Apple MacBook Pro

A few weeks ago I was working as an ICT technician at a local computer centre aimed to increase the education of the children in the local town. The centre had around 120 Apple Mac computers between two buildings.  The last time I had used a Mac was around 8 years ago and I think the machine was running Mac OS 8 and to be honest I hated it. So when they gave me a Macbook Pro on my first day I thought “Blast a Mac, but look on the good site I can boot into Windows with Bootcamp”

I opened the machines box and unpacked everything placed it all on the desk. The first thing I then picked up was the charger. I like the idea that you can just put a plug on the unit that reduces the power and not have the long flex in the way. The unit also has two little pegs were you can wrap the wire round. Both features are very convenient. I then unpacked the laptop its self, well what can I say it certainly looked the part! Then I plugged in the charger and noticed it was a magnet, very convent if someone trips over your wire and pulls the laptop of the table.

So far I am very impressed with what I seen already, but little did I know I have not seen the full potential this machine has. Once the Mac was configured I started to use it. This was probably the most incredible laptop I have ever used and it was lightening fast. Mac OSX is fantastic it’s fast, clean easy to use and from what I can remember from OS 8 it has improved dramatically.

The Bootcamp application is a fantastic piece of software free from Apple that allows you to either boot in Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or Linux. This makes the Apple the master computer, the only computer that can run the 3 major type of operating system. This can eliminate the need for more than one computer for people who use more than one Operating System. For example a friend of my is a journalist and he carries two laptops with him a Mac & PC. If I he was to purchase an Intel Macbook or Macbook Pro he will only need to carry one laptop around appose to two.

If you would like to run Microsoft Windows in a Virtual Machine I would recommend “Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac” found at www.parallels.com. This product in my opinion runs much more smoothly than any other Virtual Machine software I tested including VMware Fusion. You can download free trails of both products so you can decide for yourself.

I found something what surprised me a little is that Microsoft Windows XP seems to me run much better on the Mac than the PC. I don’t know if this is me or if anyone else noticed this but it didn’t seem to crash as often or freeze up. Upon review the full technical specifications of the product the hardware used seems to be generally good durable hardware. Another factor could be how well the drivers were developed.

However, I there are a couple of setbacks with the product. I am not overly impressed with the Mac web browser Safari. I found it to be a little slow and not very user friendly. I knew the speed wasn’t due to the internet connectivity as the connection is 100meg. So instead of using Safari I decided to use Mozilla Firefox as an alternative what does the job fine. Something else I found a little annoying with the product was when you closed a product it seemed to be still running in the dock, to resolve this I used to force it to quit. If that was the right thing to do I am not sure.

In 4 weeks I come from totally hating Macs to loving everything about them. Unfortunately when I left I had to give the laptop back. The Mac grew on me in such a big way next year I will be purchasing my very own Macbook Pro.

If you haven’t tried a Mac before you should give them ago. Visit your local Apple store they will be more than willing to let you have a try on a display machine and I think that you will be pleasantly surprised. If you still find the Mac OSX software isn’t for you, I would still recommend buying the Mac and run Windows XP or Vista only, as mentioned I found that Microsoft Windows runs much better on Apple products.

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