Jumping Ship

Now that I have finished with most of the major system migration from my old PC box, I can finally sit down and give a decent review of my first week with my Macbook Pro.

Perhaps even more important than my impression of the machine is the operating system it’s running on. After my first weekend with the MBP, in which I spent most of it in Vista gaming, I have now been able to spend some quality time in OSX, and I wish I would have thought to switch sooner. Aside from the big features, such as real-time searching in Spotlight (which Vista tries so hard to recreate), it’s the little keyboard shortcuts and GUI features that I find brings the most enjoyment to my Mac experience. A good example of this would be the use of Exposé, which allows you to view all of the windows and programs you currently have open in a single keystroke. As a person who frequently has multiple browser and folder widows open while working with a program, this is a godsend. In addition, this feature can be used in conjunction with “hot corners,” which simply reduces the action required to a mere mouse movement. I have used Vista’s Aero glass Alt-TAB feature to attempt to perform a similar action, but while visually appealing, it doesn’t help me get things done.

Even something as routine as installing and uninstalling apps is simplified in OSX. A simple drag-and drop into the trash is all that’s needed in most cases, with a quick find-and-delete in spotlight being the most the user ever has to perform in addition. Coming from windows, with its myriad of proprietary uninstallers and registry keys to eliminate to ensure the application is really gone, this is a welcome relief.

Since this is the first laptop I’ve ever owned, I’m also slowly learning that I no longer have to be tied to my desk to perform all of the same actions I’ve become accustomed to doing on a desktop. The Airport Express that I purchased this summer, in addition to providing wireless access to my house, has demonstrated that Apple products just work. No drivers to install, no files to browse for: you just plug it in and start using it.

While I was impressed with this ease of use with Apple products, I wasn’t fully convinced until I tried it with some third-party products, namely the Brother HL-5140 laser printer I have been using for school. Now this printer is not terribly old, but it has since been discontinued, which made it a perfect candidate for a compatibility test. On the Mac end, I plugged the printer in via USB, and printed a test page out within seconds. I decided to see how far my luck would go by attempting to print over my wireless network, and after plugging it in via my APX, it again my document printed without incident.

On the windows side however, things went quite differently. I am using Vista Business via a Bootcamp partition on my MBP, and I had hoped I wouldn’t have to go fish for drivers in the middle of working on a project, being the latest version of windows. But alas, as soon as I plugged the thing in, it barked at me for drivers, and unsuccessfully attempted to find them for itself. After a trip to the Brother website (which was admittedly easy to use and find what I needed), the document printed. As for wireless printing, I used a windows version of Bonjour (per Apple’s suggestion), and after profiling and clicking through a setup dialog, got wireless working for it as well.

So in the end, the big question is this: Is it really that much more of a hassle to get drivers for a device? For someone who is used to it, and knows where to look, probably not; but for someone who has no idea what a driver does, or where to find them for their device online, it can be a huge blow to productivity and overall enjoyment of using a computer. I feel that just being able to save those 5-10 minutes digging for drivers will add up over time, and will go a long way towards me getting the most out of my MBP.