I finally did it - I switched!

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G4 Cube
The backstory: A couple years ago I saw a G4 Cube on ebay, and being in love with both technology and good design, bid on it. I ended up winning it and thus started my love affair with modern Macs. The first real switcher in the family was my wife, for whom I got an iMac for her birthday. After that I got a Mini and had fun modding it; regretfully I did not have the space to house the Cube and sold that. I then decided I needed a portable computer, so I got a 13" MacBook and sold the Mini. I had tons of problems with it though and ended up selling it after getting it repaired. So for the last year or so my wife has been enjoying her iMac and I have been living in the wonderful, wonderful world of Windows (that's sarcasm there, folks).

After following various technologies closely, I finally decided that it was high time to switch. I got my new baby last week - a 2.2ghz 15" MacBook Pro. I immediately performed surgery on it (4 gigs of ram and a 200gb 7200rpm Hitachi hard drive) and wrapped it in a smoke-black Speck case and a Marware wrist pad to keep it looking new for years to come. The 4 gigs will be sufficient to run my work and school apps with (2 gigs for XP under Parallels and 2 gigs for OS X). My wife also decided to go mobile and get a 13" MacBook to replace her iMac desktop, which we promptly upgraded with 3 gigs of ram and another 200gb 7200rpm hard drive. Between our laptops, we have 400 gigs of hard drive space, 8.72ghz of processing power, and 7 gigs of ram; that boggles my my mind! So now we are in the midst of transferring our files and will then sell her iMac and all of my PCs. I'm almost having withdrawls...wow, that only lasted for a few seconds! I am quite excited; we both have portable, powerful machines which will be immensely useful in both our work and personal lives.

I also jumped on the refurb Mac Mini deal over at Apple to act as our home server. I am currently running a FreeNAS (FreeBSD/Unix-based) file server for multimedia and computer backup, but I wanted a Mini to handle various functions for both now and in the future. Over time, it will become the heart of my home automation system (INSTEON controllers and a network Infrared blaster) and phone system (Ovalab's Phlink), as well as provide remote access (VPN via HamachiX) and some other functions that I will add over time. I'm keeping the BSD file server (hey, it's almost OS X!) since I can't find any good RAID 5 software solutions for the Mini to run external hard drives with. Hopefully Leopard will offer RAID 5 software support or ZFS or some kind of solution for combining drives in a reliable way so that I can ditch my file server and finally be a true Mac convert.

We picked up a couple iPhones last week to seal the deal. I figured if I'm going to sell all of my PC stuff, I had better get something good out of it! Aside from AT&T's less-than-stellar service, we are quite pleased with the phones. They integrate flawlessly with OS X (and even XP) and are miles ahead of my previous phones. The usability puts my previous Motorola Q to shame! The iPhones are especially fun because they will control the Mini, which in turn will control the lights, home theater system, and even the Roomba robotic vacuums. So in addition to being a phone, the iPhone also serves as the master remote for the house. It's all part of my grand scheme to have an iHome O:)

Currently the iPhone is controlling multimedia playback on the Xboxes running Xbox Media Center, using the awesome XBMC iPhone Remote Control software. The Xbox catalogs all of the multimedia on my file server (music, movies, and photos) and then I can browse my multimedia library right on my iPhone and send commands like Play/Pause straight to the Xbox. It even grabs the Album Art and DVD cover! Once I get the Mini up and running and integrate some hardware controllers into the mix, the iPhone will be able to turn on and off the lights, control motorized applications like drapes and a projector screen, and send commands to anything with an IR receiver such as a television, projector, receiver, or DVD player.

Welcome to 2007. Think Different :D
 
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Wow that is some serious hardware you've got there... going all Apple, eh?
 
OP
K
Joined
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Your Mac's Specs
G4 Cube
Wow that is some serious hardware you've got there... going all Apple, eh?

Yup! Computers are my passion and I enjoy working with them at work, in school, and at home. Windows XP is just fine, but I love being on a powerful OS X machine. The technology has come to the point where I can realistically switch without looking back. I support multiple companies in the tech department and having a laptop that can run any version of Windows I throw at it, anytime I want, is simply amazing. I also use it for development purposes - virtual machines are the perfect sandboxes to try out new software, test new code and operating systems, and so on. I'm very, very pleased with my setup so far. I am installing the apps and transferring the files later today and should be completely switched over by tomorrow.

As far as the 15" MBP goes, it's incredible. I've never seen anything like the screen on it - super bright and deep, deep blacks. I hope Apple releases some updated displays with LED backlighting soon because the quality is just stellar. Computer graphics is one of my big hobbies and also plays a minor role in my work; I can effectively do whatever I need right on my 15" screen without absolutely having to hook up to my big LCD monitor to get the color I need. Also the heat and noise blow me away...it's almost non-existent! I ran a couple yes>/dev/null commands in the terminal to see how loud I could get the processor's fans to go at full-speed, but it was as quiet as a mouse. The bottom got warm, but not so hot that I couldn't keep my hands there. On the flip side, my sister-in-law's 15" MacBook Pro Core Duo could double as a pan to fry eggs on! The 7200rpm drive also gets warm but not terribly warm; it hasn't even approached "hot" yet. Quiet, fast, cool...I love it! It's everything I had hoped it would be.

Also I saw in your sig that you are getting a new MBP - congrats! I just posted a mini-review of the Marware wrist pad, I would highly recommend picking one up ASAP:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=453472&postcount=1
 

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