Mac and Me



One of the cool things to happen this week at The Salt Mines is that our department all got new Macbook Pro laptops. It's been more than three years since we were issued our first Mac Powerbooks, which we got back then on a lease-to-own arrangement. Well, now that our Powerbooks are now OURS, we can take them home or do with them as we like while brand-new, replacement portables have been made available.

As opposed to the first batch of Macbook Pros which were notorious for bugs and defects (our department head went through two lemons before settling on one that worked fine), the new Macs seem fine. The widescreen LCD screens are gorgeous, and brighter by a large margin than the Powerbooks (though age may have something to do with this). Processing power is great, with Intel Core Processors now running under the hood, with 2 GBs of DDR RAM. More than 80 Gigs of Memory are there for use. Battery life seems excellent as well, with a full charge lasting about four hours or so (the Powerbooks were lucky to last three hours). I particularly love the new power cords, which attach to the laptop via magnets instead of your standard plug... this allows the power cord to detach easily without danger of damaging the laptop or someone accidentally tripping over the line and pulling the laptop off the table and to the merciless floor. Oh, and the keyboard lights up with a lovely white glow when you turn off the lights, for some moody night-typing. Awesome.

But I am of course trying to keep a modicum of distance from my new laptop, since it's technically not 'mine' (though we do have an option to buy them in a few years). I won't even dare bring this out of the office unless it's totally necessary. But darn, it's a gorgeous thing.

As for my old Mac laptop, it's now sitting at home in my Mom's room. I'm more of a PC user anyways, and The Sanctum's desktop does all my requirements perfectly. For now, the Mac can serve to get Mom up to speed with using keyboards and touchpads, typing and sending e-mails to my brother and sister abroad, or using Skype to make internet calls. You gotta love technology. Being a gadget freak these days is bliss.