Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Learning to be a Mac

It's been about 2.5 weeks since i got my MacBook Pro for work, and so far i've been mighty impressed. As a quick background, i've been a PC user since i was 6, and a ThinkPad user for the past 11 years. I absolutely loved my T42 (running the stable and usable Windows XP). Last year i got an X61 running Vista Business and have been very disappointed. I love the form-factor and size of the X-series ThinkPads, but it was crashing constantly, among other issues. So when i got the choice of choosing a laptop for work, my decision wasn't too hard:
  • ThinkPads are no longer IBM machines
  • I've been punished by Microsoft for way too long already
  • Most of the other people at work use MacBook Pros
  • I was fairly clueless around Macs/OSX and felt kinda stupid as someone who's supposed to be relatively tech savvy
So how's it been so far? Pretty awesome. :)

The goods:
  • It is so freakin' fast to boot up, sleep, wake. I remember my X61 took about 5 minutes to hibernate or resume.
  • Its sleep mode is so impressively battery efficient (as Paul had told me before)
  • OSX (10.5.5) is really stable. I've had one or two programs freeze up, but haven't had the whole OS freeze up on me (*cough*, Vista, *cough*).
  • Most of the functions are fairly intuitive and logical once you know how to do them, and work really well (i.e.--scrolling using two fingers on the touch pad).
  • Seems to be a short-cut key for everything (just need to learn them all; http://www.usingmac.com/2007/11/21/mac-os-x-leopard-200-productivity-booster-hotkeys is a great resource).
  • Built-in iChat is so easy to use and performs pretty well.
  • Beautiful bright screen, good speakers.
  • No longer having to deal with Windows.
The not so goods:
  • I still don't know whether to use control, option, or command when i want to skip to the beginning/end of a line or skip from word to word. I don't think it's even consistent among programs.
  • No right-mouse button. Yes i can hold control while clicking, but it's so much slower.
  • As people have said, the machine does get quite hot.
While i felt really strange about it when i first took my Macbook Pro out of its pretty packaging, i've quickly grown to love it, and to enjoy being among the increasing number of people who "are a Mac".

No comments: