Beer in the Headlights

I've been wanting one. I've been dropping hints.

Well, it finally came.

OK, settle down... It's not mine. It's Mrs. TC's.

I've got my trusty 4+ year old ThinkPad on which I'm creating this here blog entry and she hasn't had a computer of her own. I met the missus at Fry's this afternoon and we picked out a MacBook. This one.

Frankly, it's better than I had hoped. It's fast, frighteningly easy to use and looks pretty good. The recent Popular Mechanics Mac vs. PC article was the tipping point for me.

The slick little box fired up and was a breeze to configure. I just had to skip past the wireless network configuration part because I was too lazy to transcribe the wireless security key from a text file on my flash drive. Going into the settings to create the connection was easier than eating pancakes. Updates were far quicker than those for Windows.

Mrs. TC wanted the ability to fiddle with Word documents so we bought VMWare Fusion so we could run copies of Windows XP Home and Office XP. Both the Windows and Office installed quickly and without a hitch. And it's pretty cool how fast Windows XP boots up inside the Mac OS.

I've played with Windows Vista. I hate it. I've made my living knowing my way around various Windows operating systems for over ten years. In my opinion, hubris got the best of the gang in Redmond when it came to rolling out the successor to Windows XP. Vista is a bloated pain in the behind.

Do yourselves a favor when it's time for some new computer hardware and buy a Mac. Either that or get yourself a good quality computer and load Ubuntu Linux on it.

My son is getting to the age where he should get his own computer. I hate to do it to him, but the next Mac in this household is mine and it's going to be a nice MacBook Pro.