, but I have been around computers for some time. I started networking on Q-link on my C-64 and taught a “class” in philosophy on that network. Imagine a discussion where you could read the text far faster than the network could get it to you! I have seen revolutions in computers come and go, but there is a big one coming now and Microsoft is missing it.

The movement toward universal applications that break the OS barrier is one of the biggest changes I have seen. I don’t think Microsoft gets it. Apple is too expensive for what I get, but since I buy used that is not a big issue. As the Wii proved, in the new world of platform neutrality the processor matters less than ease of use and getting to the Net.