MAC vs others

Before... I am used to HP and other laptops/notebooks, like IBM and Dell. Now, I have MAC Tiger OS X 2Ghz duo processor, 1G RAM and built-in video card and i like it very much, the performance, finishing touches, features and all. So in a period of three months owning a MAC I beleive I can share the good points having it for personal use.

Physical Features. MAC looks more compact than other brands with height of more or less 1" (monitor lid closed). Smooth edges and trayless DVD. Keyboard keys nicely apart from each other. With magnetic plug, active matrix LCD and built-in camera for chatting and video conference (can act as a mirror as well thru a mirror widget). It is nicely package in just one handcarry box. The only bearing is that USB slots is limited to two (2), and it has no built-in card reader (compared with HP notebooks that have 5 in 1 card reader).

Windows on MAC. Yes indeed, the new OS X Tiger with Intel duo processor can run Windows as 2nd OS. I setup my MAC for dual boot, so basically, i use MAC application for developing my own programs and office stuff, and use Windows when playing DOTA. MAC has also developed paralled OS which means that, Windows can run on top of MAC (pretty cool, right?), in this way users can run MAC application and Window application at the same time.

OS and AS. My MAC runs OS X Tiger version with installed iLife (with iWeb for web publishing etc..), iPhoto (like google's Picassa), iBooth (for taking pictures), iCal (Calendar), iTunes (for music and iPod), iSnyc (for contact synchronization with other device), AddressBook, iMail, and others. I just separately purchased MAC Office to cater MS Office documents. MAC has built-in PDF creator/reader, bluetooth and Wi-Fi service. One good thing, you can setup all application to be voice activated like "axe get mail" then axe (name of my MAC will automatically open iMail and connect and download all my emails from my googlemail's mailbox). The browser is Safari, but you can download firefox, for some webpages limit its browser compatibility. Also, MAC has widgets, just press F12 and the widgets will come out (like calculator, weather forecast, world clock, cyber pet, notes, etc.)

Performance vs. Productivity. That Macs are faster than PCs is a myth. Lets forget about benchmarks and MIPS for a second and let me be subjective. To me, they feel slightly slower in terms of how fast you can work. Is this a big deal? Not really. The Mac makes up for it by providing a more conflict resistant system, so in the end, the Mac comes out being more productive. The time you save by not tweaking and troubleshooting things on the system gives you more time to work on your projects.

Price. My MAC costs for SGD 2.2K vs my previous HP which was SGD 2.7K (single 2Ghz processor). As i compared prices with other notebooks MAC seems to me cheaper than HP, SONY, NEC, FUJITSU and with DELL for similar features. see sample price comparison in USD

Bottom line is, if you go for features, speed, productivity, style, comfort and fashion that gets you noticed and meets your requirements, switch to MAC.