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Just Pulled the Trigger... After Pondering for 6 Months

D

davisjj

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 4, 2009
11
0
Hi All! New member, first time poster here! :cool:

Well, quick history... I'm an IT manager for a Windows shop and honestly I'm not really anybody's fanboy. My main work notebook is currently a Toshiba (my company is owned by Toshiba) A10 running Windows 7 beta (7000 build). I have an iMac in my home office (the one just prior to the aluminum iMacs). My wife has a Vista notebook for her photography business (don't get me started on the oddity of a household where the artsy photographer woman doesn't like Macs and prefers Vista, but the engineer/IT manager guy uses a Mac at home). Oh, and from time-to-time, I get around to playing with an Ubuntu box. Long story short, I'm probably just really geeky type that loves it all. :)

Anyway, I've been toying with getting a new MBP for awhile now and I finally pulled the trigger a few minutes ago. Well, actually, I bought a refurb (15" Uni, 2.53 GHz) from Apple.com. I had a budget of $2500 (at no interest for a year), and I toyed with buying from Amazon (new), but I got tired of waiting for them to bring back the $100 rebate. I feel pretty good about getting a refurb direct from Apple, based on everything I've read on here. Oh, and I'm getting bonus points via my credit card's rewards program.

Now, that left me with a little $ left over, so I bought a refurb 40GB Apple TV too. That was the impulse buy. My wife is so gonna kill me tomorrow (one of those "you can buy it if you want to, but I still reserve the right to kill you later if I'm not in a good mood" comments). :p

All that, after tax, with free shipping, I'm out the door at $2,488.88. I can't wait! :D
 
Congratulations! I know you'll enjoy your new MBP... and your wife may, too!
 
Me to, after years and years of sticking to PC's I made the switch to Mac. O' life is so much easier now but it is taking me a bit of time to cross over.
 
Ya, you know there's just something about a little variety in my day. I mean, I use Windows all day, and I like it. When I come home, I like OS X!
 
Fortunately. my work only uses Outlook to process email, so there is not much involvements in Windows as such. I just laughed at our workers crashing Vista and the boss complaining and no body could do a thing about the corporate policy to use Win2K/Vista. No Xp in our workplace, no OSX, except days when I bring my my AIR just to do Web access with Outlook. The windows "conspiracy" probably cost our company 5% in overhead if someone bothers to solve that problem.

My home has 5 Macs for everyone and 3 PCs which were legacy I thinkered with some years ago... OSX is cool and Windows 7 just OK. Vista plainly sucks bit time, so i will not touch it ever again..
 
Congrats OP!

I'm sort of a Jack-Of-All-Trades for an enterprise webapp at work. I'm doing a little dev work, maintenance work, etc. Without getting in to too many details, I was amazed how hard it is to get anything but Windows Server past IT in a fairly large organization. I knew I'd win, but I lost. Even though this webapp runs on Tomcat and every indication showed we would get much better performance and less maintenance running on one of its supported *NIX platforms, IT would not have it! Now I am stuck with frequent headaches. Really weird stuff, especially if you come from a *NIX environment it feels like MS would be doing worldwide productivity a big favor by getting out of the server biz. We get inferior results + maintenance-wise Windows is a needy & quirky server OS. I wish IT would get on board with the best tool for the job instead of being homogeneous, which means Windows.

I think the perception among some is OS X is a toy, or an artist's OS, but under the hood is a robust UNIX workhorse that makes Windows, by contrast, the real toy.
 
Congratulations on your MBP, and may both you and your MBP live long together and prosper. I'm a switcher from last year, so I share your enthusiasm, and I'm very happy with my MBP.

However, I am at present in the Caucasus, where my current working environment is entirely, and explicitly Windows, a situation I am not in a position to change, unfortunately. Yes, I share your amazement at the reluctance of large organisations to contemplate changes which may prove advantageous for them.

Cheers and good luck
 
davisjj said:
Hi All! New member, first time poster here! :cool:

Well, quick history... I'm an IT manager for a Windows shop and honestly I'm not really anybody's fanboy. My main work notebook is currently a Toshiba (my company is owned by Toshiba) A10 running Windows 7 beta (7000 build). I have an iMac in my home office (the one just prior to the aluminum iMacs). My wife has a Vista notebook for her photography business (don't get me started on the oddity of a household where the artsy photographer woman doesn't like Macs and prefers Vista, but the engineer/IT manager guy uses a Mac at home). Oh, and from time-to-time, I get around to playing with an Ubuntu box. Long story short, I'm probably just really geeky type that loves it all. :)

Anyway, I've been toying with getting a new MBP for awhile now and I finally pulled the trigger a few minutes ago. Well, actually, I bought a refurb (15" Uni, 2.53 GHz) from Apple.com. I had a budget of $2500 (at no interest for a year), and I toyed with buying from Amazon (new), but I got tired of waiting for them to bring back the $100 rebate. I feel pretty good about getting a refurb direct from Apple, based on everything I've read on here. Oh, and I'm getting bonus points via my credit card's rewards program.

Now, that left me with a little $ left over, so I bought a refurb 40GB Apple TV too. That was the impulse buy. My wife is so gonna kill me tomorrow (one of those "you can buy it if you want to, but I still reserve the right to kill you later if I'm not in a good mood" comments). :p

All that, after tax, with free shipping, I'm out the door at $2,488.88. I can't wait! :D
Click to expand...

Thank you for joining the forum. I am getting sick of fanboys. Good luck with your new toys!
 
Thanks! It's funny. Mac-only folks don't understand my love for all things Windows Vista and Windows 7, and MS-only folks don't get my love for all things Mac. :D

It's all good. :apple:
 
macrem said:
Congrats OP!

I'm sort of a Jack-Of-All-Trades for an enterprise webapp at work. I'm doing a little dev work, maintenance work, etc. Without getting in to too many details, I was amazed how hard it is to get anything but Windows Server past IT in a fairly large organization. I knew I'd win, but I lost. Even though this webapp runs on Tomcat and every indication showed we would get much better performance and less maintenance running on one of its supported *NIX platforms, IT would not have it! Now I am stuck with frequent headaches. Really weird stuff, especially if you come from a *NIX environment it feels like MS would be doing worldwide productivity a big favor by getting out of the server biz. We get inferior results + maintenance-wise Windows is a needy & quirky server OS. I wish IT would get on board with the best tool for the job instead of being homogeneous, which means Windows.

I think the perception among some is OS X is a toy, or an artist's OS, but under the hood is a robust UNIX workhorse that makes Windows, by contrast, the real toy.
Click to expand...


You have to admit though, without those kind of companies and users, we might not have a job.

In most of the work I did (Sys/Net Admin), I was the only MAC guy in the company and many of them were shocked to see their main IT guy is using a MAC. Even more stunned of the fact that I can still control the network of Windows servers and mainly AD work with a Windows OS running in VM and with Mac version of RDP client. They were happy to see that they could still run Windows on Mac. Many of the people started buying Macs for themselves and as well as bringing them to work. Many of the developers didn’t even know that the OS X is a certified UNIX OS but they liked how I take advantage of multiple screens with Spaces and Dashboard and they thought it could be a major benefit for development purposes.

Now as for the management not wanting to deal with UNIX and MAC when it comes to using BEST tools to provide their services, I can understand why they would want to use Windows. Windows, whether we like it or not, is still the biggest platform with massive amount of software and the biggest market of IT administrators with certifications. It does not matter to them if the UNIX could be the best platform to use.

Many companies loath at having certain people that can’t be replaced because imagine what would happen if those people (god forbid) disappear, like something happened to them. How could they replace them in the fastest and a smooth transition so that it does not disrupt the company productivity. Not to mention it is nice to have the technical support from Microsoft and from those major server suppliers such as HP/Dell.

In order for Apple to be considered in the enterprise market, they have to WANT to be in the enterprise market. They don’t really seem like they want to be in that market, so the longer they act like that, the more likely we might be facing the possibility of banning Macs from being used in the work environment because it only adds more workload on the IT staff for supporting such different philosophy for both platforms. IT staff is becoming much more overworked, underpaid and much more burdened with different projects, they may not be able to handle two different environment at all. I know there are many trained IT staff who can incorporate both, but most IT people were trained with Windows only in their education study. My college (RIT) still use mostly Windows with limited focus on *nix and even more limited focus on Macs.
 
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