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Switching to a Mac – But Which One?
By Dave Peterson | February 21, 2008
When I decided I was going to try a Mac, the obvious first question was what model? The day the new iMacs came out, I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I’ve been using laptops as my primary systems for a number of years now, and it’s hard to imagine giving up the mobility (and computing while sitting on the sofa — guess that would be immobility) now. So I knew it had to be a laptop.
It’s a smaller range of choices than when looking for a new PC, because (obviously) you’re dealing with the products of a single company. In Apple’s current product line, that’s the MacBook (their low-mid range machine), the MacBook Pro (their high end machine), and the newly released MacBook Air, their super-thin, super-light object of desire. In the wake of the Macworld keynote, the Air seemed like the only possible choice, but that’s what you’re supposed to think when Steve Jobs stops talking. On second, third and fourth thought, I knew that it was a fine computer for some people, but not me. It would be great for a frequent traveler or daily coffee shop denizen who wants a machine for e-mail, web, and light, productivity-type apps, but I tend towards a need for greater horsepower.
Which brought me to the next filter: Would this be a little test machine, just to give me a taste of the hardware and software of Apple? Or was I going to truly attempt to replace my primary computer, a two-and-a-half-year-old Dell Inspiron 9300? The Dell has long since outstripped its internal storage and I’ve been off-loading those duties to a number of external drives. Its 1 GB of memory is starting to feel a bit strained. So, yes, I can justify a new primary computer. I started checking out configurations of the 17” MacBook Pro. I was about pull the trigger on a maxed-out configuration when Neal Campbell advised me that the buzz was that a refresh of Apple’s high-end laptop was right around the corner. I’m the guy who bought the iPhone two weeks before its storage was doubled, so I knew it would be worth a bit of a wait for the newest laptop
So that’s where I am, now, waiting for the new MacBook Pro, which I anticipate maxing out on the specs, to give Apple a real chance to prove itself to me. The Mac community seems to feel this could come on almost any given Tuesday, the new release day for the company.
Waiting… waiting… waiting…
Topics: Switching to a Mac |