I've had a 12" Apple Powerbook for almost 4 years, which is arguably the best technology purchase I've ever made. It's also about the longest I've ever actively used a notebook for day-to-day work.
Prior to this purchase I'd never really been a fan of the Mac, which, from occasional usage in the late 80's and early 90's, had always left me with the impression of a nicely designed but unresponsive graphical interface. In short, the hardware just couldn't keep up with the software. (The phrase "pulling teeth" came to mind when waiting for System 7 to boot up). Also, as a closed source desktop, volume economics meant that Windows had the support of a much greater software ecology by comparison.
And before you ask: no, I don't get the "one mouse button" thing either.
However, I have been a UNIX user since 1992, and in 2003 I was using a notebook with Linux installed for daily work. During that year, I was sitting in a conference room in California and was faced with a painful scenario of having to configure a closed source wireless driver paired with closed source VPN software. The "painful" part of the scenario was that that the supplied object code for the different software components made individual assumptions regarding the version of the underlying kernel (i.e. expecting different kernel versions).
While I was able to dodge something up to get this combination working, it occurred to me it was absolute insanity that I had to work so hard to get network access going ("in this day and age!"). [As an aside, even open source wireless under Linux is still diabolical in terms of a lack of standardisation of configuration options between different wireless chipsets!].
At roughly that time, it came to my attention that Mac OS X (released 2 years earlier) was based on BSD UNIX (tick!). As the OS could assume it was running on Apple hardware, it also had a well integrated network stack (tick!). It also didn't suffer from any ambiguity as Linux did in terms of GNOME and KDE slugging it out for desktop mindshare (big tick!). Given the tax incentives via salary sacrifice, it ended up being an easy decision to buy a Powerbook 12.
From the perspective of daily productivity, not only is the Mac OS X interface both simple and beautiful, but it is also practical. If you haven't seen Expose, it is a far more natural and effective implementation of "alt-tab" under Windows. It is very easy to get used to, and you really notice not having it on alternative systems.
When I changed employers (3 years ago), I briefly used the supplied IBM Thinkpad T41. The Thinkpad, while having an industrial design that NASA in the 70's could have been proud of, was of a relatively decent spec. But O my lord, Windows niceties such as Outlook had me contemplating russian roulette. Once I felt I was competent with the company endorsed tools and software under the standard build, I switched back to my Powerbook, and have never looked back.
The Powerbook is starting to get a little long in the tooth now. It has a 1 GHz PowerPC chip (G4), 1.25 GB of RAM, a 1024x768 screen (I often use a high res external monitor) and a 100 GB hard disk (a manual upgrade prompted by a previous hardware failure). It only just keeps up with my daily work activities, but what is really compelling me to upgrade is the ability to use server virtualisation (Parallels or VMWare) on the new Intel-based Mac notebooks.
The 15" MacBook Pro I just ordered a few days ago (while sitting in the Qantas lounge in Tullamarine airport) will have a dual core 2.4 GHz Intel chip, 4 GB RAM, a 7200 rpm 160 GB hard disk and a 1400x900 screen. The graphics chip and dual link DVI will allow support of my external 2560x1600 monitor at native res! And for these capabilities, the new notebook is a mere pound heavier than my old system.
The only drawback is that the customised build is going to take a month to deliver! I can't wait!
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3 comments:
I was looking at the new Macbooks just the other day with a friend and I was HORRIFIED by the price of a machine which had almost identical specs to my $1400 Dell notebook, which does have the obvious drawback of being a Dell (and yeah, a Windows machine), but has also served me brilliantly for a year now and never once made me wish I had spent a cent more. Of course, I wouldn't throw it around the way I felt comfortable doing with my old Toshiba (that thing would have survived WWIII but I gave it to some rednecks who didn't have a computer when I bought this one).
I had to drool over the idea of a 2560x1600 monitor though. Wish I could fit one of those in my back pocket. When am I going to have a high-res monitor that I can fold up like a piece of paper and carry in my back pocket? It could even unfold itself like one of those flip-out tents, or the windscreen shades you can get for cars.
Anyway, congrats on your purchase :) I hope you enjoy it and you can laugh at me in 2 weeks when my dodgy Dell machine dies and I wish I'd bought a Mac.
Of major importance to me is the salary sacrifice option my employer provides. Combining this with depreciation means I ultimately pay nowhere near the retail price.
If I was considering a PC laptop, the upcoming Dell XPS m1330 (end of June) would be of strong consideration! After owning many laptops of varying sizes, I am a big fan of smaller form factors, and this system looks very well equipped!
However, it unfortunately doesn't handle the prime requisite of running Mac OS X. Even if I was willing to run a hacked version, the support for all the nice hardware wouldn't be good enough -- tits on a bull as they say.
The only thing I haven't seen so far is the res of the m1330 -- I'd love to see what it will do! Dell have typically been bleeding edge with high res screens on laptops.
As a complete aside, I find it both interesting and amusing that Dell - for their enterprise customers - allow upsell of their support so that you can actually use non-Indian call centers. I'd be interested to see the ratio of Indian:non-Indian uptake is.
I wouldn't want to be relying on Dell support of any nationality :p If I didn't have a fairly good idea of how to fix my own laptop and where to get cheap component replacements then I wouldn't buy a Dell.
Salary sacrifice is a beautiful thing.
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