MAC Book Pro

[rockymtnhigh]

If you go this route, make sure you DON'T read the EULA...



Diogen.

Of course not.

I was mostly interested in doing it so I could get my iPad into developer mode, but now that I have a mbp on the way, no real need. I have fed the Apple machine enough money as it is.

 

[Foxbat]

I am open to suggestions for sure. Definitely want to be able to have a few of my windows apps available when I need them. Its not all the time, but occasionally.

Rocky, I use Oracle (was Sun) Virtual Box. I like the price (free) but I'm not sure if the Personal Use license would be compatible with your Educational use. I set mine up to support 64-bit Windows 7 when it seemed like that was the direction my company was headed, but they have since backed down to the 32-bit version.

I don't use it very often, but everything I loaded on it under Windows 7 seemed to run okay. On a i7 quad-core, you should have no performance issues.

Have fun in Hawaii! Really, I'm not jealous...

 

[rockymtnhigh]

well, I have the new mbp. The IT guy for our dept never set it up, and he is out for a week, so I picked it up and am playing with it myself. Very nice so far. But it will take a long time to get used to the trackpad. And little things like figuring out how to install stuff. Just kind of different.

 

[stimpson]

Very nice so far. But it will take a long time to get used to the trackpad. And little things like figuring out how to install stuff. Just kind of different.

I hear ya!!!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

When I got mine I had to load Windows on it and then slowly learn the mac os.

Once I learned the OS I hardly ever booted into Windows on the machine again.

You will find yourself saying "where is..." and "How do I" a lot your first few days... but once you find those things you will love it move every day.

It is the toughest most stable laptop I have ever owned.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Yeah, just little things like trying to figure out where the dropbox tray icon was - felt kind of stupid since the "tray" is on the top of the screen, but for five minutes I was going nuts - how do I know it is syncing? But then I found it.

I notice that this puppy runs fairly warm - already have a laptop cooler under it; and the fan has a tendency to come on fairly often, but that is doing its job.

So far I have Office 2011 and SPSS installed; I am bummed, the license I have for CS5 is PC only, so I will need to spend $$ to get it for the mac. I assumed the license we had at school would work, but alas, I was wrong. And there are several programs I own where I just need to download the mac versions. I immediately installed Chrome and synced it with my google account, so all of my bookmarks and chrome apps are functioning.

I am still in the experimenting mode, but so far am happy with having finally abandoned my biases and decided to try it out. One thing I cant figure out is when I am in a folder and looking at files, it does not seem to provide a way to show the sub-folders first, like on a pc? Am I missing something really simple?

 

[diogen]

SPSS installed;

Is it v.18?
There are a few Java patches that you have to have...

Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Is it v.18?
There are a few Java patches that you have to have...

Diogen.

Yes, 18. I forgot about the patches. I'll do that. I only ran it briefly.

I tried to download the mac version of the content analysis software I use, and realized there IS no mac version; they recommend running it under Parallels.

Been doing some research on Parallels v VM; a review a few years ago showed Parallels running 14% faster on average. But the review was old.

 

[JAG72]

But it will take a long time to get used to the trackpad.

I love the trackpad. I actually find myself trying to use the multitouch gestures on my work HP laptop and keep getting frustrated that they don't work.

 

[stimpson]

I love the trackpad. I actually find myself trying to use the multitouch gestures on my work HP laptop and keep getting frustrated that they don't work.

My wife did the same with ours. That's the main reason why I bought her an ipad. ?

Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys

 

[rockymtnhigh]

i don't mind the gestures, just getting used to everything is challenging, and installing apps seems to cause me more grief than it should. But I am getting better at it.

I get that you drag the dmg file to the App folder, but every one seems to respond a little different. But I'll get it eventually.

And I already installed a replacement for Finder, called Path Finder. It was driving me nuts that when I was in a folder, all of my folders were alphabetized instead at the top of the list like in Windows. Path Finder fixed that.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Why is it that the simplest things, like just selecting text, just don't work the way I think they should? Its kind of infuriating at times.

 

[diogen]

"Think Different!", remember?...

Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

"Think Different!", remember?...

Diogen.

Yeah. I remember.

Its the stupid track pad. I connected a microsoft mouse to it, and everything worked fine, but that "magic" trackpad is more than a little infuriating.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I realized I have used the word infuriating a lot. LOL

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Slowly figuring out stupid things like while there are no dedicated page-up/page-down keys, you can use fn-arrow to accomplish that. Hilarious.

 

[Foxbat]

The Apple philosophy seems to be "Add just enough Hardware so you can do it with Software"... Now, I don't have a Mac Book Pro, so I can't speak to its keyboard, but my Mac Pro's USB keyboard does have Page Up and Page Down keys. There probably wasn't enough room on the keyboard. Can't you use two-fingers to scroll up and down on the trackpad?

I stated using Mac OS after coming from the Windows world, but the first windowing systems I used were DECwindows and Amiga DOS. Having the menus at the top of the screen just seems natural to me, so I always move the task bar of all my Windows machines at work to the top to keep it consistent.

I noticed the heat when I played with the MBPs at the Apple store. That's one of the reasons I'd get a Mac Book Air for my portable computing needs instead. With the SSD, LED-backlight, and slower processors, they run remarkably cool.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

The Apple philosophy seems to be "Add just enough Hardware so you can do it with Software"... Now, I don't have a Mac Book Pro, so I can't speak to its keyboard, but my Mac Pro's USB keyboard does have Page Up and Page Down keys. There probably wasn't enough room on the keyboard. Can't you use two-fingers to scroll up and down on the trackpad?

I stated using Mac OS after coming from the Windows world, but the first windowing systems I used were DECwindows and Amiga DOS. Having the menus at the top of the screen just seems natural to me, so I always move the task bar of all my Windows machines at work to the top to keep it consistent.

I noticed the heat when I played with the MBPs at the Apple store. That's one of the reasons I'd get a Mac Book Air for my portable computing needs instead. With the SSD, LED-backlight, and slower processors, they run remarkably cool.

I think there was plenty of room for two pg up/pg down keys, but I think you are right, in terms of their philosophy.

It does run hot, but to be fair yesterday I was downloading over 30GB of files from dropbox, and that was pushing the system. It has been much cooler - and quieter - today. I guess I did a "burn-in" pushing the machine.


The mb air is just not powerful enough to be my work laptop. I opted for the most powerful machine I could get in the 13" form-factor -- which is 2.7GHz. I do need to add some ram, to get it to 8GB, but that will come later this summer.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Yeah! I figured out the delete thing! Fn-Delete is a "forward delete" and Delete is really backspace. Phew...

Also installed Parallels, with Windows XP, dang thing runs very fast. Pretty impressed. Once I upgrade the machine to 8GB of ram, I'll give it more than 1GB of ram. Coherence mode is pretty sweet. List of WIndows apps in the dock, click on the program and once the VM loads, the app just shows up like any other. Nice way to live in both worlds.

 

[stimpson]

Yeah! I figured out the delete thing! Fn-Delete is a "forward delete" and Delete is really backspace. Phew...

Also installed Parallels, with Windows XP, dang thing runs very fast. Pretty impressed. Once I upgrade the machine to 8GB of ram, I'll give it more than 1GB of ram. Coherence mode is pretty sweet. List of WIndows apps in the dock, click on the program and once the VM loads, the app just shows up like any other. Nice way to live in both worlds.

What is Coherence mode?

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