For the last few months I have been shopping for a laptop. Knowing that I have rather specific requirements for what I wanted from the hardware and within a certain budget, I’ve been pretty picky. All this, and I told myself I would either wait until service pack 1 of Vista was released or try to pickup a refurb Dell unit still running XP. Since I wasn’t in too much of a hurry, I could take my time and really get a feel for what I wanted. This usually meant playing with whatever laptops the big box stores had while I was there for some other purpose and looking for deals online. From a tactile feel, I’ve always liked Sony Vaio laptops, however they are way over priced for what you get. HP seemed to have everything I wanted, however their 15.4” models only run a screen resolution of 1280×800, I wanted better than that from a 15.4” and they didn’t offer much in the 14” and smaller line that was anything near affordable. Back to Dell. Dell offers some sick screen resolutions on their 15.4” lines, but the price goes through the roof when you add the video card to drive them, and they don’t come with bluetooth or a web cam by default, they are about a $100 add on. I can live without the web cam, who would want to see me anyway, but I want bluetooth for easy synching with my phone and for a wireless mouse. The added video card and bluetooth put me over the budget I had of around a grand.

My hardware requirements are:

• Intel Core 2 duo
• At least 1GB of RAM installed
• At least a 120GB hard drive
• DVD burner – double layer doesn’t much matter to me
• Extended battery
• Bluetooth
• Under 5lbs

Looking at a refurb site, I thought I found a 13.3” Vaio that fit my needs and an older 1.83 core 2-duo processor. It had everything I wanted and a few things that were nice add-ons, but only came with a 90-day warranty. The company selling the laptop offered a 3-year on-site warranty for an additional $99, but it was done through a third party, something I’m not fond of. I was still very interested in it though and asked some co-workers their opinion on the hardware setup. All agreed that it was a lot of computer for the money, but asked if I looked into the Macbook refurbs, there was one that was about $50 more but had a 1-year warranty.

Reluctantly I went to the Apple site and clicked on the refurbished section. Sure enough, they had a 13.3” Macbook with a better, 2.15 Core 2 duo processor and everything else on my want list. Black would have been my first choice, but they only had white in stock. The next 2 hours really had me pondering what to do. A co-worker has been running Tiger on his new (refurb) 15” Macbook Pro with VMware Fusion, allowing him to also run Windows and Ubuntu all at the same time without rebooting. This sounded great, although I can only think of one application that I have that is Windows specific that they don’t have a Mac version for. At least the option to have Windows is there.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a fan of Macs, most don’t understand why though. I think OSX is a great operating system but I don’t like the overpriced hardware one needs to buy to run the operating system. Up until this point, one can almost always buy more hardware for the money and run Windows than OSX, I still feel this is true with most of the desktop units that Apple offers. In my case, laptop to laptop, the refurb Macbook is in the same price range with the same features as Windows based ones and the ability to run Windows and Ubuntu on it is very attractive.

The laptop is supposed to arrive tomorrow, we’ll see if FedEx ground comes through or not, but several of my friends that know its coming are more excited to me. In telling a few Mac using friends that I ordered one, their first question back to me has been nearly identical, to the word, do you love it?

I can’t say that there is any proper way to answer that, even after I get it and start using it on a regular basis. I’ve never said, Wow, I love Windows! Nor can I say that about nearly any product I use on a regular basis. What makes Mac addicts so into their hardware? Some of these friends who know it’s coming bought a Mac because it looks pretty, which in most cases, it does, some are programmers and designers who have been using Macs so long that they are just more proficient with them. Where does all this supposed love come from though? Why do Mac fans get all excited in the pants at the announcement of a new keynote speech by Steve Jobs?

My main computer uses are

• Internet
• Email
• Photoshop (most RAW processing digital photos and adjusting for output)
• Minor coding (usually in Dreamweaver or Scite)
• Writing / blogging
• Bittorrent

My hope is that none of these tasks are drastically affected as I make the transition to a Mac. I have no intentions of moving entirely, my XP based desktop is still plenty fast and will serve for grunt work with specific Photoshop work that requires a higher resolution than my laptop will provide me with.

Expect updates on how my introduction into OSX goes as well as other learning curves, widgets, and other Mac anomalies go. Wish me luck!