25 September 2006

I love my Mac

For a long time, I despised Macs. When I was in high school I worked our school newspaper, and we used Pagemaker on Macs to do the paper's layouts. Those Macs crashed ona regular basis, so much so that when working one had to hit open-apple-s (save) once a minute in order not to lose valuable work. Not only was that a waste of time, but waiting for the computer to reboot after it froze also took way too much time. So I developed a decade-long aversion to all things Mac.

In the end, though, I was deeply unsatisfied with the Dell laptops that got me through graduate school. My first laptop had to be repaired when it was less than a year old; the on switch stopped working. Dell's customer service was pretty good then, and the repair happened quickly. But when the computer died, it completely died. The keyboard fritzed out, followed by the hard drive (within about five minutes of each other). The warranty had expired three months before. So I got a new Dell, and this one developed problems almost immediately. When it was less than a year old, it needed a new processor and processor fan, since it consistently overheated and shut off. A year after that replacement, it started overheating again, leading me to conclude that Dell sells poorly engineered machines.

So it's a real relief to have a functional new Mac powerbook, which I've been using for several weeks and appears to be working flawlessly. Not only does it have a cool feature that allows me to take goofy pictures of myself, but it doesn't crash or shut down. It's a strange feeling to have a reliable computer!

I've also been using itunes, which I enjoy (especially now that I've figured out how to make it pause between songs instead of slurring them together DJ style--that works great for pop music but not for opera!). I've digitized most of my music. I don't have an ipod but I've developed a yearning for one. I'm also using Endnote 10 for Mac, which also seems to work better than the PC versions I've used.

So, am I a convert? I'm not sure. I've got my semi-functional Dell laptop set up at home, and I'm using the MacBook Pro here in the department. Rest assured: if the MacBook acts up, the blogosphere will be the first to know!

4 Comments:

At Monday, September 25, 2006 5:52:00 PM, Blogger Isodice said...

I've always had a deep-seated loathing for Macs (connected partly, as in your case, to having to use the wretched Pagemaker in junior high), but I can't say I'm too fond of my Dell lappy either. Almost every Mac user I've known has had horrible hardware issues--several of my roommates in college were computerless for weeks at a time. I'll cross my fingers that your machine is the exception!

 
At Monday, September 25, 2006 5:56:00 PM, Blogger Rebecca said...

At least if something goes wrong I can call Rice's IT folks and they'll have to deal with it. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I love my Mac! If there's a problem with it, someone else will spend hours on the phone with customer service!

 
At Sunday, October 08, 2006 5:28:00 AM, Blogger Celia said...

I have my ibook and I love it :D

 
At Friday, October 13, 2006 9:04:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love my macbook pro, and my iMac. I'm planning to switch my parents to Mac by getting them a Mac Mini soon. The OS is WAY more user friendly than Windows...much less of a hassle to deal with.

And I've had nothing but good experiences with Apple's service, especially the Genius bars at most Apple Stores. Compared to the service I've received from Gateway in the past, Apple has fantastic technical service.

I also run Parallels with Windows XP on my MacBook Pro, to test websites in Windows browsers and run an occassional Windows application.

 

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