Potenital Switcher Here

I have a really nice desktop, and it was mainly built for gamming, but I really don't do much of that. I used to have a decent notebook and I miss the abilty to be moblie and have all work, and files with me where ever I need to go. I guess you can say I am growing up mabey, growing out of gamming. I still like to play WoW with my girlfriend, and do still enjoy games here and there. I am really looking forward to Starcraft 2. Anyways Everything about th new MBP's I love. I have allways loved there desgin, the new screens just seem to good to be true, solid preformace, abilty to game, and the 3-4 hour battery life. I do plan to dual boot as there are still things I will use in windows, but MAC OS will be my main OS. Next weekend I intend to goto my apple store and check them out. Bring a DVD or two, a music CD, and just mess around with one. I can say I have not been this excited about a new product in ages. Anyways I am trying to gather opinions, mabey here from other recent switchers and get there thoughts.

 

i've been thinking about it. i just wish they offered a discrete video card in the macbooks or have a budget model of the macbok pros. if you got the money, go for it.

 

I switched about 2.5 months ago, and haven't really looked back. I'm a software engineer in the space science field, so I thought I'd be running XP all the time, but it's not the case. After a bit of searching you can find almost any comparable software for OS X.

The quality is great. The service is great. When I ordered mine over the phone they told me that if I upgraded to priority shipping for $20-something it would be at my house in two days. Well, two days passed and I checked on line and I see that it had just then been picked up by FedEx in CHINA!
So I called apple and explained that I had been told I would already have the notebook and I wanted to know why it was being shipped from China and not Pennsylvania. Apparently when you order a non-standard system(added ram in my case) they do that in China. So I complained because I had to spend an extra $40 bucks in gas to go back and get it from my house four days later, and they completely refunded my shipping and upgraded it to overnight. Unfortunately I wasn't there by the time it arrived, and still had to wait another week.

In short, not only do you get a great product, you get great support from english speaking people(rare in the computer industry).

 

Recent switcher myself, and similar to you I come from a background of overpowered gaming desktops, but have grown a little tired of it. If you have the budget for the MBP, I think you'll be very happy with it. OS X isn't a huge adjustment, and alot of things about it I like better than XP or Vista (but there are some vice versa's too... more on that in a post i'll have later).

I just yesterday used BootCamp to put Vista Ultimate on my MBP, and I must say i'm thinking about removing it because I really don't have anything i'd want to do in it. EA announced at WWDC this week that they will be bringing C&C3, Battlefield 2142, and a slew more of titles to OS X in July... more than enough to fill my gaming gap, without having windows.

So i'd say if your thinking about it, and you want something different and out of the norm, go for it.

Not to mention its just so sexy..

 

Yea. I am an overclocker at heart, but over the years its just not the same, and not as fun as it used to be. Again mabey I am just growing up, but I feel like my investement is just sitting there going to waste. Snice my first laptop I just love the fact I can move my entire computer were ever I wanted, and with the new MBP's I can still have very solid preformace with a machine that weights less than 6LBS. By next month after I part out my desktop and work full time, should have enough money. Not going to use the stupid Visa Jumpper card with its super high intrest rates. Anyways keep the opinions comming guys.

 

I bought my MBP on Monday. It's a pretty sleek and serious piece of machine. I'm a fan of both Windows and OSX, they're both suitable for different needs. My MBP fills my portable audio production needs. My Windows desktop at home fills my PC gaming needs. The question is, what do YOU need your laptop for?

Web browsing, email, documents? - get a cheap PC
Light audio/video, email, photos? - get a macbook
Heavy audio/visual - get a macbook pro or a high end PC (depending on what software you like to use, ports needed, peripherals, etc.)
Heavy gaming - get a high end PC

 

Well I use my desktop for quite a bit of things. If I were to get the MBP, I could see myself trying new things such as video editing, getting back to learning to code, ect... I guess also the reason is I want to get myself away from being at home, on the computer just playing games. I am really starting to see playing games by myself as a waste of time. I rather go hang out with friends after work, goto a bar, ect... With the MBP I will have mobilty, preformace, new software to play with and learn, the abilty to game if I feel the need, and just for something new. Long time windows user, and quite frankly I am bored with windows and my current PC.

 

Sounds like a solid reason to invest in a MBP. Almost the same reasons I had to purchase mine. I considered a clevo m570ru before, however I know my need to game would take up time I could have been using to learn Cubase and making music. So instead I picked up an MBP with a copy of Logic.

My need to game will always be there though. So the 8600m GT is nice so I can at least keep in touch with my CS:S homies and Guild Wars guild-mates while i'm out on the road/(or sea, i work on a cruise ship ) However knowing I've put a +$2000 investment into a laptop will make me want to focus more on the primary reasons I bought it for.

Getting adjusted to OSX was interesting. Its a fun OS and I am loving more and more features about it every day.

 

Wow you are right. We do seem to have simular reasons. I feel the same way as you.

 

Another potencial switcher here... Have just few questions: I am an AutoCAD user so I need WinOS to work on...

1. If I put Vista Ultimate on MBP will this slow it down?
2. How much HDD space will it take to install both OS?
3. How do macs and pcs get along if they are connected to the same network? (file sharing)

My other choices are hp 8510w or dell M65... But macbook pro looks so good!!! I work in design so I need to watch my reputation...

 

1. Not sure if you mean Vista, or the MBP. Either way, the answer is no. Under bootcamp windows runs completely natively, you don't lose any ram or other performance penalties. OS X is also unaffected by the existence of the windows partition.

2. Entirely up to you. I havn't got my mbp yet (waiting on the 7200 rpm drive), but I think OS X is a few gb. Vista ultimate is like 10gb isn't it? If you're installing AutoCAD 2007, plus maybe a few games and office etc, I'd say you're probably going to want a windows partition of at least 40GB to allow room for page files (AutoCAD 2007 is a hog) and defragmenting.

So first, if you don't know, some hard drive formatting issues. OS X uses HSF+ which windows cannot read at all. This can be remedied by the use of a program called macdrive. OS X can read and write to FAT32, but can only read from NTFS. Under bootcamp, FAT32 is limited to a 32GB partition size which I think would be pretty marginal in your case. With either the latest version of Parallels, or MacFuse (free, I believe), OS X can both read and write to NTFS.

I will be using XP, but my plan is to make a windows partition of about 40-50GB (I have lots of big music programs, games, and general crap). This will be for programs only. All my music, photos, movies, and other documents will be on the OS X partition (hopefully it'll be a bit safer there than on the XP partition) and I will use macdrive to access them if I am in XP.

3. Can't comment on this from direct personal experience, but my friend runs some webservers and a mediacenter on linux, a gaming machine on windows, and has a mac laptop (with no windows partition) and has no issues getting files around. So it can definitely work. He does know alot more than the average user about networking though, so it may or may not be so easy. I think for pretty basic needs, Apple has a program available called Bonjour that should do the trick and pretty much works.

DD

 

Thank you for your answer, it's been very helpful. I want a mac, but since I'm basically a cad user it would probably be easier for me to stay with pc than?

 

Haha, how to answer that one?

I'm an engineering student, I use AutoCAD, SolidWorks, and some FEA programs extensively for school. I also have spent lots of money on PC based music programs, so for the next couple years at least I have a to be able to run windows on my computers, and will be using windows quite a lot.

I'm still buying the mbp. Why? Best hardware package I've found, and OS X. Will I be using OS X more than 50% of the time? Probably not, but when I am on my own time (and not doing cad or other calculations) I have the choice of using what I consider a more enjoyable operating system.

If you are concerned about networking issues, I don't think it will be too complicated but I'm sure a forum search will turn up more info.

At the end of the day, what do you want from the computer? If you have no interest in OS X, save your money and get a PC (unless you really really want the hardware and have lots of money), otherwise get the mbp. I don't think you will encounter anything that is a significant barrier to what you want to use it for, but I also think as a more complex system (dual booting, multiple drive formats, etc) there will be some more things you will have to learn in order to make full use of it.

 

Ohh, another thing about networking. If you are bootcamped into windows, networking with another windows machine would be just like networking two PCs.

 

Well, that's what I am afraid of... more learning!

No, the problem is I never used OS X before, so I don't know if I'm interesting in it or not... But I would like to try it! And so far no one was able to explain to me the real difference between windows and OS X... All I hear all the time is “Oh, it’s so much more fun!” But is it useful, too?

Currently I have a desktop computer, but since I’m moving around more and more lately I need my work to move along with me when necessary. I also need a laptop for easier presentations to my clients. It’s easier sometimes if you can show them a 3D animation of a product instead of just plain 2D pictures. I know mac supposed to be great for that, but I also need to be able to work on this same laptop when I’m traveling.

Thanks again for all your answers so far... You were very kind and once again... very helpful.

 

My time with OS X currently is about 10 hours in the store and with friend's computers. I'm already pretty comfortable with it, and for normal stuff like web browsing, text documents, multimedia stuff i find the os much more streamlined.

I find Expose a better way of handling working in multiple programs than in windows xp. I havn't used Vista so I can't comment on the user interface, but I am not keen on the kind of resources it uses to deliver functionality like Aero.

I also like to tinker with writing simple bits of software so widgets are pretty fun (although I think you can get them for windows now too).

The best thing I can suggest is take an hour or two, borrow a friend's mac or go down to an apple store. It's a question of user interface ergonomics. Taking a car as an example, I love my subaru impreza. The range of adjustments are limited but for me, I can set everything up so that I am extremely comfortable and when I drive I focus more on my driving than on finding the volume control for the radio or control for the windshield wipers because everything just works really well for me. I am short. I have no doubts a tall person would hate driving my car, really think the interface ergonomics sucked and not pay as much attention to how much fun it is to drive.

 

Same here, although I have used macs off and on since the old IIci days. (yeah, it makes me feel old). I finally got fed up with the cost, noise, heat of gaming PCs combined with the scarcity of really good new games that are not just rehashes of the same old theme.

 

Yea, it looks really pretty but coming from a long-time Windows user, I know I can get stuff done faster on a PC... and I've been using OSX now for about 4 days.

There are small things about OSX that I personally need to get adjusted to, I hate not having right click, been having trouble downloading stuff, not everything is compatible (you need to do this stupid work-around to get adobe shockwave to work), and well just a few other nit-picky things that I'm not used to. It also doesn't feel as personal as a PC (hell its even called "personal computer").

But again, its only been 4 days in. You have to take the switch with a very open mind. You sacrifice some things for a gain elsewhere. I'm going to ride my Mac out fully and not take it back because I want to be proficient in both platforms. Being like you, except my field is in the music biz, I researched the Mac and read all the reviews about how Mac is better for this and that. So, this is my $2000 experiment to see if it really is. In 2-3 years, I'll either love the thing, or hate it and it'll be time to upgrade anyway... or I might not need a laptop at all. For some people, they love Macs instantly. For others it takes a little more time to adjust... and the rest are just not meant for Macs based on their needs and expectations of the machine and the OS.

Play around with some at the Apple store like someone suggested and just give it an open mind.