MacBook Pro

[Paul B]

Logging in for the first time on my new 17" MacBook Pro, WAHOO!

Had to promise the missus I'd give up smoking to pay for it.

Gave up last Monday and am not enjoying it, but I guess it's a win-win. Oh, and those tablets the doc can give to help you quit, don't help they just give you the worst headache you ever had that lasts for a week and you feel sick all the time too, so I stopped taking them. Screw it - cold turkey... What one man can do (or woman, Lil), another can do... It'll give me the opportunity to see what I'm made of.

But I'm back on a Mac at last, after 10 dismal years doing the PC thing (slumming it). This thing is F**cking awesome. If you get the chance buy one - it only took me ten freaking years to afford one, but I'm back on the horse.

It's like driving a brand spanking new Bentley after spending ten years driving a 1975 VW bug.

I don't really have anything more to say, I'm just writing now so that I can keep using this keyboard, which I must say is a subliminal experience.

Cheers,

Paul

[Lillian]

So Paul, are you recommending a Mac or not? Its hard to tell from your post. I've always heard that once you go Mac you never go back.

Good luck with the cold turkey. Congratulations with on quitting. Wish my mom had quit, then maybe my son would have gotten to know his grandmother instead of having one picture of her holding him with he was just a few weeks old.

[sebastiaan56]

Good on ya for giving up the ciggies Paul! As for the MacBook, Im jealous.

[kiwigeo]

A smoking MacBook Pro is far safer than smoking cigarettes

[morgan]

Once you go Mac, you don't go back

As somebody who was once a very heavy smoker I congratulate you on your achievement. Life improves every day without cigarettes. But a word of caution; at least with me I find that the body never forgets - I have to think of myself as a non-smoking smoker in much the same way as many alcoholics refer to them selves as non-drinking alcoholics (as opposed to ex-smokers and ex-alcoholics). Breaking an addiction requires filling the void left by changing behaviours and habits. At least now you'll have all this extra time on your hands to do even more lutherie, and read about luthrie on your new laptop.

If you have any more bad habits to give up such as a bad crack cocaine addiction, you could take all the money saved from that too and upgrade your new MacBook to 8GB RAM, replace the disk with an OWC 480GB SSD drive, swap out the optical drive with an Optibay kit and replace it with a 1TB WD Scorpio Blue drive, connect a nice 30" IPS external display, and enjoy it all from the comfort of some Herman Miller furniture

[Nick]

Been a pc user all my computer days but even I want one of these babies in the 24" screen!


Was also a 30+ a day smoker & went cold turkey, really weird because I had no trouble at all, worked with smokers & didn't once desire a drag of theirs or get the craving....strange, my system must have been ready to give up. Even now though (26years later) occassionally I'll get a whiff of a ciggie & think "hmmm, wouldn't mind one of those" but after such a long time it's real easy not too. Good luck with it though Paul. Try not to replace one addiction for another though like lollies or chocolate otherwise you end up fat & still having serious heart related health issues!

[kiwigeo]

Been a pc user all my computer days but even I want one of these babies in the 24" screen!

Um that's actually a 27" iMac mate.....I bought one for the boss and she came home and asked me why there was a TV on her desk.

[Nick]

Um that's actually a 27" iMac mate.....

Bloody Anorak 24/27 apparently three inches doesn't matter when you get up in that range! I stand corrected though, thought they came in a 24

[Paul B]

Thank you all for the encouragement.

Been a 25 a day man for 30 years (started when I was 14). The hardest thing is working out how to spend my morning tea and lunch breaks, not to mention arvo smoko, I've just been working through and having a sandwich at my desk. The scary thing is that I once gave up for two years and started again 'cause I spent the entire time dying for a smoke as if I'd just given up the day before. See how it goes this time, they say (who the hell are 'They'?) that the average person takes 7 goes before they're successful. This is number 7 for me, and I seem pretty average...

These machines are just so beautifully engineered compared to the PC boxes I'd make out of cheap bits found on eBay. They're just so expensive compared to a PC. I bought a HP laptop in the US on the company dollar when the one they'd given me died. $728 at Best Buy, over here the same one was $1650 at Dick Smiths and that was when we'd reached parity. I dunno how much a Mac goes for in the US but Apple would do themselves a great service by dropping prices. But then I guess you get what you pay for.

[kiwigeo]

These machines are just so beautifully engineered compared to the PC boxes I'd make out of cheap bits found on eBay. They're just so expensive compared to a PC. I bought a HP laptop in the US on the company dollar when the one they'd given me died. $728 at Best Buy, over here the same one was $1650 at Dick Smiths and that was when we'd reached parity. I dunno how much a Mac goes for in the US but Apple would do themselves a great service by dropping prices. But then I guess you get what you pay for.

If you sit down and look hard at Macs and PCs you soon realise that over the long term Macs arent that much more expensive than PC's. The crux of the matter is that Macs dont age as fast as PCs and you dont have to update them as often. Long term this leads to cost savings if anything.

My first Mac portable was a G4 Titanium Powerbook that only got retired early last year after 5 years use when I upgraded to my current machine..a fully specced up 15" macbook pro. In the days when I was running on PC portables I was upgrading my machines every 18 months on average as they rapidly became outdated and unable to efficiently run the OS's and application software or in some cases (HP/Compaq) just fell apart on me. If you cost in the time you spend under the hood dicking with the OS on PC's (time is money when you depend on your computer for work) then you quickly realise the Mac is a much more cost effective option compared to a PC.

Horses for courses of course but I wouldnt go back to PC's even if you held a gun to my head.

[Allen]

My first Mac book ran for 2 1/2 years without needing a reboot. Couldn't even get 2 1/2 days out of a PC. It still gives me the shits though when there are things I'd like to do (taxes for instance) but the ATO doesn't support Macs.

Good luck with the smoking Paul. Have a friend back in Canada that had every vice known to man, and told me that giving up smokes was the hardest of them all.

[Clancy]

Can't help with the MacBook, Paul.
Can help with the ciggies.
Two years without a puff this month (quit at 42yrs)
Keep at it mate, you can beat the bastards!

[Paul B]

I got over the non-support thing years ago. I'd sign up with a new ISP, and they'd go into this BS about how to get my PC online and all the steps I'd have to do. I'd just say "dude, it's a Mac" and be greeted by silence. so I'd say "look, just gimme the phone number and my login/pass and I'll be online thirty seconds after I hang-up". They'd laugh. Thirty seconds later and I'm surfing. I hope they were watching, bet they stopped laughing - probably went out and bought a Mac.

I guess the thing about having bugger-all tech support back then (and this is like, what '93, 94? Dunno), was that you had to work it all out yourself. And that was a good education, being on a PC for ten years has left me lazy. Now, I gotta get my chops back.

[Lillian]

From the Mac Store site. 17-inch. Starts at $2499

One day I will be able to afford one. One day.

Paul, have you looked into hypnotherapy about your cravings? If you can find someone you trust, it might be worth it to help you get past it.

[Paul B]

Hey Lil,

That's about what I'm paying through my wife's salary sacrifice thing at work.

Yeah, I have a colleague who's a hypnotist in his spare time, but he's a German dude who kinda creeps me out....Otherwise I'd ask. But nobody has been able to hypnotise me so far - been there, done that. Met a fella at a dinner party once, years ago, we were celebrating the fact that he'd just been awarded an Order of Australia medal (kinda like a knighthood) for his work for ASIO (read OZ CIA), he was a specialist in hypnotism and told me that when people say you can't use hypnosis to make someone do what they normally wouldn't do, they were totally wrong - you can make em do whatever you like, and he was the guy with the shiny medal to prove it. So I guess I'd never be able to relax enough to subject myself to that. Cold turkey sounds better.

[seeaxe]

Hey Paul

Good luck with the giving up mate, I can't offer any advice from experience, never really having been a smoker after I found out at school it didnt really impress the chicks and wasnt as cool as the advertising would have me beleive.

Now if I had been wandering about with a MacBookPro hanging out of the side of my mouth, that would have been cool (especially as they weren't invented then)

I have spent years baiting mac users about their overpriced toys that are half as powerful as pcs for twice the price, but now find that whenever I go into a computer store, its the macs I go and play with - who wants to play with a pc?. The rot has set in and sooner or later, I know someone will offer me a quick drag of a Mac and then I'll be sucked in the void. What has started all this? My Ipod, which is cryogenically cool, works without me knowing how or why and it's green!

Good luck (from a non mac using macaholic, I think)

Richard

[kiwigeo]

My Ipod, which is cryogenically cool, works without me knowing how or why and it's green!

Nick will be online shortly asking you where you got that green iPod.

[Lillian]

Hey Lil,

That's about what I'm paying through my wife's salary sacrifice thing at work.

Yeah, I have a colleague who's a hypnotist in his spare time, but he's a German dude who kinda creeps me out....Otherwise I'd ask. But nobody has been able to hypnotise me so far - been there, done that. Met a fella at a dinner party once, years ago, we were celebrating the fact that he'd just been awarded an Order of Australia medal (kinda like a knighthood) for his work for ASIO (read OZ CIA), he was a specialist in hypnotism and told me that when people say you can't use hypnosis to make someone do what they normally wouldn't do, they were totally wrong - you can make em do whatever you like, and he was the guy with the shiny medal to prove it. So I guess I'd never be able to relax enough to subject myself to that. Cold turkey sounds better.

All things considered, I'm right there with you on the hypnotherapy.

[Nick]

My Ipod, which is cryogenically cool, works without me knowing how or why and it's green!

Nick will be online shortly asking you where you got that green iPod.

Taint nothin wrong with green....just ask Kermit!

[charangohabsburg]

2x congrats Paul! Keep your fingers occupied by hitting the keyboard for writing in the ANZLF and by holding chisels, planes, wood, etc. ...

From the Mac Store site. 17-inch. Starts at $2499
One day I will be able to afford one. One day.

The day I'll suffer from dispensable $ 2499.- I'll ignore once more Macs and buy instead a new PC and one of those...

[Lillian]

Hehehehe, I'm not the only one that is lusting after one of those.

[charangohabsburg]

Hehehehe, I'm not the only one [...]

No, you're not.

[kiwigeo]

2x congrats Paul! Keep your fingers occupied by hitting the keyboard for writing in the ANZLF and by holding chisels, planes, wood, etc. ...

From the Mac Store site. 17-inch. Starts at $2499
One day I will be able to afford one. One day.

The day I'll suffer from dispensable $ 2499.- I'll ignore once more Macs and buy instead a new PC and one of those...

That jointmaker looks neat but how do you plug it into your ASDL router??

[morgan]

2x congrats Paul! Keep your fingers occupied by hitting the keyboard for writing in the ANZLF and by holding chisels, planes, wood, etc. ...

From the Mac Store site. 17-inch. Starts at $2499
One day I will be able to afford one. One day.

The day I'll suffer from dispensable $ 2499.- I'll ignore once more Macs and buy instead a new PC and one of those...

That jointmaker looks neat but how do you plug it into your ASDL router??

You don't need to. It's wireless, of course.

(Obligitary 'IT Crowd' reference...)

youtu.be/

[kiwigeo]

My Ipod, which is cryogenically cool, works without me knowing how or why and it's green!

Nick will be online shortly asking you where you got that green iPod.

Taint nothin wrong with green....just ask Kermit!

youtu.be/