My New MacBook

I never thought I would be blogging from a Macintosh – ever. I used Apple IIs and Macs in the early days (80s) of the PC, and I thought they were nice machines that had no place in the business arena, but were great for graphic designers and educational purposes. So I stayed firmly rooted in the IBM PC camp while keeping an eye on the Mac world. Now, more than twenty years later, I have finally decided to purchase my first Mac, and I am very pleased with my decision thus far.

From the ease and speed of the selection, configuration, and ordering process on the Apple.com site, to the timely delivery of the machine, to the intuitive setup process and user interface, this has been the most positive and exciting experience I have had in acquiring a new PC. It is hard to believe that I am using a completely new operating system, and was up, running, productive (with my Google tools), and playing (on SecondLife) within an hour of powering up the machine for the first time. I cannot get over how well engineered both the hardware and the GUI are. So elegant and yet useable.

I have really missed not having a laptop for the past year. When my ThinkPad finally bit the dust last spring I decided to replace it with an HP mini tower with a high end graphics card and monitor so I could enjoy my SecondLife experience more fully, as well as for more speed and precision when editing photos and graphics. I have been pretty happy with the HP, but I hated being tied to the office all the time. I yearned for the freedom to work from other locations. I wanted to be able to watch UT basketball while blogging at the same time – as I am doing right now. This is as close to heaven as I have been in a long time.

This OS X Leopard operating system beats the pants off Windows. The networking is effortless and fast. Upon bootup – with an Ethernet cable attached to our office LAN – the OS found the network, found the internet, and attached me to every shared device and directory available without any action from me whatsoever. Try that with Windows. So far, the most annoying problem I’m having that I haven’t been able to resolve is the locating the ‘end’ key or function. But I haven’t cracked a manual yet, or looked at any online help yet either.

Well, I’m off to learn more about the features and functions of my new ‘toy’.

Happy Easter!