So I've been using a mac for over 6 months now. The reason that I got it was Shannon needed something at home, cause our really only functioning computer was my work laptop. Oh there are 2 working computers downstairs (old w/ linux on them, haven't been turned on in about a year) and one that likes to fry video cards (my fault, mounted motherboard poorly), but when it comes down to it there really wasn't one for her to use.

If anyone wants those two old PCs (Pentium II and AMD K6-3 450), just let me know, I'll format 'em and they'll be yours.

So I have a few compliments and complaints about Apple and Macs. First off, the few problems that we've had with the Macbook have been frustrating, but Apple Support has been amazing. Hearing about family members and friends having to deal with Dell, Gateway, or others, it makes me glad we have what we have. We've had the random shutdown issue, the discolorization of the palm rests, the power not switching to battery when the cord is unplugged from the laptop, and the not going to stand by mode when the macbook is closed (which I think should be a setting, cause some people may want to leave it on, my work IBM laptop has this as a setting).

The Wireless can be janky sometimes, I'll connect and then For some random reason it'll loose the signal and it'll have to reconnect. Sometimes it can see the 802.11a wireless, most of the time it can't (though g is fine too).

Shannon's become very comfortable with it, and I rarely have to help her do things now. I've even got her using Thunderbird for email now.

Now that Open Office (Neo Office) is OSX native, it makes it much easier for me too. I just wish they'd hurry up and get Gimp (graphic editor) native too.

There are things about the software that can be annoying, which I think they should make it easier to do.

iPhoto. It should be easier to share the pictures, ratings and etc, with the other users on the system, and have it auto-update the permissions and all that when you add photos. Making a book has been easy as pie. As most of the people that we are giving them to, we're making books (hard cover) of our wedding and I hope the quality is good (especially for how pricey they are per book).

iTunes, should share it's music easily. Shannon should be able to have her own ratings to all the music and have access to it all to. So if we get her an iPod she can do all those things without messing with my ratings (which would be quite annoying to me).

iDVD. It's easy to make a movie, but the way that it compiles the movie and how many chapters it uses makes it incompatible with many of the DVD players we've come across. Windows, Chris and Holly's, Shannon's Parents...in fact the only one it's worked on that we've tried is our own. If we used less pictures, it wouldn't have been a problem. If they'd create a movie so that say, 10 or 20 pictures would fall into a chapter, that'd probably work smoother. Maybe it's that these DVD devices don't fall into spec, but whatever, it's problematic. I made a movie for one of the Director's here, for her trip to Africa, it took me about an hour, and that was the second time I had used the program (I had done it once before, just to figure out to see if I could do it). She actually ended up buying a mac.

Games...this is where I get depressed, and this is why I'll probably always have some sort of PC. The games that I want to play, come to the mac later, or never...It's depressing. But since I've been spending most of my gaming time playing Final Fantasy XII, it doesn't so much matter.

Printers. Setting up my networked laser printer was a gigantic pain in the ass. Finding a driver that would work with it AND the device I use to put it on my home network was a huge trouble. The color printer just wouldn't work across the network device (which isn't certified for mac use), but if you plug it in, it works great (can't so much plug in the laser printer, since it doesn't have a connection that goes to my macbook).

I've been long overdue in buying an upgrade to my personal copy of Macromedia Studio (now Adobe), and It'll work on the mac, but I was curious if I could get something that was opensource. The things I've seen so far have really really sucked...I mean just awful.

Like I've said on a few occasions, I may always have a PC, but I really think that the mac is my new base for the personal stuff (email, photos, etc).