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The What and When
I checked in with my four friends on what to purchase, visited an Apple store on two occasions, and have selected this hardware configuration:
- 17" Macbook Pro laptop. I like more real estate on the screen, even if there are penalties for size and weight.
- 3 GBytes of memory. The extra memory will allow me to concurrently run many Mac and Windows (via Parallels) applications.
- Undecided on disk space.
Software. This is still a moving target but will likely include:
- Parallels, and Windows XP to use with Parallels. My understanding is that Parallels is just a shell and so I need to acquire the Windows operating system too.
- Microsoft Office for the Mac. This puts me behind since the Mac version of Office 2007 isn't due out for a while, but I don't care. The 2003/2004 version is sufficient for my needs.
- Microsoft Project. I'll run it in Parallels.
- Microsoft Visio. I'll run it in Parallels.
The When is easy. I am waiting for Apple to release the newer operating system (aka Leopard, or OS X v10.5) for the Mac. ETA is perhaps the end of March.
5 comments:
Key consideration will be the approach for moving mail and contacts and files. Suggested helper apps:
http://www.sigsoftware.com/namecleaner/
http://www.littlemachines.com/
Peter,
go to www.omnigroup.com and get Omnigraffle (like visio but BETTER) get OmniPlan (LIke MS Project but you guessed Better). I also use OmniOutliner for notes and whatnot but have reciently found a product called NOTEBOOK which is better.
to the best of my knowledge none of the omni products interoperate with their MS Counterparts, but for creation of flows and plans for your own use, there is none better. (they produce output which is distinctly "Mac" meaning that it looks oh so much better than their windows cousens.
L
P.S. you're not going to want to run 3 gig of memory. the MB Pro only has 2 slots (I looked). You will want to run either 2 gig or 4 gig, you want as closely matched pairs of memory as possible or else your memory won't run in DDR mode.
L
I take that back. Omnigraffle exports Visio XML
Peter,
I've been doing the same as you plan to do on my blog Keynote2Keynote For the past month or so. Its been quite an experience. You might get some tips by picking through some of the things I've written.
If you end up going with a standard configuration you'll likely save a decent amount of money by buying from an online vendor. I bought my MBP from MacConnection and saved over $200 dollars. They are runing a special right now for $150 off all MacBook Pro computers, and a free copy of Parallels, a free carrying case, and a free printer. Might be worth a look if your not set on custom configuration.
I have 2gb on my MBP and I have yet to come even close to using it all. And thats with photoshop, firefox, iTunes, Transmission, and a few other smaller apps.
You can get Microsoft Officer compatability with neo office and a few others. If your set on getting Office, you could use neo office (or one of the others) till Office 2007 comes out. This would save you the cost of upgrading in a few months.
I know that you'll end up using parallels a decent amount since you need to run Visio/Project. I thought that I'd be running parallels a bunch, but I've barely used it at all. I'm actually thinking of uninstalling it.
Good luck with the blog. If you'd like to do a link exchange or something feel free to contact me :)
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