For the past few years, I’ve been doing all my personal computing on an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300. It was a pretty bad machine (as in good bad) in its day, the only problem was that its day was about 5 years ago. Needless to say, my little Toshiba was really outdated and underpowered for today’s applications, particularly as I have begun to experiment with web design (expect a redesign of TI soon!). My frustration finally came to a head and I decided to buy a new laptop that was a little more powerful. On the recommendation of several people, I bought a 2 GHz MacBook Pro, and needless to say, I’m pretty pleased.
My initial impressions upon pulling it out of the box: sexy. The slim, silver anodized aluminum case looks really sharp, hinting at the power that lies within its sleek trappings. It’s really slim, and weighs about 5 lbs. I love this because up to this point, I’ve been lugging around a 13″ laptop that’s three times as thick and weighs about the same, if not more.
Next impression? The screen is stunning. Ultra-high-res goodness. And the graphics are smoothly rendered and sharply detailed. I had to wipe drool off of my lip as the startup screen loaded.
Now, those who know me know that up to this point, I’ve been a PC man. I come from a long and storied line of PC men. My uncles and father and grandfather are PC men. In fact, I am probably the first person in both my immediate and extended family to own a Mac. This kind of ingrained training doesn’t die easily. And I will admit that once I started using OSX, I was a little disoriented. Gone was my familiar ‘Start’ bar. Gone was ‘My Computer.’ gone was my right mouse button! However, after using the OS for the past couple of days, I have to admit that the interface has been really intuitive and extremely user friendly. I still haven’t figured out how to fully leverage the power of OSX, but I’m sure I’ll get there.
Other things I like: the Front Row media interface is really awesome. It’s visually attractive and simple to use with the included infrared remote. It’s perfect for using the MacBook as a media player, which is convenient because…
The MacBook Pro comes with TV-compatible DVI out. So I can plug my laptop into my high-def bigscreen and enjoy HD goodness until my brain melts. You better believe that I plan on trying that out.
Everything is just so snappy. I guess this if born of using a craptastic laptop for a while, but I still appreciate how quickly this computer runs.
So, all in all, I’m fairly pleased with my purchase. I think I’ll like it even more once I get some of my favorite software up and running on it so I can start to use it for what it was intended. Hopefully it will pay for itself.