I haven’t upgraded to Vista yet.
It’s not that I’m not eager to use Vista, I’m just not eager to have to go through the head-ache of updating my laptop. I will admit that I’ve been a bit slower since quite a few of my hard-core developer friends have re-installed XP recently.
Part of the problem is my Lenovo T60 laptop is nearing its end of life. I just upgraded the RAM only to find out that the Lenovo/ThinkPad chipset only will recognize 3GB of memory.
The other choice that’s holding me back is Apple. A lot of my friends/co-workers are buying Mac Books and well, I’m jealous. Scott bought a Mac Book Pro and runs Vista natively (and says it is the best computer he has ever bought). Jason has a Mac Book Pro and runs VM Ware, and also swears by it.
Here is why I’m jealous:
- Cleanliness. There are no stickers and random junk stuck all over the laptop. Have you gone to Best Buy or another electronics store and looked at all the crap that OEM’s stick on your laptop? My Lenovo has 3 stickers: Graphics by ATI; Intel Centrino; Microsoft Windows XP. The Microsoft one was the worst. After about 5 months I now just have a shiny silver spot on the keyboard (the image wore off).
- It’s a work of art, seriously. The Mac Book just looks awesome. It’s small, very well engineered, and is much thinner than other laptops I’ve looked at. I’ve got to admit a large part of the appeal is the hardware itself.
- Ready for something new. Maybe it’s the geek in me, but I’m ready to try something new. The Apple OS, Leopard, looks really clean. That and I just love my iPod and if the experience is in any way similar…
- Parallels. I really like the idea that I could run both a Windows OS and the Apple OS together. Not just together but literally integrated together. That just looks cool.
- Media. I’m finding myself doing more and more with media such as photos and videos. The tools on my PC feel clumsy whereas my Apple friends seem to manage media with ease.
- Just about everything I do is on the web. The only non-web applications I use and depend on are: Microsoft Office; QuickBooks; and all development tools. In other words, get me FireFox and there’s a 99% chance I’m happy.
Here is why I’m on the fence:
- Time. The time required to learn something new (right now) just seems like it would ultimately be unproductive considering everything else I want to do. Plus if I’m going to put the time into it I might as well just install Vista.
- Email client. My Apple friends complain vocally about using Entourage (Microsoft Outlook for Mac). I literally live day and night in email. A bad email client is a big negative – of course I would probably be running parallels or VM Ware anyhow.
- Presenting. I do a lot of presenting and I know a few friends have struggled with presenting on the Mac Books from Parallels. Maybe I’m wrong, but this one is a show-stopper for me.
I haven’t made up my mind yet. But everyday I’m pestering Jason with questions about his Mac Book. He even wrote up a post recently for "Mac Converts."
