Bye PC, Mac Got Me

For a majority of us, purchasing a new laptop isn’t an everyday thing, and it’s also not typically a small purchase that we just run out and rush into. That’s why it’s important to ask yourself a number of questions prior to purchasing a new computer. In this post, I’ll be helping you answer the question, What will I use this computer for?

I’m a web developer, and I do about 95% of all of my programming and development using Microsoft technologies, on a desktop PC, at my office. The use of my laptop has, and probably will always be more for personal use – pictures, music, videos, responding to emergency situations while out of the office, for checking email while on vacation. Over the years, I never really used my PC laptop to do any real development work. Most often, the only “real work” that I’d do on it was write quotes and proposals for clients. And Mac OSX offers the Microsoft Office Suite which would allow me to create quotes and proposals just as I did with my PC.

Prior to deciding the type of computer that I was going to buy, I put together a list of things that I’d like to use my new laptop for. Your list will probably look different, but this will give you an idea and a starting point of things to consider prior to making your next computer purchase.

• Image editing
• Video editing
• Music management
• Writing quotes and proposals
• Browsing the web
• Email – Personal, work, and other (I’ve got like 500 email addresses)
• Watching movies
• Blogging
• Basic HTML editing
• FTP access
• Remote server access – for my work servers

The above list covers about 90% of my day to day activities that I’d be using my new laptop for. Next, I had to ask myself, what software/features do I need, and how much power do I need to accomplish all of these tasks. Mac OSX comes with iLife and iTunes which takes care of a large portion of the above list, but for advanced photo editing and video editing, I’ll be using Adobe products such as Photoshop, After Effects and Premier. These programs typically require strong processors, and a large amount of RAM. I was never really worried about storage space because I typically will store all of my music, pictures and videos on my home PC server and/or on an external hard drive. The only time videos, music and images will take up space on my laptop hard drive is when I am working on them directly.

My minimal storage space needs, made just about any laptop a perfect fit for me. However, due to the amount of work that I anticipate on doing with digital media (music, pictures and videos), my mind was pretty much set on going with Apple and the OSX operating system, due to all of the easy to use tools that it comes with. My need for a fast processor took the MacBook and MacBook Air out of the equation, thus leaving me with MacBook Pro as my final option. So, now there was only one question left – 15 inch or 17 inch. And I think we all know the answer to that one!

written by Brady \\ tags: email, FTP, image editing, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, video editing

A couple months ago, my laptop computer blew up… literally. I was working on something, when it started to sizzle, then POP. Everything immediately turned off, and smoke started spewing from the computer. It was an HP laptop PC, which I never really had a problem with, until of course it blew up. Until this “incident”, I had never really considered buying a Mac, but when the opportunity/necessity to get a new laptop computer presented itself, I started to consider going Apple, and buying a MacBook. Over the years, I’ve had friends and family who all raved about Mac computers, and this seemed like the perfect time for me to give it some serious thought.

The computer that really got my attention initially was the MacBook Air. There is nothing in the market like it, and that initially sparked my interest. I found myself in the Apple store occasionally playing around with the MacBook Air, then the MacBooks and the MacBook Pros.

My old HP laptop was 17″, I like having the extra screen real estate, so I decided to buy a MacBook Pro 17″. The computer was about the same size in terms of width and height, but the depth when closed was about half, and the weight of the computer was about half as well. The MacBook Pro is a very sleek and well designed laptop, plain and simple.

So when the time actually came to make the purchase, there were a few questions that I asked myself. These are probably some questions that you should ask yourself too when considering converting from a PC to a Mac.

• What will I use this computer for?
• Which Mac should I buy? In my case, it was: Which MacBook should I buy?
• Will I be able to navigate the Mac OSX operating system?
• Will all of my old PC files be compatible with my new Apple Mac?

I’ll explore the above questions further in future articles, and to conclude this article, I’ll touch on the single biggest selling point that truly sold me on Mac OSX. The Intel based Mac and BootCamp. First of all, the fact that Apple switched to using Intel processors rather than PowerPC processors was huge, and that made BootCamp an viable option for me. I’ll be installing a copy of Windows Vista on my MacBook Pro using BootCamp. Thus far, I haven’t had any need to boot up any PC based programs while using my MacBook Pro, but I’m sure that the day will come, and when it does, I’ll have a dual boot machine that’s ready to go.

written by Brady \\ tags: BootCamp, Intel, Mac, MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, PC, PowerPC