Well, it’s time to make a startling confession. I’m a Mac-head. I’ve used a Mac since the early days of the Apple II. Please don’t try using this milestone as a way to figure out how old I am. I use a Mac Pro for my image processing and a Macbook Pro for all my other tasks. Kim has a Mac, and our oldest uses a Mac as well. We’re a Mac family. Or, we were until yesterday.

With apologies to Steve Jobs and my Mac friends, and after careful deliberation and head-scratching we decided that our new art business would have to run on a Windows based PC! Our newly arrived gallery management software from Masterpiece Solutions could certainly run on a Mac installed with Windows virtualization through Parallels. However, our art space also needs to use point-of-sale equipment, such as barcode scanner, magnetic card reader, cash-drawer and a receipt printer. It turns out that the Windows world has more history and options for ensuring that all these peripherals work in our retail-ish environment.

So, let’s all give PC a welcome. And, while we may have finally compromised our technology principles we did not yield on our need for cool design with artistic flair. So, here’s what our new PC looks like, courtesy of some young artists (and HP).

If you’ve read my previous article about Mac versus PC you’ll now know that I’m the person on the left.