Well, i broke down and bought a MacBook. Now i'll have no excuse for being unproductive on campus. I've spent most of today installing all the programs and apps that i want to take with me. I realized that most of the apps i rely on are open source or otherwise free-ware. The only app i had to worry about was Microsoft Office but the student edition some with three install license keys so i had some still available.
I do think it's amusing that the laptop comes with an infrared remote. After playing with it for about fifty seconds, i decided that i would probably never use it again. Trying to scroll though my iTunes music library by repeatedly pressing the down button gave me some insight as to what a disaster the iPod would have been without the scroll wheel. Tools like Remote Buddy may make the remote more useful but i'm not sure when i would ever be that far away from my laptop that i couldn't use the keyboard. It is nice that you can use it to click though Keynote presentations out of the box; that might come in handy at school.
The last thing i have to worry about is keeping my desktop and the laptop in sync, especially keeping my school files up-to date. ChronoSync looks promising but i haven't tried it out yet. Keeping track of e-mail is probably going to be the biggest challenge. Right about now i'm wishing my hosting provider offered an IMAP e-mail server.
The nice thing about my purchase was that i got a new iPod for about $100 with one of their student promotions. It's not a new-new iPod, but it's the 60GB iPod Video. I figured it was such a good deal and i was in need of one to replace my recently deceased model, that i couldn't pass it up. I also got a free scanner/printer as well. I'm glad that with my limited income i was able to get the most for my money.
I hope i enjoy this new machine: my first ever laptop and my first intel Mac.
Posted by Matthew at September 17, 2006 12:40 AM