Win to Mac – Day One With a MacBook Pro
We are documenting the move by a business and professional from a Windows PC workstation / notebook to the Mac OSX platform. Today, what are the subjective initial impressions gained from unboxing a MacBook Pro?
After working hard and saving my pennies for a number of months, I have finally purchased a MacBook Pro 15”. This actually happened a couple of months or so ago. Since then, a lot has happened and I have been keeping notes, upon which this short Win to Mac saga is based. It has been an interesting journey for me, and I hope it will prove at least slightly interesting for you as you relive it with me. I went to the Mac mainly to escape the Windows desktop, and to move to OS X, but there are other reasons to get a Mac.
The Pro came in a cute little box with a handle. Apple easily captures the packaging crown. Inside was the MacBook, some CDs and a few cables and cords. That’s it. For the price, it did not seem like much. Then again, that is the feeling I have had every time I have unpacked a new laptop. I did a lot of price comparisons, together with a lot of soul-searching, before I made this move. Feature for feature, the MacBook Pro was no more expensive than a comparable Dell or Toshiba, if you could find a comparable Dell or Toshiba.
My first impressions were great. It starts fast. It shuts down fast. What an improvement over Windows! The glossy monitor was excellent. The keyboard was outstanding. The trackpad is a wonder. The design and level of finish was astonishing. What great details! Let me describe just one: the power connector is almost magic. It gets magnetically sucked into place with a reassuring “Click!” When it is connected, on the side of the machine where you can see it, a little light comes on, red-orange for charging, green for charged. If you happen to kick the cord, the magnet is not strong enough to pull the laptop down; it just silently unplugs. That is a feature with real benefits, and it is things like that which justify my switch as much as moving to OS X does.
Tomorrow: settling into OS X.
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January 3rd, 2009
Just a hint… you rarely “shutdown” a Mac… when you are done, just close the lid… or choose “sleep”.
Windows users have a bad habit of shutting down, starting up… no need for that on a Mac.
January 4th, 2009
Also try out Quicksilver.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14831/quicksilver
January 4th, 2009
For most their life, Mac laptops also went to sleep and woke up virtually immediately. I didn’t realize that was unique to the Macs until a Windows laptop user expressed enormous surprise at how fast it happened and I was back to work.
The latest OS X now uses the Windows approach of writing the contents to disk, but if you add the FREE pref program SmartSleep to your Mac, the sleep is once again almost instantaneous unlike that under Windows.
January 4th, 2009
Huh???? Robinson, I haven’t added anything to my Macs / Macbooks and they do just what they’re suppose to do, wake up and work.
The only time I restart my Macs is when I DL software or do a permission repair, which isn’t a bad thing to do on occasion.
January 4th, 2009
Usually, the only time I restart my Mac is after an OS update.