Me and my macBook
me and my macBook
More then 3 weeks using the macBook and I am more than happy.
This little thing truly is an amazing thing. Here I wanted to Tell little bit about my experiences.
Me as a full time programmer doing mostly web-developments I needed something that was faster then my old 1.8GHz/512MB Latitude but I also needed to get rid of windows. In my personal opinion people don't use a OS, but use software that is running on top of a OS. So I really don't care about what I 'run'. I could ask myself why not buy a laptop and install Linux? Well buying a laptop here in Ecuador is like buying a house, you get Windows and I don' want windows. I have been using it since the dawn of windows 3.0 and now it was time for something else. I also didn't really want to have Linux because I needed something that works out of the box. I didn't want to find drivers and configure the system like in Windows. So I bought the macBook. Everybody (Specially Jesus, Cy on #TYPO3)) told me it is the most brilliant thing ever.
I recently had to buy a mouse for it, I didn't want to spend to much money buying a mighty mouse, so I bought a Genius mouse for $10,- The funny part is that the sales guy did put it in his XP computer that was on display in the shop. Where windows XP needs a driver, (you know these old floppy's where supplied) I could plug it into the macBook and starting to use it.
These are my pro and cons experiences:
Pros
- This thing really works out of the box from WIFI to the camera, USB devices etc. it simply works.
- Decent Battery live of about 4 hours with WIFI on setting in bed programming and serving the net.
- Although I would like have to see the screen a tad bigger in size and a higher resolution (I was always used to 1600x1200) this works well and the letters are clearly visible, even with small font sizes
- It's fast working with my software, maybe because of my 1.25GB or RAM
- All software I need (I am not a gamer) works out of the box, or almost out of the box. Eclipse, word, open Office, FTP tools SSH
- All external hardware I tried so far works out of the box (USB HD, mouse, digital camera)
Cons
- I find the keyboard sometimes a bit small, and I have yet to find the 'INS' key, I use that key a lot when working on shell with the midnight commander.
- When I use gaim 1.5, I cannot find anymore how to insert character like # and @. it did worked... and now it doesn't... I truly don't have a clue why yet.
- Low screen resolution... It would be great if newer version will come with a slightly bigger screen and resolution. But that would be called a macBook Pro then?
- Graphics are really slow when using OpenGL I have this fish screen saver (really cool) but when I put anywhere between 4 and 10 fish on my screen the internal Fan goes on and processors running at full speed.
My conclusion so far is that this macBook is made for me (well almost) and for all sorts of programming I currently do it does the job. Properly in about 1 or 2 years I will give this on to my wife Karina and I know for sure that I will be a new macBook (maby Pro).
kind regards,
Ries van Twisk