The past 2 months have been very intense – so intense in fact I have been totally away from blog, but I will catch up with you soon with some interesting stuff.

But the news today is I’ve been won over by the Mac guys – yep I did it and here I am now a Mac user.

It was an exciting day when everything arrived at the office. Thomas (the cute guy with hair and glasses) was waiting for his iMac.

Learning to use a Mac isn’t all that hard nor is there such a substantial difference in the way things go, at least in my experience.

I was really worried about migrating all my files and configurations over to my MacBook Pro – really worried. In fact I was so worried I actually waited 3 days before I took it out of the box and switched it on for the first time … now that’s really out of character for someone like me (Ok I was also really busy and that escalated my anxiety to the next level).

When I finally got around to firing it up and working things went pretty smooth considering the fact that I had never ever used a Mac before.

As a Windows user I noticed how fast it is to install and remove applications on a Mac – drag and drop and within seconds your new software is available for use. No restarts. Within minutes I had installed all my (new and old) software.

What you also notice when you actually migrate your things is the amount of software now available for Macs – I was able to replace with the same or equivalent software most of my tools, and installed VMWare with Windows Xp that so far has been working as a perfectly integrated desktop application.

I also bought a Time Capsule for backups – simply fantastic. Nothing to configure (and by doing so making mistakes you’ll only discover when you actually need the dat you hadn’t been backing up …)

I picked up a copy of iWork – here I was a bit pissed off at the customer support guy who told me that my OpenOffice files would be compatible, but they’re not so be careful. I installed NeoOffice that works fine and I’m testing Pages (the word Processor) and especially liked the template creation procedure I was able to master while watching a movie with the kids.

The high resolution screen on the MacBook Pro and the 20″ Apple monitor seem to put lees strain on my eyes, the increased speed at which things are done with this machine are driving me into the ground (startup and power down are incredibly fast).

Am I Satisfied ?

yes !

Is there anything I don’t like ?

Well I must admit there is a lot less free software out there for Mac – so far I was looking for a product that would replace BlogDesk I was using in Windows but found nothing that was worth using as a freeware product, so I choose ecto as suggested by Darren Rowse in his post 5 Tools that I’m Happy to Pay for as a Blogger – they are all great tools and they don’t cost very much.
I must admit to missing my textpad for the first few days, but not being a programmer it was no problem to identify work arounds with the existing tools (I’m still not familiar with them all).

The only problem I’ve had and that caused me to waste a considerable amount of time was setting up use of my existing printers on a windows network – not because it was too difficult – in fact it wasn’t at all … my MacBook wasn’t asking for the right information i.e. user and password for the print server !

Oh one last thin while we’re talking about printers, you need to be careful, if you have older ones you might not find drivers for your new Mac – I can’t print off my oldr Samsung Laser (it’s about 3 years old)
So if you’re a Windows user and looking for a breath of fresh air, something new to make your work look and feel nicer, Mac is a great opportunity to open doors and windows of your workplace and renew yourself, especially if you don’t want to go down the Vista path.

I don’t believe Mac is for everyone, it’s a professional machine and should be compared to the high end of PCs for professional use.

I’d like to hear from other folks who like me made to move o mac – drop aline and let me know how you’re doin’