Hi All,
I've been into Macs since '84 - we have 6 in the office - my 17"
MacBook Pro is the second brain to my business.
Ease of use - rock solid OS - rock solid hardware - elegant
interface - VMWare Fusion makes it both a Mac and fast full fledged
PC - best of both worlds. .mac can provide some great syncing
features for a multiple person small office - we use ichat for 3 and
4 way video conferences which Skype can't do.
Always been the way to go in my book.
Best,
Jeff C.
Village Power Design
Mac for certain - 25 years of owning a Mac and over 10 with a PC at
work. You'll likely want a vpc program and a wireless keyboard and
two button mouse for desk work. Don't buy the bottom of the line nor
the top- you will like I think.
Ezra Auerbach
On 10-Apr-09, at 10:56 AM, Keith Cronin
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
I also segued to a mac last fall and installed VMWare to bridge the
PC experience. Overall, I would recommend the transition.
There is also incentive, if you live in a metro area- to get
training at the Apple store- it is $100 for the year and if you can
carve out time, you can take 1 lesson a week on a host of topics to
get up to speed rather quickly.
I believe in the next 5 years, we will be agnostic on platforms,
and we will be primarily web based, as we want everything on the
go. It (wireless) will be inexpensive and ubiquitous in larger
populaces and my vision for larger mesh networks will cover all of
us to connect more readily. It is amazing, Get Smart's shoe phone
to where we are today is extraordinary and the innovation will only
accelerate..............................
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
Back to the mac- very robust machine architecture and relatively
simple to use and setup anything from wireless networking to
installing a printer. Their time machine feature also deserves
mentioning- it does incremental backups- meaning, it will take,
like a video of your activities and save the activities as they
occur. So, if you are working on a proposal, and doing alot of
revisions, it will archive them on a time line. If you ever wonder
what you where working on, lets say Monday, you can go back in
time, and find it. Very slick, as PC's, I believe, don't have this
functionality to date.
Lastly, on the backup and if you still have a PC- I would highly
suggest subscribing to <>www.mozy.com for your laptop and office
server. Same theorem as above- incremental backups, when you are
not working on your machine- to the web. I did this a few months
ago- have almost 100GB of data archived there. Did take alot of
time (weeks) to upload, but it is all there, in a directory to grab
anything when I need it. Lets face it, when we do backups, like at
the office, we take either some DVD's or a hard drive, back and
forth every week. This eliminates this completely. Also, I found a
coupon code for their service- type in the word NEXT into the box
before you subscribe and it is $46 a year to back up everything for
one machine. The office/server flavored subscription is alot more,
but this also frees up your time to focus on your business.
Another great wrench tool list addition!
From: Kurt Albershardt <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]>
To: RE-wrenches
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 7:19:16 AM
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] A Wrench's computer
As yet another long-time PC veteran (after IBM SNA and PDP-11s)
with way too much Windows internals experience, I also just
purchased my first Mac. Installed Parallels to support Quickbooks
(still no integrated payroll on their Mac version.)
I have a maxed-out MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement but I will
say that the integrated graphics (9400M) is quite adequate even for
large SketchUp models - so the plain MacBook looks like a heckuva
deal given its monoblock case design and low price. The MagSafe
power connector is pure genius.
If you click on the new trackpads with two fingers, you get the
right-click context menu all us Windows power users miss. The
other shortcut it took me awhile to find was <command> + <~> which
is equivalent to <ctrl> + <F6> in Windows (move to next window in a
multiple document interface.)
On 4/10/09 9:56 AM, Larry Crutcher, Starlight Solar wrote:
Joel,
After 28 years of business computing dating from my George Morrow
CPM machine, I purchased my first Mac, a MackBook Pro, 2.4GHz.
After 6 months, I have very mixed feelings about it. I love the
battery life and simplicity of features and included programs.
Although I am still in a steep learning curve, there are many
things that frustrate me daily. NO right click button means you
need to plug in a mouse so you can use the many options accessible
by a right click. I have my old Sharp laptop PC on the other desk
and find that I often scoot my rolling chair to it to quickly
accomplish something. Perhaps it is just because it is familiar.
The MacBook seems rugged, has a fairly bright screen although my
Sharp has a sunlight readable, 400 NIT backlight. I am sure once I
learn, or just put up with, the intricateness of the Mac, it will
be just fine. Here's a really positive note: It has never crashed
or locked up...yet. What a feeling!
Larry Crutcher
On Apr 10, 2009, at 8:26 AM, Joel Davidson wrote:
Wrenches,
Some Wrenches include their notebook computer among their most
valued tools. My 2001 IBM T23 notebook has served me well in the
office and on the road, but it is getting a little long in the
tooth. What notebook computer do you all recommend? As always,
thank you very much for your valuable advice.
Best regards,
Joel Davidson
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeff Clearwater
Senior Design Engineer
NABCEP (tm) Certified Solar PV Installer
http://www.nabcep.org/
Village Power Design/NorthEast Solar Design
Turnkey Solar Design & Installation for the Commercial Sector
http://www.villagepower.com
[email protected]
Voice: 413-259-3750
Fax: 413-825-0703
65 Schoolhouse Rd
Amherst, MA 01002
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