I hopped in the car, ran to the local Apple dealer, and bought an iBook 600.
The goal, was to use it in tandem with my Dell Inspiron 5000E running
Windows XP. To see if I could use the Apple in my daily work. I never
expected to switch completely. That was never the intent. I was simply
evaluating the platform for it's suitability, as I had given up on getting away
from Windows.
The iBook was a truly impressive piece of hardware. All of the criticisms of the
Mac are very very accurate on the surface. They cost too much. The iBook
was an $1800 laptop running at 600mhz at a time when x86 laptops with
bigger screens and much faster processors (800's) where going for about
$1600. The screens are too small. All of this was a concern to me. But I
bought it anyways.
The reality was that from the initial opening of the box, I fell for the machine.
Yes, on the surface the criticisms are correct, but they miss the big picture.
The Mac and the iBook in particulary have a polish that the Windows machines
do not match.
One of the first things I had to do was get the new laptop configured for the
two networks I live off of. At home, I use a wireless 802.11 configuration. At
work, I have a Fast Ethernet network. They use completely different
configurations. On the Windows XP machine, this took a couple days to get
completely correct. At home, this took less than 5 minutes on the iBook, and
it took nothing more than turning on the iBook at the office. This was a first
impression that lasted a good while.
The next thing that was required was for me to get data from my Windows
laptop. Browsing a Windows network was a little klunky on the Mac, but the
fact that I could without installing a 3rd party product like Thursby's Dave was
a major improvement over OS 8. Once connected over the 802.11 network,
I could copy files at will. The problem is that an 802.11 network is inherently
slow for gigabyte size copies. Well, I had ethernet cards on both laptops
so I more or less decided to try it that way. The problem was that my cross
over ethernet cable is lying on my desk at the office. So I go hunting for a hub,
nope, none in the house. Meanwhile, I had plugged everything in, and out of
habit had plugged in the normal ethernet cable. Turns out, that Apple built in
an autoswitching ethernet port, it doesn't require a cross over cable.
Files copied, and I'm ready to play with the iBook. Some of the highlights
from my initial notes of that weekend:
- For a 600, this is quite a bit snappier than expected.
- Wow, the display, the LCD itself is one of the best I've used
- The overall fit and finish is very tight, much as one
would expect from a high end luxury auto
- CD Burn is very easy, and painless.
- iTunes is tidy, yet minimalistic.
- iPhoto nice, very consumer oriented
- Mail usable at a basic level, needs a good rules system
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