On 12/6/03 10:24 am, "Craig" craig@wizball.co.uk wrote:
At the moment, I am thinking about ditching my 3 months old laptop to get a ibook. Why? My housemate bought one last friday and it is _gorgeous_. Okay, that would be a bit of a understatement but I am using a imac at work on and off.
But dang, I'm still impress with the ibook. Is it a smart move to ditch this laptop to switch over? Many people I have spoken to are doing this!
If anyone on this mailing list is using OS X. Please convince me if I really want to make the switch. So far, I am really appealed by the o/s, battery life and most of all, it's unixy feel! ;)
I'm interested to hear your thoughts!
I'm using OS X on a 17" PowerBook. OS X has a location manager that changes your TCP/IP setting on the fly (without reboot) so I leave the PowerBook running and switch between Work/Home.
Apple provides a free X11 implementation so everything I do on our UNIX servers I still do but from the PowerBook. Most of my UNIX code seems to just compile on OS X without too much hassle (the Development System is included free on every Mac). I've started to learn Objective-C to write native Mac Applications. I have MySQL, PHP and all of the usual geeky stuff running (had to download those). Apache was installed by default.
So you get all this UNIX core plus a UI that's vastly prettier than XP and just works so nicely that I never find myself fighting it like I do if I'm forced to touch Windows.
Plus I've got MP3/ACC CD ripping and burning (iTunes), my digital camera works out of the box with no drivers (iPhoto) my Digital Video camera just works without drivers and I can edit my video (iMovie) and I can make my own Video/Data DVD's (iDVD). So far everything I've mentioned came free with the PowerBook. The only software I bought was Microsoft Office and Photoshop Elements.
I was originally going to buy an iBook but the screen is only 1024x768 (The same as my iMac) and although it has an external video connector the external monitor still only runs in 1024x768 in mirroring mode only.
If 1024x768 is too small you may want to look at the 12" PowerBook (just been reduced in price to £1,299 including VAT). It runs in 1024x768 but can run two monitors so you can use 1024x768 on the train but at the office you can plug into a 21" monitor and run the PowerBooks screen at 1024x768 but have the screen span both monitors I run my 21" at 1600x1024 (Will run up to 1920x1200). The 17" runs in 1440x900.
The 17" Also has built in 802.11g and Bluetooth that I use to communicate with my Sony Erriccson T68i (id I mention that worked out of the box with no drivers as well). One button sync's my contacts. I bought some $10 shareware that allows the T68i to be used as a remote control, so I can run PowerPoint using my phone as a remote keypad.
I hope to be able to make an ALUG meeting other than Elmswell at some point and bring it with me.
Let me know if you want any more info.
Regards, Rob.