Time for a reflection on Mac: 4 months on

Well, sometime in May, my choice to purchase a laptop was running between a macbook and the Lenovo T61 which had just came out. I was leaning towards the Lenovo for various reasons, one being that I had always been a PC user. The only thing that held me back was the cost of the T61, which actually wasn't that far away from a macbook.

Then the macbooks were upgraded with a new processor. The macbooks of the previous generation, which were always sold $200 cheaper refurbished, were now $400 cheaper. A black macbook, 2.0ghz, with 120GB HDD and 1GB RAM for $1200 CAD? There came the tilt in my decision in the opposite direction, and I ordered the mac. Lucky for me, laptop RAMs had their prices dropped steadily over the past couple of months, so I was able to get 2 x 1gb sticks from a canadian outlet for just $50.

I was a bit disappointed at first when i saw my new macbook. Everything was fine, but there was one glitch: a slight bump on the top part of the mousetrack. At first I tried to ignore it; but it wasn't that it was physically annoying me, but it bothered me that I had just spent all that money and received something less-than-perfect (apple's refurbishment program is supposed to be one of the best, or so they had claimed). I went to a authorized mac repair store, they kept the laptop for a day and changed the keyboard, and the bump was gone.

And from then on, i must say it's been a love affair! I love this laptop. The relationship was a bit bumpy at first. I liked the design, the brightness, almost everything about the laptop, but every 10 minutes i had to go to a Mac 101 tutorial website (which I had bookmarked!) and at times I was so frustrated I wanted to throw the laptop out of the window! Then I found out that there's no driver by HP or apple for my HP Laserjet 1018, and I had to wait for 2 weeks until someone on this forum helped me (it involved a long process which was all done through Terminal). But once I had my printer fixed and used to the new interface, i was sold. And I can say with 99% certainty that I'm never going back to that Windows junk again ... EVER!

Just 2 small complaints about the laptop: it can get quiet warm sometimes, and the speakers are ... well, as the French say it, freaking crappy!

 

I feel exactly the same. The only reason I still use windows is for programming at school. Nothing else. Also now I am running Office 2008 for mac as well as iWork 08, which pretty much obliterates any need for me to use office 2007 on windows.

 

Office '08? Isn't it scheduled to be out sometime in 2008? And as I understand it, there are no betas available to the public either.

If you do indeed have office '08 (which somehow I doubt, no offense!) and also iWork 08, can you tell me which one you like more? Specifically, can you give us a comparison of Pages and Word?

 

I have an Office 2008 beta (no offense taken! lol), and yes it is supposed to come out on January 14th I believe, but given how stable it is at the moment I wouldn't be surprised if they released ahead of schedule. The only thing that kinda gets on my nerves is how word uses at least 180MB when it launches, compared to Pages' 40.

As to your other question, between word and pages, I prefer word for word processing, you could say I am a little biased since I've been using word since I it's first version. But when I want to do letters or page layout type things, Pages is a lot better, for me at least. Between Excel and Numbers, it's really give or take, since I'm not a hardcore Excel user, so they both work the same for me. I guess whichever I click first! lol. And keynote blows away powerpoint. Always has.

I'm not sure what else do you want to know specifically about word.

 

Oh cool, how did you get the beta?
And can you tell me which you like more, Pages or Word?

 

Maybe Apple will include an Office 2008 Test Drive with Leopard.

Mac Office 2008 Hits Private Beta

 

An ex that I dated while I was living in Canada is now the fiancé of someone who works for microsoft's mac bu. Anyway the other day she said she had a new office beta just released so I begged her to send me the image file. A few hours later, boom!

Like I said above, I like word more for word processing. The new "ribbon" interface is kinda cool as well. Not bloated like in Office 2007. There is a bar below the toolbar, which has quick tables, charts, document elements, etc, which when you click them you get a drop down ribbon thing. Its totally unobstrusive because it's not part of the menu like in office 2007. So yeah I'm a word power user, probably one of the few people that know the ins and outs of it like the back of my hand, and everything that I like about word 2007 is here. I'm a happy puppy right now.

If anyone has any questions, or 'requests' (lol), feel free to add me to your aim, yahoo or msn. aim would be better. I am trying to find excuses to use ichat... lol

 

I suppose I can't beg you for the image file, can I? If it helps, I'm Canadian

 

Sure thing. I don't mind spreading the love. I'm not sure if it's against the TOS here, but if someone here can help me set up an ftp server I can upload the image file and have it there for download just for members of this forum. If not, pm me and we can go from there.

 

Nice work, sepandee! Glad to see you're enjoying your Mac .