My Mac experience. I’m a new believer
Going with my recent trend of ‘An Apple a day keeps the doctor away’, its that time of the year, when I gloat over a new technological purchase. Yes, I’ve gotten myself a shiny new gadget, and no it’s not iPad 2 (which for an iPad1 owner is not a great deal better), but rather a 13incher MBP (the Macbook Pro for the Mac-fanboys).
For the best part of 2 years I’ve lugged around gaming behemoths, namely 16inch Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) laptops, the first one running a very buggy Vista and the next one a much improved Windows 7. I’ve had my moments with both. Together with them windows boxes I’ve spent numerous hours gaming, doing normal Windowsy-stuff, occasional OJ spills, not inflicting any damage on either of them.
The first one, which I got end of August, ’09 was a white ROG laptop with a Core 2 Duo processor and the nVidia GTS 260M, which pretty much played every game of that time at the highest settings. I had to trade it in for a newer model with the now standard i5 chip and an updated GTS360M when after less than 10 months the screen lost an entire line of pixels. Best Buy to the rescue as they did a free replacement. If any one is looking for a cheap gaming option with high-end graphics cards, the Asus ROG line is the best to go, hardly a fourth of an similarly configured-Alienware with less bells and whistles. I however, have a few issues with the ROG laptops – they are seriously heavy and the power brick is the largest I’ve had for any of my laptops, this and the low battery life (1hr 50 minutes), made it painful taking either to class (both being of equal weight and dimensions). They are definitely worthy desktop replacements and more than ample for the best games that are out. Added with the loud fan(s) and the heat from the vents, those were serious faults. The build quality was pretty much right up there probably better than Dell and HP, and a tad worse than the Vaios and Lenovos of our time.
Shifting from Windows-gaming to console-gaming negated the need for such a huge piece of hardware. Add to this the system becoming progressively slower with time (mostly as a result of installing more applications, which Windows 7 still can’t handle even with 4gigs RAM), I had virtually reached a point where I just wanted to toss it out of the window. Most regular Windows users will agree. A Mac hence seemed the most viable (though expensive) option.
What I needed now was a lighter and faster machine while keeping the transition costs minimal. Deciding on the 13 MBP was pretty much a no-brainer, given my stretched budget. Something I always suggest people is when you get new hardware pay the premium to get the best within your budget instead of saving a few bucks. I took my last windows machine and got it duly replaced with the MBP paying a premium of $500 over my old machine.
Truth be told, I was hugely skeptical, new OS and all. Using a few Apple gizmos along the years as well as seeing friends with MBPs kind of made the shift easier.
Still more to come!!!
