Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Mac or Ubuntu

For a long time I've had one eye on the Mac laptops (power books and such). First a friend and former coworker pointed out some years ago that many (or most) UNIX admins around him were using the Mac laptops. Then I've observed a number of them at USENIX conferences. Etc.

This is combined with deciding that my 15-in wide screen Inspiron 8600 is too large for some uses. I really like it for desktop work, conference room work, and working at home when not in my office at home, is really great! But it's a bit too big to haul into Starbucks and I find I tire of dragging it into the office every day. (Typically I don't since I use an Ubuntu system for most of my desktop OS work).

Finally, OS-X has a particular attraction since it bears so much of it's ancestral NeXT OS which I knew well and loved dearly.

So I've been thinking about smaller and lighter wireless devices. But playing with them briefly at the ~Apple store embedded in Fry's, I found the new Macbook and older Powerbook harder to use than the Windows machines. And the Windows machines can (potentially) run Ubuntu, which I generally prefer. The Windows laptops I tried were much snappier. Granted this is typically a matter of tuning and such but I looked at the machine specs and they were about the same. I really, really, really prefer more mouse buttons. (I like three buttons better than two which I like better than one!).

(By the way, I decided the coolest laptop I've seen recently is the Vaio SZ, but it's about as expensive as a Mac laptop! Note however the focus here is on screen, keyboard, and portability).

So this morning this article in Slashdot pops up on the radar about switching from Mac to Ubuntu.