I Should Have Done This YEARS Ago!
I used to look at them the same way UNIX admins looked at PC users. I bought the koolaid of no market share and I drank it because it was comfortable. Windows wasn’t great, but it was acceptable and the price of hardware continued to fall while performance specs continued to blow through the roof each year. I accepted the quirks and idiosyncrasies because it was an acceptable trade-off for the lower prices.
That was then, this is now.
Microsoft Windows Vista drove me over the edge to what I used to call “the dark side”. Vista has gone way too far in trying to protect the user from themself. To make matters worse, you can’t completely stop Vista from saving you from yourself. It is bloated and even on heavy duty iron, the performance is less than stellar.
Yesterday, I finally succumbed to buying a MacBook Pro. Not a bleeding edge one, but a pretty powerful one. I was expecting to go through the same basic steps to get to a productive state as I have with Windows before. I was pleasantly surprised, IT JUST WORKS! I mean right out of the box. No complex setup. It wakes up, looks around and figures out what it should do.
Wireless? Absolutely no problem.
USB keyboard and mouse? Again, no problem.
DVD? Bluetooth? External monitor?
You name it and it had no problem with it.
I did buy the Parallel software to load Windows XP but I have not done it yet. Since Microsoft builds a remote desktop client, I don’t think I will need to add it to this.
I am a happy camper.
However, I fear for my son’s laptop now. After seeing this and playing with it a little bit, he got a look in his eyes as he went back to his Windows XP laptop that makes me think it will suffer an “accident”. I am kidding, of course. But, he has already started his wish list for birthday and Christmas.
Tim,
Are you using a personal finance S/W package such as Quicken or Quickbooks to keep track of and manage your cash accounts as well as your investments? If so, do you mind sharing what you are using and whether it is compatible with your new Macbook? We have been using Quicken for several years and from what I have seen of the Mac version, it doesn’t have near the same functionality.
I think yours is a common response of a new convert. I have a couple friends that have vowed to give away there Mac to a non mac user every time they upgrade. I was given a 5 yr old 15 inch PowerBookPro, which looks just like a mac book pro. He had upgraded it with 2gb of ram as he is a software developer. He wiped the drive and installed OSX Tiger(I have since upgraded to Leapard) and when I brought it home and powered it up it was just like taking it home from the Mac store, the whole new machine setup and everything ran the same as a new one. It felt just like getting a new computer. No performance issues and it is 5 yrs old! Try that with Vista.
For my wife, iLife and NeoOffice are the only items we needed to install. Everything else is automatic. Even the network printer was automatically found. iPhoto, iTunes and mail are about the only things that are needed for the average home user and Mac does that and everything else better than any PC. The only thing the old machine does not do is run some features of Garage band that I believe need the intel chipset or a faster machine to run.
My wife loves the machine and now my friend has the Intel MacBook. My other friend gave away his 17 inch PowerBookPro, the same kind of thing…So pass it on when yours wears out. Give it away to a non mac user to make more converts.
It is amazing how in the pc world 5 year old iron is useless when new operating systems come along.
@Burke:
I use GNUCash and while it runs on the Mac, it appears you have to build it from source. I may leave that on a Windoze box until a better option is available.
We are seriously looking at converting away from Windows and that means a permanent solution to accounting must be found. I don’t think QuickBooks will be the one we choose.
GNUCash? You use the free version?
I looked it up (never heard of it before) and didn’t see pricing. Free version is safe?
@Debbie:
GnuCash is perfectly safe if you get it from a KNOWN source and check the checksums. It is not really “free” it is open source. I encourage you to make a donation to the project if you use the software.
Debbie, It is open source. Similar to Firefox or Linux. A bunch of developers with like ideas create great software. Many project use the GNU General Public License, hence the GNU in the name.