the mac...

Recently I spilled coffee on my work laptop.  Yes it was a stupid careless thing to do but accidents happen.  The upshot of this was I was out of a work laptop for a little while while they determined what was wrong with it.  Fortunately for me all that got damaged was the keyboard, so the damage was minimal.

This left me with some choices as I have a few laptops at home to use.  I have a relatively new HP laptop with a big 17" screen which is very nice.   It runs windows 7, and I primarily have it for gaming and to run iTunes.  The other choice was the old mac book pro my sister gave me.

I chose the Mac.

There are a few reasons I did this.  The primary reason was portability.  The HP is big and heavy and I didn't feel like lugging it around.  Second, I do play games on it.  I have steam and other things installed on it, and didn't particularly want those connecting at work.  However another part of the decision was that I really like having a *nix workstation.  My work computer runs Gentoo Linux and the Mac runs Unix under the hood.  What I wasn't expecting was how much I liked the Mac.  So much so in fact, that I genuinely regret not asking for one when I started.

Why?

Well to be honest, they are very stylish.  Even this 4+ year old Mac Book makes the Dell's we have look like a piece of junk (which in my opinion they are).   I haven't bought/used a Dell in years and have been reminded of why.  It's not the performance or parts.  Those are more than adequate, it's the packaging.  They look and feel cheap.  Now, let me be fair, the reason I got the HP was cost.  To get a laptop with it's feature set (dual drives, 3rd generation i7, back lit kb, 17" 1080p screen and a Nvidia card) I had to go with this laptop.  The comparable Dells were significantly more expensive.  I always choose Nvidia for Linux support, and fully expect to run Linux on in at some point in the future, but I digress, back to the Mac :)

What really surprised me, and this is coming from someone whos never really used one, was how well everything works together.   Maybe I've gotten older, but the Mac is really a joy to use.  So much so that I want to get a newer one.  Yes, this one still works, but it's a core 2 duo, has 2gb ram and has a 200gb drive.   For a "Pro" computer those are some pretty basic specs for a 2008 laptop.  My previous HP blew that away and cost a lot less, but I digress again.  The things that annoy me in the Dell + Linux setup are simple things like undocking the laptop.  The Dell has a terrible screen, so I use external monitors in the docking station at work.  If I undock the laptop X will crash.  Now the Mac doesn't have a docking station, so I have to use just one external monitor, but it works.  Even Windows 7 can undock.

So here's my dilemma, do I spend well over 2k for a laptop for home, where things like undocking don't matter because I *want* a laptop?  The real issue with the new Mac's are that you have to put all the features you want in them at purchase because you can't upgrade them.  Hard drive upgrade?  Nope.  Ram upgrade?  Nope.  I'm just used to being able to upgrade those later.  In my last 2 laptop purchases I've upgraded the ram and added a SSD after I bought them, but to get a Mac with a decent HDD and ram its well over 2k.

Decisions, decisions...   Not to mention Apple is probably getting rid of the 17" MacBook...