MacBook Pro

I almost never have a desire to be on the bleeding edge of technology…cutting edge – sure; always, but not bleeding. In early late April, however I just couldn’t resist with the announcement of Apple’s Boot Camp for Macintosh. I was in the market for a new laptop and was about to purchase yet another Dell Latitude, my preferred choice for nearly 10 or so years – tried and true (and not "blue"). But when Apple made it’s announcement on April 5^th, my heart hurt with desire for one of those new MacBook Pros with its brushed silver aluminum thin cases and extra wide screen. I had always loved the Mac since my early college days when I was one of those kids who spent their savings on a Macintosh 512Ke (the “e” was for “enhanced, making the 512K of RAM work just a little faster). It even had an external floppy drive and a nifty canvass bag allowing me to carry it around which I did on occasion. Not sure way I did, but I did. The whole thing, including the Imagewriter II printer, cost me around $4,000. And on that machine, I did amazing things creating newsletters and leaflets and posters for my student organizing days with the MPIRG. Ahhh, those were the days my friends. But alas that machine outstayed its welcome and eventually got traded for an IBM Laptop which got traded for a wooden Gemeinhardt piccolo (which I still have). And I landed in professional jobs that by day had me on the personal computer (well, actually I started out on old CPM machines with the KayPro2, but that’s another story not worth sharing).

For the most part by day, I have continued to live in the PC-windows world and by night the Macintosh and with that, a plethora of machines for my own personal use at both work and home. With this announcement, I could live in both worlds in one machine. I could potentially get rid of a couple of in-use laptops and maybe even that desktop which housed my creative works. So with little trepidation and good deal of consideration, I took the plunge: A 2.0GHz Intel duo core MacBook Pro with 2G of RAM a 120G hard disk. It arrived 4 days after purchasing (which was as fast as my Dell shipments) in a very thin black box. It was a stunning sight and I was about to experience a little bit of the bleed in being too far out on that edge of technology……