All,
Many thanks for your tips on what to expect with my first mac.
I write this to you now on Safari on my 17 inch Powerbook (5400 HDD and 128 MB Graphics) which arrived on Friday.
I now have Office 2004 installed which means I can access my corporate Exchange Server and bin my work-issued rubbish wintel laptop.
It all works great and in the main I am very happy.
- No dead pixels on my 17 inches of lovely TFT. Great looking apps including the Office 2004 Project centre which rocks.
- Pretty easy transition from Windows (note to others remember the Apple key rather than CTRL {I know Apple invented CTRL-C!}, the lack of a delete key {irritating}, the lack of a UK customized keyboard {@ and " in the wrong place}).
- I love the sleep functions which work perfectly, waking up in around 5 seconds - compared to my 6 Windows laptops over the last 10 years which all failed to reliably recover Windows from hibernation.
- Transition was pretty seamless - I will provide a further migration update in the next few days unless this one gets flamed too much ;-)
- Integrated OK with my existing wireless and wired networks without too much hassle (although my 40-bit hex key was a pain to type in)
A few observations and myths to be dispelled:
1. "You never have to re-boot to install apps on a Mac"
Not true. 3 of the Apps I have installed have requested a re-boot on install, examples include Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro.
2. "Macs never crash"
Not true. After two days use I find I have a known bug with the screensaver (if you know a fix please flame me mercilessly but leave me the solution). I leave the screensaver to come on after 5 mins. I enter the password after it is active (a standard Apple screensaver) and get a black screen with a working mouse pointer and that's it. No matter what I press I can only recover by holding down the power button for 5 secs until it forces a power off and then restart. After spending some time on google it appears this is a known bug. No more screensavers for me. What a pity such simple functionality doesn't work.
I have just ordered another 512MB of RAM to speed things up as 512MB alone seems to be not quite enough.
Do I regret spending 25% more on a Powerbook than the most expensive Wintel laptop I could find? No - it looks better than any of them and works as well as them - the screen is great although Word in Office 2004's default 100% view is not quite bit enough - 125% is better. Watching DVD's on this is amazing!
My iPod is the only other irritation. Having built a library on my Windows PC, when I first connect the iPod to the PB it wants to update the firmware and can't without wiping the whole thing. It would appear the only way I can have a music library on my PC in iTunes and on my PB in iTunes is to rip the CDs into both independently. Good job I ripped themm first using CDEX into MP3 then and imported. This way it is a simple copy and paste job followed by an import. I will leave the iPod as FAT32 so I can use it as a portable HDD.
(edit) - I forgot to mention the F9 view all open windows - best feature ever!
Thanks for your earlier advice and looking forward to a screensaver solution!
Many thanks for your tips on what to expect with my first mac.
I write this to you now on Safari on my 17 inch Powerbook (5400 HDD and 128 MB Graphics) which arrived on Friday.
I now have Office 2004 installed which means I can access my corporate Exchange Server and bin my work-issued rubbish wintel laptop.
It all works great and in the main I am very happy.
- No dead pixels on my 17 inches of lovely TFT. Great looking apps including the Office 2004 Project centre which rocks.
- Pretty easy transition from Windows (note to others remember the Apple key rather than CTRL {I know Apple invented CTRL-C!}, the lack of a delete key {irritating}, the lack of a UK customized keyboard {@ and " in the wrong place}).
- I love the sleep functions which work perfectly, waking up in around 5 seconds - compared to my 6 Windows laptops over the last 10 years which all failed to reliably recover Windows from hibernation.
- Transition was pretty seamless - I will provide a further migration update in the next few days unless this one gets flamed too much ;-)
- Integrated OK with my existing wireless and wired networks without too much hassle (although my 40-bit hex key was a pain to type in)
A few observations and myths to be dispelled:
1. "You never have to re-boot to install apps on a Mac"
Not true. 3 of the Apps I have installed have requested a re-boot on install, examples include Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro.
2. "Macs never crash"
Not true. After two days use I find I have a known bug with the screensaver (if you know a fix please flame me mercilessly but leave me the solution). I leave the screensaver to come on after 5 mins. I enter the password after it is active (a standard Apple screensaver) and get a black screen with a working mouse pointer and that's it. No matter what I press I can only recover by holding down the power button for 5 secs until it forces a power off and then restart. After spending some time on google it appears this is a known bug. No more screensavers for me. What a pity such simple functionality doesn't work.
I have just ordered another 512MB of RAM to speed things up as 512MB alone seems to be not quite enough.
Do I regret spending 25% more on a Powerbook than the most expensive Wintel laptop I could find? No - it looks better than any of them and works as well as them - the screen is great although Word in Office 2004's default 100% view is not quite bit enough - 125% is better. Watching DVD's on this is amazing!
My iPod is the only other irritation. Having built a library on my Windows PC, when I first connect the iPod to the PB it wants to update the firmware and can't without wiping the whole thing. It would appear the only way I can have a music library on my PC in iTunes and on my PB in iTunes is to rip the CDs into both independently. Good job I ripped themm first using CDEX into MP3 then and imported. This way it is a simple copy and paste job followed by an import. I will leave the iPod as FAT32 so I can use it as a portable HDD.
(edit) - I forgot to mention the F9 view all open windows - best feature ever!
Thanks for your earlier advice and looking forward to a screensaver solution!
