PIMs, Writing Software, and Windows XP, Vista, and OS X

Posted by Graham Smith
Nov 27, 2007 at 05:29 PM

Randall,

I recently added a MacBookPro to my toolkit after following forums and asking around for about 12 months. As I hinted in the Scrivener thread I am very pleased with it (mind you I am typing this on my old Thinkpad).

There are some comforting aspects to the Mac. Generally the OS seems better thought out than Windows and the OS upgrades from Panther to Tiger and now to Leopard have all come with increases in performance. (but also a fair share of upgrade woes it would seem, so this is not a unique feature of Windows).

In terms of performance, the consensus seemed to be that for the same spec, the Macs are about a 1/3 faster than XP. Certainly my slightly better specified XP desktop feels sluggish compared to my MacBookPro ( this includes running the same programs on both platforms eg LightRoom). It should also be said that running Linux (Ubuntu) on the same desktop seems incredibly fast compared to the either the Mac or XP .

I have some Windows only programs so I will still be running a Windows box for special purposes, but my everyday needs will now being filled with the Mac and Linux. This is a “will be” because until I can afford a “backup” Mac I can’t fully switch.

As an aside, Parrallels is not currently a reliable professional solution to running Windows programs on the Mac as not everything will fully run in Parrallels and upgrades can break programs that had been running before the upgrade.

Overall, I can’t see many people regretting a switch to a Mac.

Graham