So, I finally broke down and ordered myself a 15″ MacBook Pro from MacMall.com on Tuesday last week, and it arrived the next day (!) … and I’ve been installing apps and migrating my data over to it since. I guess you can officially call me “a switcher” as I’ve moved all my data off my old laptop onto this new one, and the old one is going to get reformatted and will become my wife’s.
Part of switching to a Mac means looking for new blogging software. I previously used BlogJet 2.0 on Win32, but now I’m trying out ecto 3 beta for MacOS X. I definitely think it’s going to take some getting used to but I can already tell it’s much better than BlogJet was. However, I can definitely see needing to customize ecto to my liking before I can feel really comfortable using it.
Have you switched recently? Got any good tips that I might want to know about? Things to avoid? Tell me about it in the comments …
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
You can use VMWARE fussion or parallels to clone your old windows PC. Sometimes you need a PC with windows to run some wierd program (I have not in almost 2 months). I have found very usefull the VMs to play with my linux machines as well.
the_real_r2d2
Kind of surprised you didn’t get the 17″ 1900×1200 resolution version. Of course, at over $3000, I’d have second thoughts about that myself.
It’s actually the main reason I went with Lenovo when I bought a laptop this spring.. I could get 1900×1200 resolution under $1500.. and on a 15″ to boot. I was seriously considering the MBP but was just priced out of it. If I could easily frankenMac this guy then I would – people have done it but I’m really not interested in going through device driver hell at the moment.
Anyway, have fun with it and good luck..
Arturo: I do have VMware Fusion 2.0 beta and Parallels 3.0 – I bought them with the Mac – but I didn’t want to run my old machine as-is. I’ll still run a few apps that are only available under Win32 under VMware, but for the most part, my goal was to use OS X native apps where available.
Have any other favorite OSX apps you’d recommend? I’m trying out a whole bunch right now … maybe I’ll post a list once I figure out which ones I like vs. dislike.
Steve: I went with the 15″ simply for portability reasons – the 17″ is just too cumbersome, and I plan to do a lot of travelling with the MBP in November and December of this year, so it’s important.
Yes, my one big complaint is the crappy 1440×900 resolution on this 15″ MBP. Having had the ultra-crisp 1600×1200 resolution on my _5+ year old_ Dell C840 was a real painful downgrade. Who knows – maybe I should have gone for the 1920×1200 resolution on the 17″ MBP after all.
Exposé on the Mac definitely makes it easier to cope with the lower resolution, though. But, there’s definitely times where only having 900 pixels of vertical resolution is annoying.
Welcome to the Mac! The 15″ MPB is a great machine. I’m on one now. You’ll love it.
/gary
Welcome. A lot of friends are finally coming over… then, after a couple of days they get frustrated and some are giving up. How about an update on your progress?
-ski
P.S. I use TextMate for programming; but they claim to have a blogging script engine you might want to investigate. TextMate is like using an A-10 Warthog to go frog gigging! I cannot imagine ever using anywhere near all its power.
P.P.S. Did I see somewhere you are a tcl/tk programmer? I am just getting back into it after 10+ years on lesser tools {grin} … love that true WORM architecture.