Greetings everyone!
I'm new here, obviously, and am looking for advice, like so many before me have. The last time my family owned an Apple computer was approximately ten years ago, maybe more. It was a Performa 636 with a little over 100MB in hard drive space and ran Warcraft II and Clarisworks like a champ. After that we moved to a budget PC due to pressure from father's company and haven't so much as glanced at an Apple since.
One reason for this was, of course, games. My adolescence was wasted away on PC only titles, and that suited my needs very fine indeed. High school and college were clear Windows territory which made owning a PC convenient. But things have changed. Mind you, I have never had an egregiously bad experience with a PC. Sometimes they are unnecessarily complicated, but they've never died on me, nor crashed with excessive frequency. They've done their job. But it's time to move on.
In about one year I plan to go to graduate school (or Japan) and in between I'm working at a library and need something of a portable workstation. Now that I've dropped the worst parts of my gaming addiction (slimming myself down from AoE III, Battlefield 2142 and a host of half-baked titles down to a quiet appreciation for the game of Go) I want to find a computer that suits new needs.
I currently own two Dell machines. One is a Dell Inspiron 8200 clocking in at over eight pounds with a fire breathing fan and a roar to match. The other is a workhorse desktop that handles the residual games, photo editing, Photoshop and other small essentials like word processing and e-mail. Since the laptop is no good, and since my desktop more than adequately meets my needs I need a portable computer.
I'd like it to be slim, sleek, lightweight, quiet and hopefully less than 312 degrees Fahrenheit. It is not meant to be a media machine. There may be a DVD in there from time to time, and I might have Lightroom put on it (as I understand it, Picasa is still not available for Apple) but it will be mostly for work and not so much for play. I study and will study Japanese academia, so the Unicode is extremely enticing. Also, the third party work programs (flash cards, reference, OCR) for Apple all look far more efficient and easy than their Windows counterparts. I envisage a laptop that I can whip out, jot down a few notes, reference a contact, check e-mail and quickly sheath. I'm looking for the Iaido of digital work flow.
My search has led squarely to the MacBook. Why not the Pro? First, the Pro seems like more than I need. Second, the Pro is much more expensive. Third, I'm not enamored with the titanium/graphite look of the Pro.
However, I do have concerns about the MacBook. Is it really the portable beauty it seems like it is? I went to a nearby CompUSA but they have the poor things locked tight making any kind of handling more difficult than it should be.
How exactly does the Windows-on-Mac thing work? Is it relatively fluid and fast?
How is the start up time?
Is there a place where I can get a virtual guide through Mac OS X? And not just Leopard features, and ideally not by going to an Apple store. The nearest one is a bit far away.
iWork & Office Suite - If I make a document/spreadsheet in the programs included in iWork, is there a save format than can work in Office, and ideally Office 2007?
How does Safari compare with Firefox?
What kinds of mice/mouses/meeses are compatible with a MacBook? Any kind of USB mouse?
If need be, can I plug the MacBook into my Dell monitor for a larger resolution?
Where can I find a compendium or list of the most useful third party openware programs that people use? I think Widget comes into play here but I'm too far out of the loop to know any better. For example, almost every decent Windows user (who aren't savvy enough to use Linux, I guess) has Firefox, VLC player and a third party AIM client as staples. As far as I can tell these are essentials. Are there parallels in the Apple world?
It seems like the MacBook will get it's "upgrade" in October/November, namely Leopard, but are there other minor tweaks? Can we expect another huge structural revamp in the next year, or is that left to wild speculation?
I believe that's enough questions for now. I tender my computing future to what is undoubtedly a biased but knowledgeable crowd. Luckily I am already biased towards the MacBook, so all I need now is the knowledge.
Cheers!
I'm new here, obviously, and am looking for advice, like so many before me have. The last time my family owned an Apple computer was approximately ten years ago, maybe more. It was a Performa 636 with a little over 100MB in hard drive space and ran Warcraft II and Clarisworks like a champ. After that we moved to a budget PC due to pressure from father's company and haven't so much as glanced at an Apple since.
One reason for this was, of course, games. My adolescence was wasted away on PC only titles, and that suited my needs very fine indeed. High school and college were clear Windows territory which made owning a PC convenient. But things have changed. Mind you, I have never had an egregiously bad experience with a PC. Sometimes they are unnecessarily complicated, but they've never died on me, nor crashed with excessive frequency. They've done their job. But it's time to move on.
In about one year I plan to go to graduate school (or Japan) and in between I'm working at a library and need something of a portable workstation. Now that I've dropped the worst parts of my gaming addiction (slimming myself down from AoE III, Battlefield 2142 and a host of half-baked titles down to a quiet appreciation for the game of Go) I want to find a computer that suits new needs.
I currently own two Dell machines. One is a Dell Inspiron 8200 clocking in at over eight pounds with a fire breathing fan and a roar to match. The other is a workhorse desktop that handles the residual games, photo editing, Photoshop and other small essentials like word processing and e-mail. Since the laptop is no good, and since my desktop more than adequately meets my needs I need a portable computer.
I'd like it to be slim, sleek, lightweight, quiet and hopefully less than 312 degrees Fahrenheit. It is not meant to be a media machine. There may be a DVD in there from time to time, and I might have Lightroom put on it (as I understand it, Picasa is still not available for Apple) but it will be mostly for work and not so much for play. I study and will study Japanese academia, so the Unicode is extremely enticing. Also, the third party work programs (flash cards, reference, OCR) for Apple all look far more efficient and easy than their Windows counterparts. I envisage a laptop that I can whip out, jot down a few notes, reference a contact, check e-mail and quickly sheath. I'm looking for the Iaido of digital work flow.
My search has led squarely to the MacBook. Why not the Pro? First, the Pro seems like more than I need. Second, the Pro is much more expensive. Third, I'm not enamored with the titanium/graphite look of the Pro.
However, I do have concerns about the MacBook. Is it really the portable beauty it seems like it is? I went to a nearby CompUSA but they have the poor things locked tight making any kind of handling more difficult than it should be.
How exactly does the Windows-on-Mac thing work? Is it relatively fluid and fast?
How is the start up time?
Is there a place where I can get a virtual guide through Mac OS X? And not just Leopard features, and ideally not by going to an Apple store. The nearest one is a bit far away.
iWork & Office Suite - If I make a document/spreadsheet in the programs included in iWork, is there a save format than can work in Office, and ideally Office 2007?
How does Safari compare with Firefox?
What kinds of mice/mouses/meeses are compatible with a MacBook? Any kind of USB mouse?
If need be, can I plug the MacBook into my Dell monitor for a larger resolution?
Where can I find a compendium or list of the most useful third party openware programs that people use? I think Widget comes into play here but I'm too far out of the loop to know any better. For example, almost every decent Windows user (who aren't savvy enough to use Linux, I guess) has Firefox, VLC player and a third party AIM client as staples. As far as I can tell these are essentials. Are there parallels in the Apple world?
It seems like the MacBook will get it's "upgrade" in October/November, namely Leopard, but are there other minor tweaks? Can we expect another huge structural revamp in the next year, or is that left to wild speculation?
I believe that's enough questions for now. I tender my computing future to what is undoubtedly a biased but knowledgeable crowd. Luckily I am already biased towards the MacBook, so all I need now is the knowledge.
Cheers!