Speaking of
new family additions, another one that I'm excited about is my new
MacBook Pro. I've been a loyal IBM Thinkpad user for years, but frankly, I was getting bored. I don't really have any Thinkpad complaints other than it's not very exciting to buy one anymore, if you know what I mean.
I started on an Apple II and worked on Macs a lot during school, and I've missed them, but getting one never seemed pragmatic living in the Microsoft world. However, with the latest
MacBooks, the proposition of living in both worlds seems better now. So I jumped off the cliff and got one.
A few impressions: I love the feel of the hardware…it's solid and polished. Great attention to detail, like the magnetic power connector, the underlit keyboard, built-in video, and excellent display. And I'm liking the keyboard more than I thought I would. I never thought I'd find another laptop that comes close to the feel of the amazing Thinkpad keyboard, but this one is close. The thing I'm having the hardest time with is the difference in layout, but it's starting to fall into place. My only complaint is that the hardware can run hot sometimes, which is a bit uncomfortable when working right on my lap.
When I got it home, it joined my home network just fine. I can move files back and forth like any other PC (via SMB). It sees my printers and I found drivers via
Gutenprint.
I have Vista RC1 running natively using
Apple's Boot Camp. Aside from a few driver issues, Vista runs
sweet on this thing…with glass and all eye candy. The remaining kinks should go away with the Vista drivers. I'm also using Vista RC1 via
Parallels. They just released
RC2, which includes experimental Vista support. It's nice to be able to switch back and forth without rebooting, but you do lose the eye candy (no glass).
Since I use Google for mail, contacts, calendar, and rss, it was pretty painless moving over to OSX from a software perspective. I have
Office:mac,
MSN Messenger,
Flip4Mac (wma/wmv), and
Remote Desktop Connection, which help bridge the various MS gaps. You can also use Google Talk via iChat/Jabber.
I've already taught a few WCF/BizTalk classes on this thing and it worked just as good as any Thinkpad.
The whole experience has been fun so far, but I'm sure I'll regret it in a few months. ;-)
Posted
Oct 02 2006, 10:25 AM
by
Aaron Skonnard