I got some nice new toys over the holidays and few of them had anything to do with Christmas presents. I had a nice, profitable year in technical writing last year, and we also put a little cash in the bank when we closed out one of our business. Unfortunately, that means that for the first time in quite awhile the tax man is coming to the door and he's not taking no for an answer. As the year wound down, I figured the best thing I could do was create a few more business expenses and draw down the taxable profit in my writing business. But what could I buy? What did I really need?
When I heard that my sister-in-law needed a laptop to work in my wife's office, the solution was dead easy. I've wanted to buy a Mac for about a year now, but have been put off by the comparatively high price of a new MacBook compared to its commoditized PC counterparts (from Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.) The tax situation gave me a reason to look past the price and just buy the darn thing. A couple of weeks before Christmas, I ordered a refurbished (saving me $400) 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro. I may never buy myself another Windows machine.
I know it's a cliche with Macs, but the damn thing just works. Since it was refurbished it came with the older version of Mac OS X (Tiger.) I had to install Max OS X 10.5 (Leopard), but it was the easiest OS installation I've ever done. Insert the disk, answer two questions and come back 20 minutes later to a new OS.
The initial machine setup was just as easy. The Mac asked me a handful of basic setup questions and asked me to set an administrative password. After that it was all done and ready to use.
A lifelong PC user with a master's in IS (all my education was on Windows-based machines) I'm still learning my way around the Mac, but I love it. All my client work is done in Windows, so I've installed Parallels Workstation on the Mac and run Windows XP, Office 2007 and AuthorIT inside it. According to the reviews I read, QuickBooks for Mac is horrible so I'm also running QB 2007 in Parallels. Otherwise, I'm living in an Apple world and loving it.
The best piece of advice I got when starting to use it was not to try so hard. It has a very intuitive interface, but coming from a Windows world I was used to burrowing down in the guts of a machine and OS to really make it work. The only small issues I've encountered have come from making Parallels and Windows play nicely with the Mac, but thus far I've been able to resolve them without incident.
When I heard that my sister-in-law needed a laptop to work in my wife's office, the solution was dead easy. I've wanted to buy a Mac for about a year now, but have been put off by the comparatively high price of a new MacBook compared to its commoditized PC counterparts (from Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.) The tax situation gave me a reason to look past the price and just buy the darn thing. A couple of weeks before Christmas, I ordered a refurbished (saving me $400) 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro. I may never buy myself another Windows machine.
I know it's a cliche with Macs, but the damn thing just works. Since it was refurbished it came with the older version of Mac OS X (Tiger.) I had to install Max OS X 10.5 (Leopard), but it was the easiest OS installation I've ever done. Insert the disk, answer two questions and come back 20 minutes later to a new OS.
The initial machine setup was just as easy. The Mac asked me a handful of basic setup questions and asked me to set an administrative password. After that it was all done and ready to use.
A lifelong PC user with a master's in IS (all my education was on Windows-based machines) I'm still learning my way around the Mac, but I love it. All my client work is done in Windows, so I've installed Parallels Workstation on the Mac and run Windows XP, Office 2007 and AuthorIT inside it. According to the reviews I read, QuickBooks for Mac is horrible so I'm also running QB 2007 in Parallels. Otherwise, I'm living in an Apple world and loving it.
The best piece of advice I got when starting to use it was not to try so hard. It has a very intuitive interface, but coming from a Windows world I was used to burrowing down in the guts of a machine and OS to really make it work. The only small issues I've encountered have come from making Parallels and Windows play nicely with the Mac, but thus far I've been able to resolve them without incident.
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