Rumors abound of a 9.? inch Mac Tablet coming sometime soon (August 2009 was one suspected release date, now rumors are saying Feb; my guess would be in the fall for Christmas, but Feb has been a traditional release date, but may no longer be). I want to take a look at that. I love my iPhone. I bought a net book which I did not hackintosh because it began to look much too complicated to get all the pieces functioning together again. I paid $250 for the netbook which I used to hold photographs when I travel. The tablet is rumored to have a data plan with ATT (Verizon was an earlier rumor partner but from the rumored parts ordered, they work with ATT not Verizon.) No one seems to know what OS it will use. Ports will be a big issue for me.

Of course I'm lusting after a MacBookAir, but it's just too expensive for a toy to travel with. (My travel is almost all leisure and international, so light is good).

I took a hard look at the Air, but in the end decided against it for a number of reasons. As to the weight factor, I agree with the light is good sentiment; however the extra 1.5 pounds of the Pro just isn't an issue for me given the overall gains.

I won't disagree with this. I'm an industry consultant and so I've seen the horror stories. But at the same time, I really don't use Windows that often at all -- it's certainly possible that they've come a long way and have really improved things. I am running Windows7 on my Mac and while I don't use it very often, when I do, it seems to work fine. A lot of the Mac vs PC thing could certainly pertain to the long history of the two platforms. Maybe I wasn't being fair, because my decision to move to Mac happened 10 years ago when there was a bigger difference.

On a related note, Apple just does a really really really incredible, amazing, and great job of marketing. This hilarious clip does a good job of "proving" that

Mordy

What are everyone's thoughts on popping for the SSD in the MacBook Pro?

Nice, if you have the loot and don't need as much disk space!

make SURE to do your research though, there is a large thread over at macrumors.com. I think some SSD's work better on the macs than others, also of course, not all SSD's are created equal.

I'm also considering a switch from Windows XP to MacOS, and wanted the advice of the readers here.

I am part of a 3-man consulting partnership. We are all responsible for our own hardware, software, and email. I am currently using a Lenovo X61 with XP which will need replacing soon. The other two are on Windows Vista.

My work is:
- 50%, working with client data sets of up to 1 million records, and creating 100's of histograms, scatters, and other charts for every project. Currently using Excel and Access for this task.
- 25%, creating client reports and giant presentations (~150-200 slides). Currently using Powerpoint and Word.
- 15% email/task management/calendaring and web. Currently using MS Outlook against a hosted exchange account, and Firefox
- 5%, invoicing, bookkeeping, and business/personal finances. Currently using Quicken H&B
- 5%, helping the other partners with Windows and Powerpoint issues, often over the phone

I am considering switching to:
- Reduce the time I spend messing with my system (now about 1-2 hours/week)
- Get longer battery life and a lighter machine (I'm looking at the MBA)
- Replace Powerpoint with software better suited to my presentation-creation needs
- Get a better user experience

So, would you switch?

I think it depends on whether or not you can find something to take the place of Access, which doesn't exist on the Mac. There are some alternatives like Bento and Filemaker, as well as some good visualization packages, so probably yeah you can make it just fine. Excel and Word are available for Mac, as is PowerPoint.

I would check and see if iWork 09 will do what you need it to in terms of spreadsheet and document editing - I think Pages in particular turns out better looking documents (especially layout type stuff vs. manuals) with less effort than Word. Numbers is not high powered, though, and it may not be able to replace Excel. Keynote on the other hand - you are going to LOVE it and never look back at PowerPoint.

Mail will be no problem, the built-in mail that comes with Snow Leopard works great with Exchange (or you can use Entourage from MS but I like Mac mail better).

The other potential gotcha is Quicken, but their long-awaited Mac version is due out right after the first of the year. I use it on my Mac right now in a virtual Windows session with no problems.

So...you'll definitely save time and hassle by switching, and have a more aesthetic computing experience to boot. That's not to mention great-looking presentations coming out of iWork. But be prepared for a dip in productivity for a week or two while you become accustomed to all the new stuff.

more comments later, but you will NOT get better battery life than the x61 with 9-cell battery. That thing rocks.

Do you have to share your reports/data/work product with them? If so, having everyone working on the same platform is, IMO, critical. The more time you convert or change a document format the more chances you have for corruption and data loss. Having worked the past 10+ years in an industry where converting documents between Word and WordPerfect was the norm, I've seen more than enough of that for a lifetime.

You will not have Access on the Mac. That sounds like enough to veto the move right from the get-go, particularly if you have to share those DBs with your coworkers.
Not too much trouble here.
I'm assuming the hosted Exchange is 2007. If not, find a new hosting service. You will be able to use Mac.mail against the 2007 server, but it isn't as full-featured as Outlook 2007. And I'd highly recommend using IE against an OWA server rather than FF/Chrome/anything else. The user experience is night and day different.
Not available on the Mac.
Not gonna change if you switch to a Mac.
Not in your situation.

I took a look at the thread that you mentioned; quite frankly some of it is over my head.

My intention was to buy the 128GB SSD straight from Apple; not install my own after purchase.

This is completely subjective. My wife is your stereotypical "average" PC user; she has an XP laptop for work and her personal laptop has been running Vista for the past few years, and the Windows 7 beta and now RTM for the past few months. She has no problem switching between the 2 laptops and she tells me that she never feels like she's "hassling" with the OS on either.

This is also completely subjective, but let's not forget that moving from XP to Windows 7 will also provide a much more aesthetic computing experience.

Regarding presentations, I've been doing all of mine on PowerPoint 2010 for the past 6 weeks or so and I'm pretty impressed with some of the new graphical / experience improvements.

In my opinion, I feel that you can achieve your stated objectives by picking up a Windows 7 laptop on or after October 22, because:
* Windows 7 has a much more pleasing / user friendly interface than Windows XP
* You'll have *far* more models to choose from to get your desired battery life within your budget
* Compatibility with your peers that you share data with
* Going from XP to Windows 7 is a smoother / quicker learning curve than going from XP to Mac

I'm not so sure. Unless you're doing hairy stuff, which doesn't sound likely, you can almost certainly replicate the Access part in FileMaker Pro. It's multi-platform and interfaces quite well with Excel, oddly enough in some ways better than Access does. There may be some one-time development work (depends on how deep into Access your work goes) but FM is, all else being equal, easier to use than Access. (This is according to every review I've read and is borne out by my own experience with both.) IMHO, if Access wasn't bundled into most versions of Office for Windows, its market share would be negligible. (Access has some plusses for professional developers, but that doesn't sound like the situation here.)

Maybe, but it also comes back to how much of the work product is shared with the other 2 partners in the organization. Unless the OP can convince the partners to also switch that might be enough to derail even the finest plans. The fact that the OP has to deal with supporting the other partners anyways makes me think that adding more potential interoperability confusion is not going to help on the efforts to reduce time spent providing support versus doing "real" work.

then you will be fine, but your pocketbook will be much lighter. Personally, I would forgo the apple option, find a really good 256GB version and have twice the space. Prolly no more than apple will charge.