So, I Bought This MacBook Air

As you can see from my last post I was extremely frustrated with Windows and Internet Explorer.  Also, my laptop which was almost 3 years old was nearing the end.  The battery wasn't holding a charge very long (it's my second battery) and when I was in Iowa for a week in became quite apparent to me how slow my laptop had become on bootup.  Plus, one of the folks on the Iowa team had a Macbook Air and I became extremely jealous.

However, I still was reluctant to make the switch.  The Air I wanted plus the Apple Care and tax turned out to be around $2K and that's a big nut to swallow.  Similar (not really) HPs were in the $1300 range.  I went back and forth but my wife decided, that I should test out a MacBook Air so off we went to the Bridgewater NJ Mac store.  

Of course I bought it and after about a week, here's my quick review - BTW if you think this is going to be a Mac Fan Boy post, guess again.  To put this in perspective, I started using a PC in the mid 1980s while in high school - that would be MSDOS.  I've kept my floppy discs from college in a box as a joke for my kids.  I spent countless hours in Hill Center at Rutgers using email in the earliest days of email, I remember downloading photos with a dial up modem that took hours, and while at AT&T I was made a Microsoft rep so I remember installing Windows 1.0, Word 1.0 and Excel 1.0.  Finally, I probably have better Excel skills than about 95% of the users out there...

THE GOOD STUFF FOR AN OLD PC GUY LIKE ME

1. The machine itself is a work of art.  It's light, fast, pretty, I can't say enough good things
2. The battery lasts at least 5 hours of serious work applications
3. Itunes with iPhone and iPad just seem to work better
4. The mouse gestures are awesome - easy to use if you are a heavy iPad/iPhone person
5. The build in apps like iCal, iPhoto, Facetime, contacts, Grab, iChat, and mail are great products
6. The new Lion operating system seems very stable and easy to use.
7. Opening Office docs is easy

THE IT'S HARD TO TEACH AN OLD PC DOG NEW TRICKS SECTION

1. Importing your email is next to impossible if you don't use Outlook. I had to create a Gmail account that I used as an IMAP account on both computers to get some of my archived email over.
2. The compatibility between your old calendar and contacts are also problematic Calendar was handled via Google and Contacts was via iPhone
3. I didn't want to get Office.  It's expensive.  Mail coupled with iCalendar and Contacts is better than Outlook.  Pages and Keynote are superior products but it takes a while to get trained.  Basically, training yourself on those products will take time and commitment - don't fool yourself.
4. And then there's Excel.  I miss it.  Numbers is not as good.  As opposed to Pages and Keynote which seem easy and better Numbers is not.  After a week, I miss Excel, but Microsoft wont let you just buy Excel.  So I'm going to grin and bear it with Numbers for a while.
5. Oh - did I mention CSV files that you download from the internet.  They dont import in Numbers well.  You need to go from Pages and change the commas to tabs and then import it.
6. I miss the backspace button

After a week, the machine is awesome.  It's the best out there.  It does require some level of commitment to make it work - think LONG TERM commitment.  Even an old Windows guy can be off and running but to really get into it, it does require time and effort.  The biggest downer is Numbers.  It shouldn't even be described as a spreadsheet software. The title of the app should just be Numb.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric