Since my ex-employer liberated me from the Dell I had been using, I needed to get some kind of notebook computer to take on interviews and vacations. It seemed like the Mac was a decent choice in terms of performance and features and, since my wife has a Mac as well, I avoided the Microsoft Tax by not having to buy another copy of Office — the home edition comes with three license keys.
Of course, all of that should be taken with a large grain of salt since this machine is also somewhat of a new toy for me. (I hope my wife doesn't read that!)
The specs, in case you're interested:
- 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo w/ 6MB L2 cache
- 4GB DDR2-667 RAM
- 200GB 7200RPM HDD
- GeForce 8600M w/ 512MB of GDDR3 memory
- Slot loading SuperDrive
- LED-backlit 15" 1440x900 display
It may be the fastest PC in my house, and it all fits into a 5.4 pound package!
So far things are going pretty well, but I have to get used to the keyboard differences. The delete key, for example, is where the backspace key should be, and it performs the same function as backspace on Windows. To get the delete function as on windows you have to use fn+delete. I guess this is just something you get used to as you learn to Think Different™.
I'm curious to know how many of you are Apple users and how many have converted from Windows recently. If you have any tips for me, I'm all ears.
3 comments:
Have you downloaded the iPhone SDK yet? Any applications in progress?
Welcome... I've been using a MacBook Pro for a while, and I have to admit that the small things really do start to work for you after a while. I still find myself trying to use two finger scrolling with every trackpad, including the one on the dell, and realize every time how often I get to using that.
My experience trying to switch from Windows to Mac hasn't all been great. One thing with Mac appps is that they go for the clean interface look, and as a result, controls are not immediately obvious - you have to learn the apps the old fashioned way.
Some things that worked well for me:
Windows Bootcamp + parallels. Because of Windows support for multiple hardware profiles, you can install Windows via Bootcamp, then install Parallels into your mac and you have the choice of either booting into windows natively, or running it as a virtual machien from within the mac. The later is actually very nice with Coherence letting the windows apps coexist on the mac desktop with the mac ones. I basically only used this configuration so that I could boot into windows natively to play modern games (Portal)
Office 2008 for the Macs is pretty nice, and Entourage is actually more usable that I had initially thought. I see some people using it as a PIM, because of its ability to categorize everything under projects.
Some things you could also play with: NoteBook by Circus Ponies, is a nice equivalent to the Windows Office OneNote application. Notebook supports web & screen clipping, auto-indexing, etc. You can publish whole notebooks as HTML or PDF formats.
And while I've never really put it to great use myself, Quicksilver is supposed to be great once you get into the habit of using it.
Since getting the MacBook, I have to admit, I have really enjoyed it. I hope your experience is good.
When at GATech we used Mac OS for all image processing applications. Frankly, it was a challenge to work with in the beginning, but some of the functions were so intuitive, I actually adapted to the UI faster than I thought I could. But gone are those days..:-) My husband is a MS fan. I cannot live without Mozilla Firefox and he says "whats the difference?" and continues using IE. So, just sticking with the standard Windows based machine for now.. who knows. I might be motivated one day to switch too.
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