Zach ([info]xeerohour) wrote,
@ 2008-01-14 22:31:00
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Too cool for school?
So, I'm back in school. It's been a little over a week, and I have to say - I love it. Its nice to LEARN again, it really is. School is so much less stressful, too. I worry about it when I want to worry about it. I can see the time element coming back to bite me, though. Right now I work five days a week, have class mon and wed nights, homework tuesday nights, have mcnellies with friends thursday night, date night with sally on friday, and visit the folks on Sunday. That leaves... saturday. That day is the one day a week I have left to handle excess homework, work around the house, or relax. Right. This could get old, but whatever. Totally worth it.

With being back in school, I am feeling the need for a laptop. Technically I could use my work laptop, but it worries me for several reasons:
1. If its hurt on campus, would work forgive me?
2. If I leave/am forced to leave this job, what happens to all my work that's on the laptop?
3. Its bulky and a bit slow.

SO... all this leads me to an excuse to buy a new computer! Yay! I bought my last laptop in 2003, so I think I'm due.

I have to say, I'm leaning toward a Macbook Pro. With the developer discount (thanks Lemmata!), it's not unreasonable, and the reliability, battery life, and dual boot sell it for me.

One question to those of you running macs - can I virtual machine windows while I have Leopard running? I'd like to be running native Leopard but pull up a VM to run SQL Server or whatever is required.

Also - downsides to going with a mac? Any issues I should be made aware of? Mary - I'm looking at you, I know you just bought one.

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[info]j35u5chr15t
2008-01-15 02:25 pm UTC (link)
I have a VM of XP on my mac. The only problem is that it can be slow, but this is a symptom of my crappy laptop, not macs in general.

I can't think of any downsides to my mac other than the commonly noted ones of software and so on, but for me that has never really been a concern. The only problems I've had with have just been bad luck on my part (buying right before a major upgrade was announced and some hardware issues I live with until I feel the need to get a new laptop, which will probably be a mac). I have nothing but good things to say about macs.

Also, if you don't already know the Macworld keynote address is today which more than likely means new product announcements.

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[info]vadius
2008-01-15 10:34 pm UTC (link)
Yep. MacBook Air came out. It's a super sleek laptop, and slightly cheaper (and slower) than a MacBook Pro.

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[info]xeerohour
2008-01-17 01:52 am UTC (link)
Yeah... it's pretty, but overprices and underpowered.

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[info]marymcglo
2008-01-16 04:44 am UTC (link)
Yes, if you ever have to leave a job it's good to know that your porn work will still be with you. :-)

I just noticed today that my battery life seems to have dropped quite a bit in 2 months-- now when I fully charge it, and have the screen at the dimmest level, it only reads that I have 1:30 left (when I first got it it would give me 3+). I did all the battery calibration black magic, but I might be unknowingly running something that takes a lot of power. I'll let you know if I find out what the deal is. My only other complaint is that it runs hot (i.e. using it as a literal laptop while in your underwear not recommended unless you're dating someone who refuses to use proper birth control). And I don't particularly like the stupid magnetic power jack thing, but that's personal taste.

Other than that, I've been very happy with it. The screen quality and OSX interface are good enough that I can get work done as well, and possibly better, as I can on my desktop (not the case with my Dell). And it's a lot easier to install stuff (yes, I'm so illiterate that I can't install anything useful on Windows in under an hour).

I bought it just before Leopard came out, so I have Leopard but just haven't installed it yet. My sysadmin friend has a newer Macbook, though. She can run Parallels just fine (needs Windows for work), but I think she got 4GB of RAM, so if you're wanting to do that while running a zillion applications you might consider an upgrade. But nearly everything is available on Mac, I think including SQL servers. The only time I've ever wished I had Windows was when I was playing Portal on Austin's computer.

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fixed!
[info]marymcglo
2008-01-16 04:47 pm UTC (link)
I just reboot it, and now it is telling me I have about 4 hours battery life when it's fully charged and screen is dimmed, which I think is what I'd get when I purchased it. Apparently yeah, something was just stealing my power. To its credit, a Windows machine probably would have simply crashed with the way I was abusing it (lots of applications, a zillion firefox tabs, and not properly shutting it down in at least 2 weeks).

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Re: fixed!
[info]xeerohour
2008-01-17 01:52 am UTC (link)
Very cool! If all else fails, reboot?

Thanks for the write-up, I appreciate it.

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