Switching from Windows to Macintosh - Chapter 2

Howdy;

The MacBookPro arrived Thursday, well packed, from Shanghai, China. Everything works as advertised. I got AirPort working, once I finally followed the directions and rebooted my satellite modem.

Since that point, internet access has been a no-brainer, and it works well from everywhere in my home. I am typing this in Safari, and it is enough like Firefox that I really can't decide which to use. I did download and install Firefox. I installed Quicken 2007 for Mac, and it works pretty well, but there were issues in moving my files over that I had to resolve. This included manually entering my memorized transactions. Once I had that done, it works fine, at least for the areas of the program that I use. Setting up mail was a no-brainer.

I am amazed at how smooth this machine runs next to Windows XP on my desktop. So far, everything has 'just worked'. I set up a contact for myself, took my picture for it, and it works. I created a contact for my wife, found a picture amongst the gig or so of pictures of her, used iPhoto to clip a portion of the picture, dragged it to her contact, and there it is! Beautiful.

In iPhoto, you can get a really nifty slide show by clicking on one button. Complete with music. Very cool.

I found out you can hold down the ctrl key while scrolling on the pad, and the entire screen zooms in and out - I wear bifocals, and this feature is just plain wonderful! And it works very naturally, you really don't have to think about it while you're doing it.

So far, it is a very good experience. Soon I will be trying to set up network access at my day job. That'll probably be in the next post.

At this point, moving to the Mac appears to be not only feasible, but attractive. Very smooth.