My First Mac

By Vermouth

Well, considering I used to be a hardcore Windows PC-only kind of guy, I guess it would make sense to write a column on my first weeks using my brand new Macintosh laptop. That’s right, I finally did it, after months of thinking about getting a Mac and considering getting a Mac, I finally did buy a Mac. No I’m not one of those guys, those switch guys you’ve seen on TV. I’m not abandoning the PC. I still love PC games and Macs just aren’t affordable for serious gaming. Just because I’m not inclined to switch however doesn’t mean that my first Mac hasn’t been a very pleasant experience.

First impressions can be very powerful things, and Apple scores big in that regard. For one thing the battery actually came charged which was very nice and rather unusual in my experience. Furthermore the WiFi actually worked right out of box. I just pulled it out of the box, entered the password, and off I was surfing the net. Frankly, this has been one of my biggest hangups on PC notebooks as they usually requires a mix of astrology and voodoo to get the wireless rolling. I’ve always been left with a feeling that the planets had to align in just the right order for me to get the laptops to become good citizens on my wireless network, whereas both Macs I’ve bought have straightened up and flew straight away.

Now on to the actual hardware itself; the first thing you’ll grasp is that the screen is incredibly beautiful to behold. It’s a 13 inch wide screen, glossy. The glossy screen does wonders if you, like me, are a cave dweller. But if you’re inclined to take your notebook out into the sunshine then you might end up a bit disappointed with the screen. In a high light environment, say like outside on a sunny summer day, the glossy reflective coating can make it quite difficult to see. The flip side of this is if you use the screen inside it really looks like a stunner. The blacks are a bit richer and the colors a bit brighter than you’ll find on a non-glossy screen inside. Another hardware related note, I found the keyboard to be unusually comfortable, especially for a small machine. It’s light and easy to transport and is just a nice piece of physical technology.

Then you get to the machine’s performance. Not to put too fine of a point on it but it’s a wonderful upgrade over the old clunker I replaced it with and is easily on par with my gaming machine. The Core Duo allows for really fast encoding of music into iTunes, and any program that has a universal binary runs very nicely. I’m told that this praise needs to be mitigated a bit as it doesn’t work as well on it’s default amount of memory. I paid 100 dollars to upgrade to 1gig of RAM and that seems to have made all the difference. Every program I throw at the thing runs smooth as butter. Admittedly I haven’t done any super high end work but basic applications are running in a heartbeat, regardless of which OS I’m operating in.

Initially speaking, I wasn’t expecting to do anything but run apps in OS X on my MacBook but I did buy the big hard disk so I could put Windows on it. After putting Windows XP on the system with Boot Camp, it was a bit of a hassle, even more than an average modern Linux desktop installation. But once I got Boot Camp running I’ve been able to run Windows programs without so much as a hitch. I’ve got Civ 4 and Red Alert 2 rolling on here for when I want to play games on the go, and then if I’m doing anything else I can stay in OS X. I’m told Parallels is another option for this but one - it costs even more money, and two - it probably isn’t an ideal solution for playing games as it results in even more overhead.

Normally speaking the best differentiating factor on PCs is price. But when I went out and looked for a small form factor laptop that really fits into my lap, that has a Core Duo and all the key trimmings, I couldn’t find any real value advantage on PCs. I can run all the apps I’d want to use in Windows and all the apps I’d want to run in OS X. I’ve got myself a great mix of compatibility, usability and performance here which I’d recommend to anyone in the market for a midrange (1000-1300 US Dollar range) notebook.