Hi all
I've long admired the Macbooks/Pro's and was waiting for the new ones to come out until I decided on which laptop to go for next as my current IBM Thinkpad that has served me well is 3 years old now and in need of upgrading.
If I do end up having to stick with a Windows laptop then I would most probably go for another Thinkpad as I think they're one of the most solid machines out there and the keyboard is the best I've ever used. Vista though has been a pain and has slowed things down considerably, should have stuck with XP. But I'm quite keen to experience this whole 'it just works' philosophy of the Macbooks/Pros.
My main concern on the Apple side though is whether or not it would be suitable for my work that I do on it. With personal use I mainly just use it for surfing the net, emails, music, pics, videos etc etc. Never play games and don't really intend to. But I also use it for work which is the majority of the day and most days and as a financial adviser there's several programmes that I have on my laptop that are used on a daily basis such as quotation and resource systems. I've spoken to the technical departments of most of these programmes and they've confirmed to me they will only run on Windows. But then I'm aware I can also run Windows on a Mac so could still have them on there but would just need to switch between the two OS's.
The other things I use every day for work are Outlook for email and Calendar (synched with colleagues, meeting invitations, business contacts etc. I have both my personal account and work account set up on Outlook and it's crucial for work), Word and generally all aspects of Office 2007.
My company also uses Microsoft Exchange Server in the office and for our email which I connect to wirelessly in the office. I have shortcuts to the office server on my laptop which are used daily for accessing client folders etc, passing folders and files between other colleagues on the server, printing to the office printer/scanner/fax which is on the server etc. Then if working from home I have a VPN connection for accessing the office server from anywhere. I had a brief chat with the I.T company that look after our office/network/server but as they only cover Windows machines they weren't able to help much. They did huff and puff a bit though and said that I could have issues accessing the server and printer, networking etc with the Mac. Also that I'd be on my own in terms of support and that the safe option would just be to buy a new Windows laptop. Does anyone else use their Mac for these purposes or know if there could be any issues?
From what I've read one option could be to use Boot Camp and just boot into Windows while doing my work and then boot into OSX for personal use. That's not such an ideal solution though. The ideal would be that OSX was able to do pretty much everything that I do now so that I very rarely have to go over to Windows. From what I've googled and read so far though this isn't looking like it will work like that simply though sadly.
Hopefully some of the people here who are knowledgable on Macbooks can advise me on the above! No matter how great the Mac's are if it won't be able to do what I use it for the majority of the time as well as my current laptop does then I guess I'll just have to accept that a new Windows laptop will be best for me.
Thanks in advance!
Dan.
I've long admired the Macbooks/Pro's and was waiting for the new ones to come out until I decided on which laptop to go for next as my current IBM Thinkpad that has served me well is 3 years old now and in need of upgrading.
If I do end up having to stick with a Windows laptop then I would most probably go for another Thinkpad as I think they're one of the most solid machines out there and the keyboard is the best I've ever used. Vista though has been a pain and has slowed things down considerably, should have stuck with XP. But I'm quite keen to experience this whole 'it just works' philosophy of the Macbooks/Pros.
My main concern on the Apple side though is whether or not it would be suitable for my work that I do on it. With personal use I mainly just use it for surfing the net, emails, music, pics, videos etc etc. Never play games and don't really intend to. But I also use it for work which is the majority of the day and most days and as a financial adviser there's several programmes that I have on my laptop that are used on a daily basis such as quotation and resource systems. I've spoken to the technical departments of most of these programmes and they've confirmed to me they will only run on Windows. But then I'm aware I can also run Windows on a Mac so could still have them on there but would just need to switch between the two OS's.
The other things I use every day for work are Outlook for email and Calendar (synched with colleagues, meeting invitations, business contacts etc. I have both my personal account and work account set up on Outlook and it's crucial for work), Word and generally all aspects of Office 2007.
My company also uses Microsoft Exchange Server in the office and for our email which I connect to wirelessly in the office. I have shortcuts to the office server on my laptop which are used daily for accessing client folders etc, passing folders and files between other colleagues on the server, printing to the office printer/scanner/fax which is on the server etc. Then if working from home I have a VPN connection for accessing the office server from anywhere. I had a brief chat with the I.T company that look after our office/network/server but as they only cover Windows machines they weren't able to help much. They did huff and puff a bit though and said that I could have issues accessing the server and printer, networking etc with the Mac. Also that I'd be on my own in terms of support and that the safe option would just be to buy a new Windows laptop. Does anyone else use their Mac for these purposes or know if there could be any issues?
From what I've read one option could be to use Boot Camp and just boot into Windows while doing my work and then boot into OSX for personal use. That's not such an ideal solution though. The ideal would be that OSX was able to do pretty much everything that I do now so that I very rarely have to go over to Windows. From what I've googled and read so far though this isn't looking like it will work like that simply though sadly.
Hopefully some of the people here who are knowledgable on Macbooks can advise me on the above! No matter how great the Mac's are if it won't be able to do what I use it for the majority of the time as well as my current laptop does then I guess I'll just have to accept that a new Windows laptop will be best for me.
Thanks in advance!
Dan.
. My colleagues cannot tell the difference. Supposedly the next version of OS X will have better support for Exchange Server through Mail, iCal, etc. and I'm really looking forward to that. 
