Tuesday, June 17, 2008

MacBook convert


I used to think Macs were for wimps. I used to think only graphic designers, artists and school kids used them. And people used to think the world was flat.

I have seen the light. I am now a Mac convert. I switched over in February to using a MacBook Pro and while it's taken me a while to fully leave behind my Dell laptop, I think I can officially say that I'm there. I haven't had to use my old laptop to do anything in several weeks. Everything I need or want to do is getting done on my MacBook. Yippee!

This laptop is a thing of beauty. Every time I sit down in front of it, I get happy. It just plain looks cool for starters! It did take me a bit of getting used to being in Mac-land, but now that I've made friends with Finder and got all the applications I need installed and working, I can't ever see myself going back to PC-land.

Since I didn't get my MacBook with OS X Server, I have loaded VMWare Fusion so I could have virtual machines for Windows and Linux so I could have an Oracle database install handy. But, that was no big effort and I can easily start/stop an image and even use the Unity feature of VMWare fusion to make my virtual machine "merge" with my Mac desktop so that things look like I'm in a single environment. I could've gone with BootCamp (comes with Mac OS) or Parallels, but VMWare has been a really good fit for me.

I've come a long way from the days when I thought Macs were for wimps. Not only does my MacBook Pro do everything I need it to, it even does stuff I have yet to use. So, if you're thinking of going Mac, I can highly recommend it. Once you go Mac, you never go back!

Cool....just cool!

6 comments:

Steve Karam said...

I actually really enjoy a Mac laptop. However, I will say that Parallels runs Windows flawlessly. What's more, you can download VirtueDesktops to have multiple windows (like X on *nix). So you can run OSX in one window and Windows fullscreen in another, then switch back and forth with hotkeys or even by smacking your laptop on the side (it uses the motion sensor in the laptop)!

Congrats on your Mac. =)

Pete Scott said...

I love my MacBook Pro so much I keep forgetting to get my company to reimburse the purchase price - I just want to keep it!

As a person that plays with so many database versions and operating systems I just love the ability to quickly swap between virtual machines it just makes me so much more productive - I really love Fusion it is so simple.

MacTrader said...

Congratulations on your new purchase. Your reaction seems to be similar to most new users! Good luck discovering all the amazing new applications.

Alex Gorbachev said...

Welcome to the club.
I tried both Parallels and VMware Fusion and the latter is far superior when it comes to resource usage. I could run 3 node Linux RAC on my MacBook while with Parallels I'm struggling to run two nodes - both CPU cores are pretty busy on idle machine. I find Parallels is made only for Windows. Linux can run under parallels but only "somehow".
Well, that's a 4 month old experience but I doubt Parallels improved anything.

Kerry Osborne said...

Well I'm thinking about taking the plunge as well. My two college kids both switched to Mac's this year when their PC's died. (oddly after the first one got a new Mac, the second one's started having problems almost immediately - coincidence? - I think not) Anyway, we've been trying one out at the office to make sure we can get all the VPN clients to work, and Oracle, etc... We haven't looked at VMware yet (only Parallels) so we'll have to give that a look. Thanks for the info.

Alex Gorbachev said...

Cisco VPN works great on Mac. If you ever get "Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem" do "sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart". It restarts CiscoVPN.kext extension.