douglasmkelly's posterous

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I recently had an episode with my MacBook Pro wherein some coffee was spilled across a table and sucked into the fans on the back. As it turns out caffeine DOES NOT increase a computer's speeds. I know all you PC users, reading this, know what it's like to have a hard drive go, or your monitor give a puff of smoke and keel over. I've had the same thing with PCs my company has repaired or at places I've worked. But this type of thing had never happened on any Mac I've ever owned (6 now). Luckily business insurance covered replacement. One bonus was the prices of Apple computers had come down to pricing where I could upgrade substantially from the previous model. This is only one reason I've not blogged in a couple weeks. The old suped-up Mac G4, I was forced to use, didn't have all the passwords in the Key Chain. Yes, I could have gone to each of the websites, I use daily/weekly, and asked for a new password, but figured I'd have to do that on the new machine anyway.

One warm, sunny, February day (6 days after the "event"), Girl Friend 2.0 entered the house with little fan fare, and the box was opened carefully (but I must admit I was drooling a little). It is sexy. If you've not driven a Mac before, you seriously need to take one around the block. I know some of you like your Windows machines, and the new Windows 7 is much prettier than any other MS version, but Apple is like the 20 year old string-bikini clad bronze-beauty at the beach or that hot girl at the bar: Sleek, sexy, fast... Ok, I digress...

Again to you PC owners: I do own this Mac because it's easier to design art, websites, logos, graphics, illustrations and business cards. Yes it's also easier do image manipulation, documentation and categorization. It's better at chunking through data, massive files and multiple functions. But I use it for churning out spreadsheets, documents and emails easily. I can play games on it... but I don't. You shouldn't play games with your girlfriend. The ONLY thing I can't do, natively, is Dot Net code. You may not know that you can use Parallels, Bootcamp or VMWare with Windows running. If I'd have gotten a PC laptop instead of the MacBook, I'd have issues of software licensing – that goes with out saying, but please tell me 2 reasons to own a PC over a Mac. Valid ones. Not beliefs. Back up your rants with statistical information. I can't see any reason anyone should own a Windows PC over a Mac. Oops, I digressed again...

There are soooo many great traits to this new MacBook Pro: from the LED glossy screen, or the multi-touch track pad, to the ultra quiet fans, the up-to 8GB of RAM, to the 7 hour battery. There's the high end video card (or cards) that come standard. Most everyone knows that Apple builds their machines to work with their operating system and vice versa, making everything scream faster than (almost) every other operating system. I say "almost" because I've seen some bench marks with Linux on the same hardware that quite compare, if not exceed the Mac Snow Leopard (OS10.6) OS. Most of you also know that with an Apple machine you're not going to have to worry about viruses, popups or adware. They are going to run for a very long time (sans coffee), and give you few headaches.

The best thing about this Mac was when I was starting the machine for the first time, believing I was going to be spending the next 3-5 days loading software and configuring it, she asked me if I had and old girlfriend I was upgrading from. I said, "yes", to which it replied, "well go get her". I told her that Girl Friend 1.25 was lying in a coma upstairs, but went and removed her hard drive anyway. I inserted her brain into a SATA external enclosure and plugged it into the USB port. She asked me if I'd like to suck in all the applications, settings and passwords from the old machine! I exclaimed, "Yes, oh yes". And then she did it, in just under an hour. My Tweetdeck, Facebook, Firefox, Photoshop and even Terminal settings and plugins were all there. When I started Firefox the first time, it told me that I had crashed the last time and did I want to reopen all previously opened tabs! No amnesia. My Calendar was there. Thunderbird still held all my mail from immediately before the "event";. It was AMAZING! It was worth $500-700 right there - just for that - not to mention all the other sexy things she sports.

Now, I do have to tell you, a couple things that had to be updated, like the program that needed to be upgraded to Snow Leopard from the Leopard (10.5) version I was running on the old machine. Also my iPhone apps didn't make the move. That could have just been a jealous-lover thing or more likely some way that Apple messes with you, machine to machine. I may have lost $.99 worth of apps, that if it's that all-fire important, I'll re-download.

That's the short of it. If you run into me at a coffee house, sitting in the middle of the place, away from a power source (7 hour battery, remember?); or out at one of the local networking events, I attend weekly, ask me about my sexy new girlfriend. I'll probably gush.