My kitchen table looks like some kind of laptop turf war right now. On the left, my beloved beater ThinkPad. On the right, a borrowed MacBook. I’ve been using both all day. It’s driving me crazy.
I’m used to switching between Mac and Windows machines. There’s an iMac at my desk at the office, and my ThinkPad stays at home. But the 25-minute train ride between the two gives me enough time to switch my mind over, I guess.
Now, here I am swiveling between the two every couple of minutes. It’s a cheeseball work-around until I get a dedicated monitor setup here at home. The result? I’m trying to right-click on the MacBook (which does nothing) and Command+Shift+4 on the ThinkPad (which is impossible). No matter which trackpad I use, I end up scrolling in the wrong direction. And worrying that I’m getting Alzheimer’s.
I’m even worse with phones. A previous job of mine came with a company Android, but I kept my iPhone on me at the same time. As a result, I was perpetually lost on both phones — not because I didn’t know how to use them, but because constantly switching back and forth was messing with me.
So how much trouble do you have with this kind of thing? It doesn’t have to be computers — phones, TV remotes, cars, whatever. Are you always trying to push buttons that aren’t there?