Musings on life and technology
First day on the new MacBook Pro
The power connector broke on my old laptop and with several trips coming up I really needed to get some new iron. So the question is which one. I originally looked at a nice Sony Vaio and then I saw one of those nice Dell XPS m1330 machines. They have a very sweet LED screen and a nice form factor but I really wanted a larger screen. The problem is that the m1530 doesn't yet ship with Penryn processors or a LED screen. The other option was the MacBook Pro. Yes, I know…
So, after a lot of consideration, I chose to go with the Mac. Pretty easy decision actually. The Dell configures up with 3 year warranty at $1800 and the Mac at $2200. Now if you consider the upgrade costs for when the 1530 will support Penryn processors and an LED screen (the 1330 costs $200 more with these options), that puts the Dell at about $2000. The difference of $200 is a small amount when you consider that the Mac is the only laptop that can run all 3 major systems today. Yep, pretty easy decision.
So, the new Mac arrived today and I'm writing this blog entry on it. I plan to write for the next 30 days on my experiences on the machine. I'v always worked on Windows machines so it's a brave new world for me. I'll be testing out Parallels and VMWare fusion for my development work and playing with such gems as iMovie and iDVD around the house.
I had several good impressions during the first hour or so of us. Initial startup had a nice touch where it let me use the web cam to take a personal picture for the login screen. Anyway, I have lots more to talk about but I'll save it for the next entry.
You know it’s cool things like the mention of the Mac’s webcam for setting up a profile picture that really make me think Microsoft should get into the PC hardware business. When you can lock down the hardware and the OS it gets infinitely easier to provide a rich and consistent experience for the user, plus you can really shorten your release cycles because you don’t have to test the OS on a myriad of hardware configurations, you have exactly one, your own hardware. I can only dream…
I almost picked up a MacPro but the difference at the time between a HP dv9000 17" lappie and the Mac 17" equivalent was close to a grand and that was a little rich for my blood. One thing I’m always curious about, do you find yourself hitting the Windows Key shortcuts like Win+E, Win+D or Win+L? I find I can barely work on a machine without a Windows key these days and I was curious how a Bootcamp or Parallels switch would go.