Just before I went on my holidays, I changed my password for the Active Directory domain that I log on to at work. I wrote it down (bad practice, but I have a lot of passwords to remember…) but when I returned and tried to log on it didn’t work. I tried the old one too, but after 2 weeks of going cold turkey with no Internet access, my fingers had forgotten the old password (as had my brain) so I kept trying various options. No good. Locked out of my work PC – I thought I’d have to log a support call (oh joy!) and visit the office to access the network…

The next day I wa due to be attending an all-day event at Microsoft, so I got my personal notebook PC (an Apple MacBook) ready with all the things I would need, and went to sleep for the night.

As is the way with these things, my slumber was disturbed by the sudden realisation that, because I had been disconnected from the network when I changed my password, my cached credentials on the computer used the old password, but my VPN connection would use the new one. And I could remember both the passwords. But, needing as much beauty sleep as I can cram in (beleive me, I need it), I settled back down and took the MacBook with me to Microsoft anyway.

So, there I was, at a Microsoft event with 250 other people, in the middle of a dark room using a white notebook PC with a big Apple logo lit up for all to see. I wasn’t making a statement. It was running Vista (at least in a virtual machine!). And I was using OneNote to take meeting notes – honestly!

Thanks to Steve Lamb – who was presenting that morning – for somehow weaving his MacBook Air into the content of his presentation and making me feel better about using a Mac on the UK Microsoft Campus. Now I have some idea how Paul Thurrott felt at last year’s Windows Server 2008 Worldwide Technical Workshop when he even put a note over the Apple logo to put the presenters’ minds at rest and explain he was running Vista!