Ok so I bought my first ever Mac, a Black Macbook C2D around the middle of February. This review is just intended to help people planning to buy a mac and the questions they my have. I had the same doubts as myself so hopefully this should dispel atleast some of them.
First off, this laptop is great. You hear stories about over heating, dead pixels etc. but in my opinion these are just exaggerated as people with good screens and no heating problems do not mention them in the forum. I have been using this laptop for 4 months now and sometimes leave it open overnight also to download stuff. Till now, nothing has happened. Works perfectly and also seems perfect.
Second, the learning curve: There is some learning curve involved. When converting from Windows, you may have some problems but, the great news is apart from all the tons of books u cud read on Mac OS X, there is a wealth of information on the net about the task you have to do and also, there are many forums, this one included where you could ask questions and people would generously reply to u and solve any problem you may have. I personally didnt use any book. Just searched the net for particular problem I was having and generally experimenting with the computer.
Ok, not having a right click may seem a problem at first. It really annoyed me for around two weeks when I had to use Command + Click as right click. But, I later found there you could enable two finger tapping for right click and it works equally well.
Software. This was one of the concerns I had Would my softwares work on a Mac. Short answer: Yes. Previously it was 95% of softwares which could run but now with Bootcamp and Parallels, 100% of your software could work even games.
Consider this. Every major application suite as a Mac version. Firefox, Microsoft Office, Real Player, VLC, Adobe, and even some specialized softwares like Mathematica. If you want to play games, then just use bootcamp and run windows for tht. If you just want to run an occasional software like Computer Based training which are mostly PC based, you could use Parallels to run that app.
Cost: Macs were thought to be more expensive but trust me, with the configurations you get for a Macbook, Dell and others would be more expensive. Just think about it, Macs are atleast Core2 Duo not Core Duo or AMD or anything. Try going to dell store, configure your laptop with the almost exact specs as Macbook and you would find out for yourself. Ofcourse, I dont think you could get Bluetooth with Dell and, would be more bulkier (plus the hassle of dealing with Vista). So all in all, Macs arent that expensive. Maybe a couple of 100$ extra but consider this a chance to future proof your investment with 64bit OS and programs and memory hungry apps.
So, in summary, I think Macbooks dont have as much problems as they are said out to be. If they were, Apple wudnt have 12% market share in Laptops.
The only problem I had was wth audio which seems somewhat too low for some movies/tv shows but I guess extrnal speakers should do the job for that.
Oh yea, and unless something happens in the next 10 seconds, no problem of spontaneous combustion ☺
Hope this eases your decision of converting to a Mac!
First off, this laptop is great. You hear stories about over heating, dead pixels etc. but in my opinion these are just exaggerated as people with good screens and no heating problems do not mention them in the forum. I have been using this laptop for 4 months now and sometimes leave it open overnight also to download stuff. Till now, nothing has happened. Works perfectly and also seems perfect.
Second, the learning curve: There is some learning curve involved. When converting from Windows, you may have some problems but, the great news is apart from all the tons of books u cud read on Mac OS X, there is a wealth of information on the net about the task you have to do and also, there are many forums, this one included where you could ask questions and people would generously reply to u and solve any problem you may have. I personally didnt use any book. Just searched the net for particular problem I was having and generally experimenting with the computer.
Ok, not having a right click may seem a problem at first. It really annoyed me for around two weeks when I had to use Command + Click as right click. But, I later found there you could enable two finger tapping for right click and it works equally well.
Software. This was one of the concerns I had Would my softwares work on a Mac. Short answer: Yes. Previously it was 95% of softwares which could run but now with Bootcamp and Parallels, 100% of your software could work even games.
Consider this. Every major application suite as a Mac version. Firefox, Microsoft Office, Real Player, VLC, Adobe, and even some specialized softwares like Mathematica. If you want to play games, then just use bootcamp and run windows for tht. If you just want to run an occasional software like Computer Based training which are mostly PC based, you could use Parallels to run that app.
Cost: Macs were thought to be more expensive but trust me, with the configurations you get for a Macbook, Dell and others would be more expensive. Just think about it, Macs are atleast Core2 Duo not Core Duo or AMD or anything. Try going to dell store, configure your laptop with the almost exact specs as Macbook and you would find out for yourself. Ofcourse, I dont think you could get Bluetooth with Dell and, would be more bulkier (plus the hassle of dealing with Vista). So all in all, Macs arent that expensive. Maybe a couple of 100$ extra but consider this a chance to future proof your investment with 64bit OS and programs and memory hungry apps.
So, in summary, I think Macbooks dont have as much problems as they are said out to be. If they were, Apple wudnt have 12% market share in Laptops.
The only problem I had was wth audio which seems somewhat too low for some movies/tv shows but I guess extrnal speakers should do the job for that.
Oh yea, and unless something happens in the next 10 seconds, no problem of spontaneous combustion ☺
Hope this eases your decision of converting to a Mac!