Switched
I’ve switched.
For the last 3 years I have been using Linux on a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop. It’s been working fairly well, but lately the age of it has begun to show. The laptop emits loud fan noise, has problems with shutting down occasionally, and it’s a pain to switch between wireless networks. Linux is great to develop on, but I have not come across any desktop environment that I would feel it excel at.
So, having looked around, I narrowed my decision to IBM ThinkPad and Apple Powerbook. Rasmus has recently bought one of the former (T42, I believe), but read his posting and note how much time he had to spend to get certain things working (like suspend and wakeup). That is exactly the sort of thing that I am sick of. More and more of my friends and co-workers have been praising their Powerbooks. And why not? It’s Unix under the hood after all, with a sexy GUI on top, all glued together with tight, usable, fast desktop glue, ready for coding, multimedia, connectivity – whatever you want.
As of last Friday, I have a beautiful 15″ aluminium Powerbook in my hands and I love it so far. Put it to sleep? Just close the lid. Wireless? I go to a coffee shop with free wireless connection and Powerbook discovers it and connects automatically. Development? I have full power of BSD, X11, gcc, vim, and all the rest at my fingertips. Mutimedia? Don’t even get me started. Now I just need a list of cool apps/tips/tricks to make the laptop even better.
I have switched and I am not going back.
