Finally made the switch to a mac

Well, I am actually posting this before getting my mac but i am finding it hard to keep waiting any longer so i figured i would make this post and hopefully it will help my wait for my new mac to arrive.

So here is my backstory,

I am a pc gamer / third year university student in programming, but have spent all of my life in windows (starting with 3.1). I have been learning objective c lately and wanted to start making iphone apps. I failed miserably at hackintoshing my old acer laptop, as i could not get the onboard keyboard / touchpad to recognize. My desktop computer is a custom build gaming rig, win 7 x64, my baby, but i use it only for gaming. (left for dead 2, cod 4 mw 2, sc2, wow ect...) and my laptop has always been for everything else. Well my acer is getting really dated (about 2.5 yr now), and i decided that september i would be needing a new computer regardless.

So after much thought, and deciding that i wanted to get into iphone dev (as i have had an iphone for a while, as my ONLY experience with the mac platform) Compared to my old HTC that would always freeze and crash my iphone has yet to give me 1 problem.

So i went ahead and hit the buy button on a new mbp 13in. Below i will copy the specs from my order.

MBP 13.3/2.4/CTO

Z0J7

$1,179.00

1

$1,179.00

With the following configuration:
PROCESSOR 065-9181 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
MEMORY 065-9184 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRM - 2x2GB
HARD DRIVE 065-9187 250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400
OPTICAL DRIVE 065-9194 SuperDrive 8X DL
Apple Software - iWork 065-7672 No iWork Preinstalled
Apple Software - Final Cut Exp 065-7674 No Final Cut Express preinstd
Apple Software - Aperture 065-7673 No Aperture Preinstalled
Apple Software - Logic Express 065-7675 No Logic Express Preinstalled
Apple Software - Filemaker 065-8307 No FileMaker Preinstalled
Apple Software - MS Office 065-8198 No MSO preinstalled
DVI Adapter 065-9198 No DVI Adapter
VGA Adapter 065-9201 Mini DisplayPort - VGA Adapter
KEYBOARD AND DOCUMENTATION 065-9208 Keyboard/Users Guide
COUNTRY KIT 065-9211 Country Kit

Now i recognize that im paying double what i could pay for the same in a windows based pc, but im lead to believe that it will pay off. I did get the education discount, and plan to install win 7 x64 with my msdn keys from school, via bootcamp. I will also probably set up parallels with a win xp incase i ever need quick access to windows.

Now i know that the 250gb 5400 rpm drive is going to be a little small, but i have my drobo with 4 1.5tb drives, giving me about 4tb in raid 5, which i have networked at home. Im hoping that the mac osx will be able to see that networked drive easy, it is set up (i believe) in ntfs, so im lead to believe that a mac can read ntfs no problem.

Now here is my real problem, im dying to get my hands on this thing. Below is a copy of ups shipment tracking, (read bottom to top)

ANCHORAGE, AK, US 03/05/2010 17:07 DEPARTURE SCAN
03/05/2010 13:58 ARRIVAL SCAN
SHANGHAI, CN 03/05/2010 22:06 DEPARTURE SCAN
03/05/2010 21:21 DEPARTURE SCAN
03/05/2010 20:04 EXPORT SCAN
03/05/2010 13:16 ORIGIN SCAN
CN 03/05/2010 0:32 BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

I am really hoping that i get this thing wednesday, but i know it is probably going to come in thursday or friday, as ups dosent deliever to my town (sudbury, ontario, canada), so they will have to hand the package over to fedex, and ive heard that it will add a day. The one thing that i find odd is that i ordered the mbp on April 29th (at 1am) but the product didnt get to the shipping company untill may 3rd, that seems like a long time to me.

My only last concern is how the 320m video card will preform. My old acer had the 9600m, which i am lead to believe is still a good bit faster then the 320m. I hope that the 320m will at least be able to handel sc2 at all minimum settings, but as i have already ordered the laptop now is not the time to worry, because if not i always have my desktop

Anyway,

This has worked to relieve some of my impatience please reply, ill but up for a while f5'ing the thread

-William
(gamer taged Fedhell)

you won't notice how your video card handles unless you're playing games, otherwise it will work fine.

Whoa! Slow down!!

Don't try to do too much too fast once it arrives. You'll end up messing things up and ruining the experience. Check out all the System Preferences, but don't change anything at first. Then, don't change 10 things right away. Do it... s l o w l y .

And by all means, resist the customization bug for as long as possible. Use it the way it comes until you're familiar with it. That also means not downloading a boat load of add-ons, especially OS "enhancements" and installing them all at once. Do such things incrementally, if you do them at all.

Agree with previous comment, slow down my friend, and enjoy the experience before you start working it too hard, otherwise if you come across anything unfamiliar, you will panic, not knowing what to do, and then possibly causing more harm than good.

Welcome to the world of Macs!
And just to add be sure to backup your HDD before you do any customizations just in case they don't jive or you decide you're not crazy about them. Regular Time Machine backups are nice for retrieving files you deleted and then later changed your mind and decided you want them back and things like that. A good bootable clone is essential in case the worst happens and your HDD crashes or is damaged or an install goes horribly wrong - recommend Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! Can't go wrong with either.

fedhell said:

in ntfs, so im lead to believe that a mac can read ntfs no problem.

Click to expand...

Wow, that was a long thread with little questions! Welcome to Mac!

Like mentioned before, you won't notice a slowdown with the GPU unless you're gaming. But you have your PC for that.

On Mac, if you connect a drive formatted to NTFS, it will be Read Only. There is a work around but it's not very stable. A quick Google will help you there.

All the best,

-Ben

Hahahahahahahaha you think the 320m won't blow the 9600m out of the water? It's 3 series newer. As for it running SC2 on minimum, well at least your expectations are on the bottom of the spectrum instead of expecting too much...

Roflcopter