I'm not a PC - joined the darkside!

[Alex Snyder]

Just kidding on the image - I'm still at a 3:1 PC to Mac ratio.

We've had an intern working at Checkered Flag for almost a year now and he is about to finish. During that time I've been watching him work off an old MacBook Pro doing work faster. I've been watching in envy.

When I visited Dealer.com the other week many of them were running around with MacBooks of various sizes and styles. They weren't plugging their laptops in, while those of us on Windows-bound laptops were running from room to room with a power cord in tow. I was jealous.

I have always wanted a Mac. I've turned many people on to them, but haven't made the leap myself because they're expensive, I already had everything I needed covered, and I didn't want to have to reinvest in all my Adobe software again.

I grabbed lunch with our intern yesterday (hate calling him that) and told him how I've been wanting to get another laptop. I was in the air between a Mac and an Alienware and he had the answers to my 3 issues for not going Mac......anyway.....that's a long build-up to say I've joined the dark side.

About OS-X and being on a Mac:
Things make sense. I've found myself over-complicating things because I'm trying to apply my PC background to certain tasks and have gotten frustrated. However, when I finally figure out how the Mac way is, everything makes perfect sense. I've found myself saying "why didn't Microsoft do it that way from day one" a few times now. OS-X with the MBP's track pad is an amazing way to get things done fast. Various combinations of finger sweeps and the number of fingers used almost makes it so you're only using the mouse on web pages. Spaces is like having 4 to 16 monitors beause you can setup different programs on different "desktops" and flip to those next "desktops" at the press of a button. Say you're building an advertisement for the weekend that is going to go on 6 different websites, and all the instructions for the ad are in your email, but there are attachments too (video file, radio script, extra images) so you make one space your email with all those extra attachments, another space Photoshop, another space Illustrator, and another space your websites you'll be uploading the ads to. You don't Alt +Tab through programs anymore - you have full spaces designed around each goal.

Take all that into account with a very solid laptop, a beautiful screen (with a more useful resolution), great battery life, and a whole new plethora of free products designed by Apple fantatics and you've got yourself a nice little package.

Speaking of battery life: on my Vaio and other laptops I see about 1 hour of battery life - I'm a heavy user. Doing even more heavy lifting, I've gone through 2 charge cycles of over 3 horus each.

P.S. I haven't given up my PC's yet.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I've been messing around with the idea myself.

 

[Alex Snyder]

I've been messing around with the idea myself.

You of all people I know will love it!

 

[Mitch Gallant]

I'm ordering one on the first of the month... I can't wait!

The adobe software shouldn't be much of a concern when you switch platforms, Adobe will simply switch the liscence from Windows to Mac... which is great unless you utilize the liscence on two computers (don't know anyone who doesn't), so somthing like parallels might be usefull...

 

[AndrewDiFeo]

Converted my home PC's to an Imac and Macbook Pro a year ago, love it. Most of the video games I play are on 360 or PS3 so the Mac was the way to go for me, even though I haven't loaded Windows on it...skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7

 

[Alex Snyder]

even though I haven't loaded Windows on it...skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7

I put VMWare on mine and it is about 98% as good as being on a Windows machine. Of course, I installed XP because running Vista simultaneously with OSX would have been a serious resource killer.

So far, my only issues with running some Windows things have to do with our Microsoft Exchange server being the 2003 edition. We really need to upgrade to 2007.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Yesterday I put the MBP through a tough trial run while visiting one of our stores. I was redesigning process plans in the CRM which is a very difficult task because you can really screw things up if you don't think things through. When I redesign these things I have to go into the process plans for other stores and look at reports to see what is and what isn't working.

I used FireFox, Safari, and IE7 through VMWare plus another instance of IE7 to keep up with my email. So I quickly setup 4 "Spaces" and dumped each section into its own space. By pressing Apple Key + Arrow Key I could quickly jump into the other programs to see what was going on between 6 different CRM process plans, email templates, manager alert notifications, videos, flash files, reports, current activities screens, and was trouble-shooting people's issues all from one little laptop. The only way to do this better would have been to have had 4 monitors, but then my wrist would have been tired from dragging a mouse across so much screen real estate.....and I don't want to drag 4 monitors from store to store.

When I got home I was doing some of the same stuff while sitting on my couch watching a movie with some alcohol in hand.

OS-X on a latptop = Mobile Multitasker's Dream!

 

[mattwatson81]

Yesterday I put the MBP through a tough trial run while visiting one of our stores. I was redesigning process plans in the CRM which is a very difficult task because you can really screw things up if you don't think things through. When I redesign these things I have to go into the process plans for other stores and look at reports to see what is and what isn't working.

I used FireFox, Safari, and IE7 through VMWare plus another instance of IE7 to keep up with my email. So I quickly setup 4 "Spaces" and dumped each section into its own space. By pressing Apple Key + Arrow Key I could quickly jump into the other programs to see what was going on between 6 different CRM process plans, email templates, manager alert notifications, videos, flash files, reports, current activities screens, and was trouble-shooting people's issues all from one little laptop. The only way to do this better would have been to have had 4 monitors, but then my wrist would have been tired from dragging a mouse across so much screen real estate.....and I don't want to drag 4 monitors from store to store.

When I got home I was doing some of the same stuff while sitting on my couch watching a movie with some alcohol in hand.

OS-X on a latptop = Mobile Multitasker's Dream!

There are programs to enable multiple desktops on PCs as well.

 

[Alex Snyder]

I'm ordering one on the first of the month... I can't wait!

Thursday - right Mitch? Just remember this simple thing: if you can't figure out how to do something on the Apple, think about how your grandmother would do it - I keep finding myself over complicating things because I'm so used to the PC.

By the way, I've discovered a couple of small issues that can be easily gotten around with VMWare or Parallels:

1. Microsoft Excel for Mac has some issues with spreadsheet attachments that come from a PC through email. The exact same file can be transported over a harddrive or thumb drive and there won't be any issues at all. I read something on MacForums about a file-fixer thing that is made specifically for this issue, but have not downloaded it yet. SnowLeopard (next Apple OS) might be here in 2 weeks and that is supposed to make OS-X work with windows machines even more.

2. Blackberry hates Apple. If you want to upgrade your BB operating system or back the device up, don't do it in OS-X. RIM only supports a Windows OS. Again, using Windows through VMWare is a way around this.

3. Cisco doesn't like Apple either. If you have a security-crazed IT department, then they probably use Cisco , instead of Microsoft, for VPN connections. Cisco does have AnyConnect that doesn't matter what you're on, but overall Cisco only likes Windows 32 Bit operating systems.

Those are really my only 3 issues. And compared to the pluses, they're no big deal. I will get the Excel and Cisco things worked out. I just haven't spent a lot of time researching either because I have a few different networked drives that I usually use for passing things through. Fortunately, I only see spread sheets being emailed around month-end close-out when I'm working in ADP anyway, which means I'm on a PC for that.


Next up for me, is going to be the 24" display, adapters, keyboard and mouse because this things is definitely good enough to hang with my desktop on the bigger Adobe programs and they're better programs on the Apple (more options and better interface).

 

[andwrig]

I tried a Mac for awhile a few years ago and found that it just didn't work for all of the heavy Microsoft/IBM corporate applications I was using and logging into. They are very cool but I didn't see the benefit. In fact, the Mac was more of a hindrance than anything else. The iLife apps were cool, like iMovie and iPhoto. I bought a new Dell laptop a few months ago and beefed it up pretty good. It was less than a comparably equipped Mac and the battery life is AWESOME! It's a Latitude E6400.