I switched to a Mac for my personal laptop about 1.5 years ago. I did so after my sister was handed a new 15" PowerBook at work. She, like me, had no particular thoughts on Macs. I bought an iMac right when they came out. Back then, the PPP stack (for dialing to my ISP) was flaky. So, I took it back. Well, I bought my 12" PowerBook in February of 2005 and haven’t looked back. It’s great. When you’re finished using it, just shut the cover. Macs, well, newer ones running OS X, hibernate better than XP. They have some better out of box applications too. Now, I don’t hate XP. I’m typing right now from my 3 year old Sony Vaio running an up to date version of XP Pro. It runs great. I synch my iPod with iTunes running on this machine. And I’ve never had a problem with either the hardware or software. In fact, I like the way XP handles file downloads from the web (using Firefox.) I can click on a PDF in Windows and it downloads and I read it and the file isn’t sitting in my download location (it may be in some other temporary location but I don’t have to know that.) With the Mac, it downloads overtly to my download location, in my case, the desktop. So, both OSs are great. I prefer OS X. But, I like XP too. Here though is the big difference. I love the Apple hardware. The Mac itself (I also haev a Mac Mini). The keyboard, the mouse, the screen. And it’s very well tied to the OS. There isn’t a Microsoft computer. Probably never will be.
Many say they won’t buy a Mac due to cost. Well, here’s an interesting analysis:
I priced a PowerBook Pro 17" (widescreen) with 1GB of memory and a 100GB serial ATA hard drive. It has a standard 256MB video card. A 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo processor. DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW. 802.11G and Bluetooth. OS X. $2,799
I also priced a Dell XPS M1710 (17" widescreen) with 1GB of memory and a 100GB serial ATA hard drive. It has a 256MB video card. A 2.16 Intel Core Duo processor. CD-RW, DVD+/-RW, DL DVD+R. 802.11G and Bluetooth. 2 Year, in-home service. Windows Media Center Edition. $3,064
Take the service built-in to the dell and these machines cost the same. Take into consideration that Apple computer sales are up by 12%, letting you know others are happy with Apple computers, and you’ve got good choice in the market.
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