The Life Changing Gadget & Gizmo thread

[Birnando]

I'm gonna have to go with a rather boring and predictable thing.

Years ago, around the year 2000, I was working as a technical manager in one of the major A/V companies in Norway.
Every day after work, my then fiancé wanted to use my Dell laptop for play and fun.
About 15 minutes after she started using it I would hear the dreaded uh-oh, and she showed me what eventually drove me crazy, the blue screen of death.

So, in an effort to find her a solution that would work for her I decided to get her a Powerbook.
I knew nothing about Mac's at the time, but figured she couldn't do any worse than what she was doing with my work machine at the time.

It arrived a couple days later, I set it up for her and lo and behold, I never heard the dreaded uh-oh again.
Being an impatient and curious fella, I went out searching for info about the MacOS.
A system that wouldn't crash in the hands of that woman must have something really special going for it...

After a rather intense couple of days reading a bunch of books and info online, I decided to take a bit of a gamble and get one for myself as well.
Two days after that arrived I had the IT department change the entire company's backbone and support systems to accommodate me and my new computer along with all the others working there..
I simply told the owners that this is now my preferred system, and I'll work on that or I will find another employer that woul dallow me to.

I got bit by the bug pretty badly, and have to this day managed to get former employers to accommodate me and my "fanboyism"

As luck would have it, I now own the company myself, so nowadays I make sure that people can use whatever system they feel they are the most efficient with.
That has proven to be good economy to be honest!

Edit:
Great thread!
The heading on my personal web-site, stolen from a Swedish friend, reads "He who has the most gadgets when he dies, wins"