I went into the Apple store with credit card in hand, and honestly had every intention of buying the MacBook Air – 3 pounds! A few minutes later sanity prevailed and I realized that while 80 gigs was as big a laptop hard drive as I’d ever used, it wasn’t going to let me replace my ThinkPad, and that opened the door to the concept of instead of taking one light computer with me on a trip, having to take one light one and the same old heavy one.
So: the MacBook (Black) with 160 gig hard drive.
I was skeptical about the chicklet keyboard and the glossy screen, but Ange has been using one for a few months now and it doesn’t seem as bad as I used to think. I’m really missing the ThinkPad keyboard (soooo nice), but everything else after a few hours of use is head and shoulders above my ThinkPad Z61t:
- When you open the lid, you’re ready to go. Opening the lid on the TP led to an indeterminate wait of 5 to 60 seconds before it would wake up. Then the wireless would decide if it was time to turn on. MacBook: online in seconds.
- The magnetic power adapter. I thought this was silly, but I’ve already found it useful (OK, I was wrapping up the power plug before I unplugged it from the computer, but the whole point of the design feature is to protect computers from people, right?)
- World of Warcraft is fast! Yes, this is more a feature of the dual core processor versus whatever chip was in the older ThinkPad, and an upgrade to the T60 would have probably given me the same oomph. I don’t care, I’m just happy to see 60 fps after far too long at 9.
- Battery life: 4 hours. The old laptop got just under 2 with wireless off and doing nothing but coding. A fresh battery would have helped, but I’ve never seen 4 from a Thinkpad – the things bleed 10% of their charge overnight.
- 5 pounds. The ThinkPad was 6 I think. 1 pound never seemed like such a big deal before. It’s not the 3 pounds of the Air, but I’m happy with the lighter device, and my shoulder is too.
I’ve installed Parallels, and Visual Studio just finished installing so I’m looking forward to seeing how this “best of all worlds” theory pans out. I’ll still be doing most of my coding on my desktops (dual display is a bigger productivity boost than any hardware upgrade), but if I can lug this new box wherever I go and get some coding/writing time in at various non-home/non-work locations (food courts are great, with no wireless, people around so you don’t feel isolated but don’t get bothered, etc), I’ll be a very happy guy.
Oh, and I named the computer Nicolas Cage. Because you can’t live in fear. Also:
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