Apple Mac Book Pro: plenty of bang for the buck

Why I bought this product:
The main reason I bought the MacBook Pro, was because I had spilled a bowl of cereal on my other laptop, and had to purchase a replacement immediately, BUT, after everything I had heard about Windows Vista, I was just too afraid to make that jump. Once I saw that it was nearly impossible to obtain a laptop without Vista, I figured that if I was going to be forced to make a change in operating systems, I might as well do it all the way. All the salesmen at Best Buy and Office Max tried to scare me away from the Mac, citing limited software, and having to "buy everything all over again", but I still wanted to find out for myself. As it was, there were a lot of things that I would have to purchase to make myself completely Vista compliant. I have never heard any complaints about Macs before, and people that have them love them, so I figured that I owed it to Apple to at least give it a try.

The Deliberation:
With the price tag attached, there was a LOT of deliberation... there was even a bit of convincing that I had to do to get DH to spring for this high ticket item.
Now I understand why. It was scary to make such a big commitment, not only financially, but the thought of having to learn a new system was intimidating.

Why I love my MacBook Pro:
It has more memory than I could probably ever use, lots of nice starter software, such as IPhoto, and IDVD, which is great for making movies. I love the Airport Internet, which scans for wireless internet constantly, and will connect for you automatically. It can detect printers and other hardware without you having to go through an extensive search and set up process.

Another favorite feature is the built in Photobooth, which is a camera lens at the top of the screen that you can use to take pictures with the press of a button, and from there, easily email them, edit them, or do whatever else you want with it. You can also use the built in camera to video conference, without the bulk of a separate piece of hardware. I do a lot of business on my computer, so I did invest in MS Office for Mac, so that I still can use it for my documents that I currently have, and create windows friendly documents for non Mac users.

My MacBook Pro Specs:
Nice 15" screen
Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2.16 GHZ
667 MHZ Bus Speed
1GB of memory

This is as purchased; I can easily upgrade it if necessary.

My Afterthoughts:
The MacBook Pro does have a bit of a learning curve, but can be learned easily. Closing out windows from the left side instead of the right takes some getting used to, but is not impossible. The Mac store I bought it from even offered free Mac classes for us newbies who had never experienced the Mac before.

My husband still claims that he “doesn’t know how to use” my computer, but that is because he hasn’t made any attempts to learn how to, either.

This computer is very smart; I love being able to download software, and just drag it to my applications folder and it’s there and ready to go.

They are coming out with so many different software programs for Mac users, that it won’t be long before you barely notice the difference in available features between the two. You can try going to http://www.shareware.com or http://www.download.com where there is lots of shareware software for the Mac that you can experiment with before purchasing. I did have one problem, though. I play online poker, and the site that I use did not have a version available for Mac. So, I downloaded http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html, and now I have partitioned my hard drive so that I can run a virtual windows on my MacBook Pro, for the few programs that have not quite “gotten with the program” yet. I am by no means a techie, and I found it pretty easy to do, just following the directions.

More good things about it:
There are no virus issues with the Mac, they are known to have solid virus protection. I have NEVER experienced a crash, or any issues on this Mac, and I’ve had it for just over a year. I have found nearly everything I need in Mac software, including postage software, label software and more. Do not let trying something new scare you away from purchasing a MacBook. I wish I had done it a lot sooner. I say, “Once you go Mac, you won’t go back.” Check it out for yourself at http://www.mac.com.