Looks like I've switched

I’ve been suffering Mac envy in OS/hardware terms for a long time.

The problem has been that nagging doubt in the back of my head that says that there will be one requirement that I can’t solve without windows (vpn being the main issue up until now). Well once Apple announced Boot Camp I realised that excuse had vanished. The only remaining one was around video games and the XBox 360 is already out pacing anything I can afford in PC graphics cards for a year or so (for the record Oblivion is dominating my time when the kids are in bed).

So last weekend I ended up in an Apple store buying a MacBook Pro. I’m sure everyone has read enough I switched and the decision I made was right posts from others so I will summarise where I am.

Cons

Battery life seems short - that said I’m still playing with *everything* at once, so that could be the core reason, however I suspect the dual core is a little thirsty ;)

The base gets a little toasty, never mind - I’ve already had children.

The only version of Eclipse I can find that supports Intel is a 3.2 RC - thats fine except MyEclipseIDE does not support this yet but the v5 releases will and they are imminent.

Pros

Its all so easy - iCal, iSync, my phone, work calendar.

Unix command line - I grew up with Unix, at last I have a great GUI, with that command line goodness I know and love.

Screen/hardware - glorious.

Its a *very* fast machine.

Tools I know/use regularly like OpenOffice/Firefox/Skype all work fine under OS X.

Instant Hibernate/Instant on that actually works.

Open vpn works instantly

Parallels machine vitualisation - installed both Win98 and linux trivially for the 2 dependent applications I still need (The linux will dissapear once I get to grips with gcc).