My new toy

I'm so psyched.

I went to Best Buy and took some cash I got for Christmas and a little bit more money and put it down on a new computer. I was getting fed up with Windows (and Linux, for that matter), its slowness, and basically it being a not-fun system to use. Plus, I wanted something that will facilitate multitrack recording and MIDI sequencing without having to shell out hundreds more dollars. That led me to...a Mac. Specifically, a MacBook, as I don't like the thought of an all-in-one computer such as the iMac, and there was no way in hell I was going to drop nearly $3000 on the tower model. While I'm better off financially than I've been in a long time, I opted for the MacBook that's not the Pro model -- the guy at Best Buy told me basically that the MacBook Pro is really only a significant advantage if I'm really into gaming.

So I bought my MacBook, named her Cermac, and took her home. Wow...this machine is a dream! And this is coming from someone who was a die-hard Amiga user from 1993 to 2006. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances, I had to sell my AmigaOne in the summer of 2006. But before I got Cermac I'd been itching to get another AmigaOne, as I didn't think there could be a better machine. I was wrong.

I can't believe I'm going against my Amiganess, but...this MacBook is my favorite computer I've EVER used!

• It boots almost instantly, much like the AmigaOne.


• I was actually able to repartition the hard drive without any data being erased -- I always thought repartitioning meant that you'd have to reinstall everything!
  


• GarageBand...'nuff said! I know, it's not CakeWalk/SONAR/whatever, but it does the job for me.


• The manual is so welcoming it's disgusting. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you.


• I'm able to connect to my place-of-work's VPN without losing my Internet connection; I could never do that in Windows.


• Software installation is so easy that a brick can do it.


• Cermac was able to pick up the shared drives from our Wintel boxes -- WITHOUT ANY CONFIGURATION! I had a lot of trial and error to get Windows to do that, and I never was able to figure out how to get Linux to recognize our shares.


• My wireless networking autoconfigured in about half a second. All I had to do was type in the WEP key.
  


• The dock is really cool! I know, you can probably get a similar one for Windows and whatever Linux distro you prefer, but on the Mac it comes with the OS.


• I was able to make some changes on my FAT32-formatted iPod without having to reformat it.


• The dashboard is way cool, especially with the flight tracking widget!


• The "MagSafe" power supply connector is a nice feature -- magnetic force keeps the power supply connected, and it breaks away very cleanly in cases of trippage. Gotta love it!

I really don't know what much else to say. As much as I loved the Amiga -- from my early Amiga days of using OS 2.05 to the PowerPC days of OS4 -- I have to say that no computer has ever been more a joy to use than my new MacBook.

And no, unfortunately, I'm not being paid by Steve Jobs (or anyone, for that matter) to say these wonderful things...I really mean all this stuff!