5 reasons to love a MacBook

I have a confession to make, I used to love my PC, but, now I think I love my MacBook sooo much more!

I finally took the plunge and bought it last week, I had planned to buy a laptop on a forthcoming trip to New York, but the exchange rate has gone so far south it makes little sense to buy it abroad.

I have owned a PC as long as I can remember, and I still use it, but increasingly just for my vice of computer games.  I looked at Windows based alternatives, believing Macs to be over-priced for their given specifications.  But you know what?  They’re not.  Look for a similar specced Windows laptop that met my requirements: a 12-13″ screen, rugged build, not underpowered (I’m looking at you – oh so pretty netbooks that can’t run much at all!), <2kg.  There’s not much out there, I looked at the Dell XPS 1330 and a few others but nothing came close.  I will be lugging the laptop to school and back each day on my bike so it needed to be light and able to take a bit of a beating.  I was tempted by some of the 1st Gen MacBook Airs that are available at quite a discount, but despite it’s gorgeous form I decided that the power and upgrade-ability of the MacBook made sense.

So here are 5 reasons I love my Mac and you should try loving one too:

• It’s all so nice!  Apple’s design runs throughout the machine and the software.  I know it’s a cliche, but everything just works, and works well.  I should’ve known this after my last gadget love – the iPhone.
• Spaces.  I didn’t understand the need to have four separate desktops, after all you can alt-tab between apps easily enough.  But it’s just so slick and I know exactly where I’ll find Firefox, my Twitter client and even XP if it’s running.  Here’s a Youtube vid if you don’t know what I’m on about.  Combined with Expose, which turns the corners of your screen into hot-zones that bring up Spaces etc it’s a killer.
• It runs Windows!  Sacrilege I know, but I need Windows for my archaic school applications.  By using a piece of software called VMWare Fusion you can run XP or Vista (assuming you have licenses of course!) in it’s own application.  I followed these two guides to cut my copy of XP down to the very basics before I installed it.  You can set up the MacBook to ‘dual-boot’ into either Windows or Mac OSX, but for my purposes this worked fine.  Set to full screen on one of the Spaces windows you can quickly switch from one OS to another.
• The little things.  For instance, when browsing through your files, if you hit the space bar a preview of the selected document pops up perfectly rendered without loading the native app.
• Multi-touch.  I’d grown accustomed to this on an iPhone but it’s taken to a whole new level with the MacBook.  The trackpad is MASSIVE for starters, and there are no buttons.  The whole pad will ‘click’ although I found it a bit strange and changed the settings so that a tap registers as a left-click.  Before you know it you’ll be swiping 1, 2, 3 or 4 fingers in various directions across the pad to activate various shortcuts. Youtube.

I could go on, and on, but I’l stop there.  All I can say is buck that credit crunch and get yourself a Mac if you’re in need of a laptop.  And don’t forget that Apple give you an educational discount on-line and in stores. 🙂

What are your favourite things on your computer of choice?