Another MacBook Pro convert...

There seems to be a spate of posts like this extolling the virtues of MacBook Pros and here is another!

I needed a new laptop as I recently switched jobs and need my own kit now. After first trying a Dell M1530 (horrible screen) and then a Zepto (Scandinavia's largest laptop manufacturer! why oh why did I not go for a big name? anyway space bar didn't work) I decided I just needed something that worked and I was reading such great things about the MacBook Pros.

I went along to the Apple store and tried one out, I was hooked. These things are wonderful pieces of kit. Amazing build quality, fantastic screens, really slim and light. I went for a 15.4” machine as the 17” is just a little too big for my liking plus I have worked at 1920x1200 for a couple of years on a Dell but for the past few months was finding myself winding the resolution down as it was too high so the 1440x900 on the 15.4” is quite nice.

I got one of the new Penryn (new Intel 45nm processors) based ones and bought my own RAM for it. Chose the 2.4GHz as 0.1GHZ with a bit of extra cache simply isn't worth £300 extra.

Unlike most of the other SharePoint guys who have gone down this route though I have not decided to just run with Vista and here is why...

I want to use all of my 4Gb RAM which means Vista x64 or OSX (which has been 64 bit for a while) Now Bootcamp works really well and I have installed and used Vista on it fine. In fact the new OS X install DVDs which have the Bootcamp drivers on even have proper 64 bit drivers for all the devices in a MBP, smoothest install ever. However it is still Vista. I just can't stand it. It is harder to use than XP and is such a resource hog.

The biggest bottleneck in a laptop with VM work is typically the hard drive and Vista hammers it. The fact is that running VMs using VMWare Fusion in OS X is hands down faster and smoother than VMWare Workstation in Vista. I can run VMs with more memory or just more VMs with OS X. It certainly seems to handle memory pressure better than Vista. Also suspending and restoring VMs is soooo much quicker in Fusion it is unbelievable. I have no idea why and I tried fiddling with the settings in VMWare workstation but it made no difference. I know VMWare workstation is more powerful with more options but honestly Fusion does everything I need.

Not everything is perfect, the keyboard takes some getting used to and there are different shortcuts inside and outside the VMs. Also 2 USB ports isn't enough although fairly easily rectified with a small USB hub I carry with me. I haven't had the chance to try out a super fast Firewire 800 external drive yet. OS X has its quirks, the way windows maximise and minimise drives me a bit mad for instance.

I have a Bootcamped XP installation running in Fusion for running Office and any Windows apps I haven't found equivalents for in OS X (i.e. games and Outlook), this is all seamless due to Unity mode in Fusion (check out VMWare Fusion Unity on YouTube) Development VMs then sit full screen on their own desktops and it is a quick key press to jump from one to another.

About a month ago I spent 6 hours trying to sort out a friend's laptop that had been reduced to a never ending BSOD reboot loop due to Vista SP1 (not beta) being applied and decided life is too short to waste on it.
As most SharePoint dev takes place in VMs I just don't care about the host OS any more, OS X just works. There are so many little things about this new laptop which are cool, it has been a long time since I used a piece of technology and doing so made me smile....