FROM THE IGLOO

I have a favorite set of tools that I like to use, as all of us do, and I am generally loathe to change those tools once I have ones that work. This extends into technology, especially into computers and the associated operating systems.

Now on a professional level this has not been a problem at all as quite frankly most of what I have been doing in the last 15 years revolves around fixing computers running Windows based operating systems. Recently however I have found myself in a bit of a pickle as the computer I’ve been using for work started acting up. I’m reasonably sure that this was some type of hardware problem as opposed to some type of software issue and when the IT folks at work suggested a replacement piece of hardware I had a look at it and realized that the build quality was not what I would have expected given the brand we where working with.

Looking back at older hardware of the same product family I could see a marked decline in the strength of the build and given how hard I generally am with hardware I was felling a little nervous about how long the replacement hardware would last. Then my boss said “Get a Mac”. All groaning about platform aside I had a look at the hardware, and could not find a comparable machine with the same type of build quality that I found on the MacBook Pro, I’m sure that such machines exist (I’ve seen them) but they are not something that’s generally sitting around and easy to put hands on.

So after some humming and hawing the bosses (thanks bosses) approved a replacement machine, a shiny new Macbook Pro (15 inch) to replace the machine that was giving me grief, and despite my first thoughts of paving the computer and installing Windows on it I have decided to stick with OSX and try to make a switch to a completely new OS for my day to day work machine. While there are a couple of applications that I do need Windows to run the machines these days are fast enough that I can run a VM to take care of those applications on an as needed basis. There are in fact only two of those left, so my need is not that huge.

After a few days of working with the computer I’m quite happy with the hardware, the OS is going to take some getting used to so i’ll probably be posting about that over the next little while. It’s going to be interesting, OSX is just different enough that I have that ‘new user’ feeling at times trying to get things done, hopefully it will pass soon. If not, well the hardware can run Windows.