Finally joining the Mac side

Hi Dennis! I have just created a follow up blog post regarding your comments above, and although I haven't touched much on the subject of making extensive use of the MBP as my default work machine I thought I would share a couple of thoughts in here as well.
Yes, indeed, I am hooked to the Mac from day one, and I doubt there would be a way back any longer. I am surely enjoying the experience! But at the same time, I was also enjoying, and quite a bit, my Lenovo Windows machine. What has torn apart my 100% allegiance for Lenovo is the fact that the Lenovo 3000 N100 broke the LCD display after only one year and three weeks of user, when previous IBM ThinkPads would last me for over 3 years! And all of that after only three weeks of expiring the guarantee. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
So I thought I would give it a try and for the Mac and see if I could make extensive use of it as a business machine for my day to day work and the first few days it has been working all right. I will just have to wait and see if I would be able to say the same thing when the guarantee expires in one year from now. I surely hope so. Fingers crossed.
Appreciated the kind comments as well, and we surely need to finish off that conversation regarding Lotus Notes, but not to worry, I will give you some tips on it, once it goes gold and I try it out on the Mac. I bet that would be the ultimate experience and for several various reasons, but more on that in its due time... Notes 8 supposed to go GA this week! ;-)

Again, I emphasize the fact that I'm an *avid* gamer. ;)

Aaaah Andrew - you need an Xbox...

Alastair: I've done TCO on MacBook Pros and they compare favourably with similarly spec'd Dell kit - the usual corporate favourite.

I know people swear by Notes but it is expensive to maintain.

Lotus notes is a horrible app, but I love it to bits. I guess you could say the same for Lotus123.

I have to say the new look macs look wonderful, but way overpriced.

On the otherhand I have an ipod shuffle and ipod nano (equally overpriced) and nothing else comes close.

It'll take much more Macvenglization than that for me, though. I mean, 2 buttons isn't enough. :p

Recall also that I'm also an avid gamer. ;)

Andrew my friend - I understand your experience. Until I bought my first Mac I would have said the same having had them foisted on me for testing in the mid-90s and going 'yuk.' Hated them.

The new generation are VERY different and because so much 'stuff' is now going into the Internet cloud, you can easily argue that the lack of 'serious' apps (unless you run Windows XP, not Vista, in VM Fusion or Parallels) is no longer an issue.

FYI - the single button mouse behaves like a 2-button if you know how to do it. ;)

I'd recommend going into a Apple store and trying a MBPro out. Just give it a spin, see what you can do and then come back.

Luis's story is being repeated many times over. We can't all be wrong. Can we?

I have an iPod nano I got for free which is nice, but I've experimented with iTunes and came away gravely unimpressed. Fortunately I got the kickass Winamp plug-ins (although Winamp has iPod management built-in, I like to take things a step further). :)

As for Apple boxes, I used a late 80's Mac in the family to become familiar with GUIs when all my school had was C64's, but as much as it was nice that it taught me how to use a mouse - I think the last time in your life you should be restricted to a single-button mouse is when you're under the age of 10.

My college newspaper had an iMac. Yeah, design shops, artsy types and the related types have major NerdLove for Macs, but I didn't see it.

It was a v1.0 blueberry iMac.

With a handle on top... no doubt for helping you pick up the box, swing it around, and throw it out your window.

I'll tell you, there was unabashed rejoicing when we took our student levy funds and invested in some red-blooded PCs, so we could actually get some work done.

Macs are not user friendly if the only diagnostic image you see if an unhappy Mac icon at boot-up, that's all I'm going to say.