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Well, now that I’ve had it for a couple of days I think that I’ll be able to give a brief review of the Macbook Pro, OS X, and Mac software in general. I’ve mentioned how I came to buy it in previous posts, so now I’m going to get to the actual computer itself.

It’s awesome. When I first took the computer out of the box it was suprisingly bigger than I expected, but in a good way. Bigger like screen size, but super-thin otherwise. Opening it up and seeing the awesome keyboard, and then turning it on and seeing the awesome screen was…. well, awesome.

After a quick long video saying hello to me in 30 different languages, I went on to set up basic system preferences, and then on into the actual desktop. Getting onto the WiFi was a minor catastrophe which was eventually resolved after a recommendation by Aaron.

Once it was up and running, I procedded to install all of the neccessary applications: Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, Adium, NeoOffice, etc. All installed in under a minute. Installing programs on a Mac far out-beats doing it on windows. You download a .dmg file which instantly extracts and pops up a window with the program icon. Then you just drag it into the Applications folder (with some very satisfying eye candy,) eject the disk image, and you’re done.

Perhaps my computer was even worse than I thought, but it’s amazing how many programs I’ve been running at once. I know that this computer is brand new and all, and 4 years from now it’ll probably be just as bad, but having 2GB of RAM is a very nice thing.

The dock is awesome, and overall I’ve found the entire operating system to handle multi-tasking and quick actions much better than windows. At first I was afraid that the lack of a true “maximize” button would make the desktop cluttered and hard to manage, but Expose fixes all of that.

I was surprised how easily I was able to un-learn things. I’m still working on it, but I’m already doing Apple-C to copy and dragging hard drives to the trash to eject them.

Finally, overall the entire thing: The operating system, the screen quality, the size of the laptop, even the packaging makes Macs so much easier and fun to use.

Oh, except for one thing: I’m having a bit lot of trouble with my external harddrive, which seems to have broken down. Whether if has to do with connecting it to the computer is doubtful, but a pretty big coincidence. All of my music is on that, and my iPod is PC formatted, making more probems. I’ll figure it all out eventually , but that’s been a pretty madening exerience, especially in contrast with how well everything else is working.