The Machine
What I like about the Mac:
The Leopard operating system is rock solid. I've owned my Macbook for over a month and the system has yet to crash. Boot times for my Dell would take several minutes, for the Mac it runs about 30 seconds and most of the time, I just close it up without turning off the system. It pops right back up the moment I open the lid. When I try that it XP, it system would go into a fatal sleep mode.
My MacBook is half the size of my Dell and the batteries seem to discharge much more slowly. The built-in wireless card connects to my Buffalo wireless network without a hitch. I connected my laptop to my Canon printer and the system recognized the printer and started printing without a hitch. I was nervous about getting just 2 gigs of RAM - that's just barely enough memory to run Vista, but apparently that's more than enough memory for the Mac. So far, it seems to handle everything I've thrown at it.
Programs are seamlessly integrated together. No need to futz around with settings trying to make programs make nice with each other.
Backup using Time Machine is a dream. I purchased an external Passport HD, reformatted it for the Mac and hooked it up to the USB port on my Mac. Time Machine did the rest. Backups are painless and run in the background.
Oh yeah, the all aluminum case is way cool.
What I don't like:
The glass track pad is a moderate pain in the kiester. Apple did issue a software patch for it, but it still glitches from time to time.
Software:
Being cheap, I opted for iWork instead of Microsoft Office. Although iWork Pages saves documents in its own format, it can read Word files. To save in Word, I have to 'export' the file. Most Mac software is thought of as being more 'intuitive' that Windows, but I'm not convinced. There's still a learning curve which system you use. I generally like Pages. My biggest gripe is that it didn't come with a manual - so help is on disk or on-line. Whoever designed it wasn't a writer. Formatting page numbers, especially starting a novel chapter at any page other than page 1, requires plowing through menus. It's much easier with Word.
Safari vs. Firefox I haven't tried Firefox for the Mac, Safari satisfies most of my needs. It doesn't have the Window's version of Firefox's capability to block ads or install a wide variety of plug-ins, but then again, Safari doesn't have the memory leaks that plague Firefox either.
iPhoto seems lightweight in comparison to Photoshop Elements, so I opted to purchase PE. I've installed it, but haven't used it much. To be effective, I'll need to try to hook the laptop up to a monitor.
My biggest gripe on software is the lack of a decent financial management program. I'd been using MS Money on my PC, but that isn't available for the Mac. Reviews for Quicken for Mac are abysmal, so I've been searching for something to manage my money. I tried a turkey called Cha-Ching. It's a dog, don't bother. I recently bought something called Checkbook which is okay, but not as sophisticated as Money. It'll do for now, but there's a market out there for a programmer willing to work on it.
I love my MacBook. So much so, that I'm thinking about replacing my Dell desktop with an iMac. Sigh, how far the mighty PC snob has fallen.
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