Well, I have finally done it; I have made the switch to the world of Apple Computer and their Mac Book Pro.  My only regret is that I did not do it sooner.  I purchased a refurbished Mac Book Pro 15″ model with an Intel 2.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, and a 200 GB 7200 RPM drive.

My first impression upon taking it out of the box was that when I opened the notebook up and pressed the power button, it came on.  The battery was almost fully charged.  After answering some basic questions about my location and language preferences, the unit was mine to begin using and exploring.  Wait, you mean there are no annoying ad ware programs to go through like those found on PCs.  Sign up for antivirus for 12 months, sign up for AOL or some other provider.  There was none of this garbage on this notebook; how refreshing.

So I started to poke around and determine what wouldn’t work.  So, would my Verizon Wireless CDMA card work?  Yep, you betcha.  I plugged the card into the express card slot and bingo, it actually had drivers.  I clicked on the connect dialogue in the top right of the screen, and it connected right to the network; now that was impressive.  No drivers to install; it just worked.

What about all of my Microsoft Word documents and such?  How would I use those in this new world?  Well, I went out and downloaded two programs; Office for the Mac 2008, and Open Office.  Office is a free evaluation for 30 days, and then I need to buy it and Open Office is obviously free.  I am presently putting both through their paces, but I am impressed with the Microsoft offering, especially Entourage, the Mail Client.  As for Word and Excel, they do not have the annoying ribbon like what is found in Vista, but you do have separate windows that come up with formatting and document management controls.  That is going to take a little getting used to, should I decide to purchase a license for Office.

Personal finance programs are available for the Mac, but I have not ventured off to purchase those quite yet.  Why?  Well, I found a great deal on VMWare Fusion, the VMWare solution for Mac OS X.  It rocks, plain and simple.  For those applications that may not be supported in OS X, I have created a VM with Windows XP in it.  That way I can; migrate files over from my PC to Mac; utilize my Xerox Scanner and transfer the files over to my documents folder in Mac OS X; and continue to utilize my personal finance software until I figure out what I am going to do with those.

All in all, I am very pleased with the MacBook Pro I purchased.  The unit came with a one year warranty and I am extending that with an AppleCare agreement, so the unit is covered for three years.  It is going to take some getting used to, as the interface is different than Vista and much different that XP Pro, but the OS is much more stable that Windows, most likely due to the fact that it is based on Unix.  The Macs are pricey, especially the MacBook’s, but I am here to tell you it is worth it.  If something goes wrong with it, I can go to my local Apple Store with MacBook in hand and have the unit repaired, without having to send it off somewhere to get fixed.

If I decide to keep Office for the Mac, I will be sure to blog about my experience with it.  I also just installed Carbonite for the Mac and it is working flawlessly.  I had been a user of Carbonite on the PC and was very pleased to see they released a Mac version as well.  I will post my experiences with it as well as I use it more.  A review of VMWare Fusion is also probably not that far off either, but early indications are that it is a solid VM solution for the Mac and OS X.