Am I addicted?

I originally bought my Macbook Pro on craigslist.com. It was my first one and since it was faster than most PC laptops, I didn't realize it was the 2006 model. It's battery only lasts 2 hours (which it has started dying within 10 minutes even after replacing the battery, wonder why guy sold it) instead of 8. Now I want new Macbook Pro. Funny!

Macs just work

I bought a Macbook Pro from someone on craigslist.com.  It was the 2006 model but it is faster and smoother than any Windows 7 64 bit machine that I've worked on.  For work, I've bought 6 different Windows 7 64 bit laptops in the past 2 1/2 months and set them up for the owner, his wife and several employees.  Windows 7 is definitely better than Windows XP or Vista, especially with the new Intel processors, but in comparison this 3-4 year old Mac outperforms and is more stable.  3 GB of memory on a Mac is amazing compared to 4 GB of memory on a Windows 7 PC.

What I love is the software just runs.  In 3 months, it has locked up on me once when I had the settings for a printer incorrect.  It reminds me of the stability of Unix when I used it 15-20 years ago.  I guess that is why Macs are so stable.  I never understood the value of controlling the hardware and the operating system when I was only using Windows.  But Windows software has to be written to supports thousands of different kinds of PCs from thousands of manufacturers with hundreds of thousands of different peripherals.  It has allowed the PC market to grow so huge but it has caused PC's and Windows to perform with mediocrity.  Working on these Windows 7 machines, they stall and lock up from time-to-time while I am getting everything installed and working on them.  It is just dealing with all the different kinds of hardware attached.  Controlling both the hardware and the operating system enables Mac software to optimize itself for a short list of different machines and peripherals.  It enables Macs to deliver superior performance and stability that I forgot existed.

Spotlight - I love how fast this finds everything on my computer related to whatever I typed in the search box.  The answers are coming up as I type instead of some whirling icon that spins for many seconds or minutes.  I don't see the same performance from Windows and when Windows software is indexing my computer, I feel a performance drop.  I never even knew when my Mac was indexing everything on my computer to pull it up so fast.

Safari - I really like this browser.  I like the top sites feature.  I like how fast it goes to my websites.  I like how fast it goes to the links.  It doesn't perform the same way with the Windows version.  I like how it works with the key chain to remember my website passwords.  Just smooth.

What caused me to buy a Mac after all

Nathanael Brubaker, at Coleson Foods (where I now work), got a Macbook Pro.  He didn't tell me much about it but I knew that he was able to boot to Windows.  Jeff Lingle, from Sequoia Technology (the company that supports our servers) bought a Macbook Pro and told me a little bit about his.  He also told me about some cool software called Parallels, where you could run Windows applications at the same time that you ran Apple software.

A good friend, Christina Ross (another employee at Coleson Foods), bought a Macbook.  She REALLY liked and kept telling me how much I would love it.  I  also had bought Christina a copy of Parallels for Christmas but she ended up not needing it.  It got me thinking that I would hold onto the copy IF I got a Mac.  She also mentioned that a friend of hers told her to tell me that the Mac operating system was based on Unix.  I already knew that but it made me think about how robust Unix was in multiuser and multitasking abilities.  I think Christina pushed me over the edge in what I had been considering since Nathanael bought his Macbook.

However, I remembered my negative experience several years before so I went to www.apple.com/findouthow/mac and watched every PC to Mac video tutorial, actually every 'beginner' tutorial on the website.  That helped me to learn about the dock, how to size windows, finder, system preferences and other features.

I ended up looking for Macbook Pros on craigslist.com and found someone  down in Pueblo who seemed to have taken good care of his.  We negotiated and I got my Macbook Pro 15" with iWork09 and iLife09.  Since that time, I converted my downloaded copy of Office 2007 over to Office 2008.  I've also installed Parallels and Windows 7 (64 bit version), which I run in Coherence or Crystal mode.  I never had to give up anything that I liked in Windows and I get to use the amazing software on the Mac platform.  It is the best of both worlds.