Macrilege!

Apple customers are funny. They...that is, we...seem to have almost a cult-like attitude about Apple products. Over the past few years, nearly all my colleagues have purchased Mac laptops. At user group meetings, conference presentations, training classes, on airplanes and on client engagements they pull out shiny new MacBook Pro laptops almost to the total exclusion of any other product. That sort of reverence seems a bit silly; it's just another company, after all. Yet, it's part of the Apple customer culture. Maybe that's why I feel compelled to justify my recent decision to move away from the Mac platform. Maybe, too, it's why I feel an irrational sort of guilt about it.

I've been a happy Mac user for about five years now. I've got no complaints about Mac OS X. The problem is the cost of ownership of the Apple hardware. My MacBook Pro (the second Mac I've owned) is in need of replacement, and it's less than three years young. I've replaced the keyboard, and worn out the second keyboard. I've replaced the battery and the power supply. The display has many dead pixels and uneven brightness. The machine has started to exhibit intermittent scary behavior having to do with electricity, causing the occasional mysterious crash.

Okay, so why not just get a new MacBook Pro? Well, my first Mac, a PowerBook G4, cost about $2,500 and was serviceable for about two years. It still runs today, but not reliably enough to use for anything important. The MacBook Pro cost about $3,000 when it was new. A comparable replacement today would start at around $3,600. When beefed up appropriately, it would be around $4,000 to $4,200. With an expected useful lifetime of around three years...well, it just doesn't add up.

Non-Apple laptops don't run Mac OS X. Has Microsoft Windows improved to the point that I can work with it happily? Based on my occasional use of my wife and son's Windows Vista machines, I would say "No." Not to worry: There are beaucoup versions of Unix and Linux out there. One in particular has become relatively user-friendly: Ubuntu (and its cousins).

So, should I just dump my Mac and buy a one-way ticket to Ubuntuland? It turns out that I'm just a tiny bit too risk-averse to take such a rash step. To find out whether Ubuntu could meet my needs, I made a list of my needs and then loaded an instance of Ubuntu Linux under VmWare on the MacBook Pro to check out the available software.

When I thought about what, exactly, I actually do with my computer, I was surprised at how modest my needs really are. I spend a lot of my time working on the computer, but it seems I spend that time doing just a handful of different tasks.

My software needs:

1. Support for all the types of work for which I use my computer


2. Acceptable level of tinkering needed to configure the system and keep it running

My hardware needs:

1. Support for all desired hardware features


2. Reasonable initial price and total cost of ownership


3. Portable, yet large enough to be a comfortable platform for work; and small enough to be convenient to carry to conference sessions and business meetings for giving presentations and taking notes


4. Usable on different national electrical grids, since I travel in my work


5. Reasonably nice-looking; doesn't look like a prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Thus begins the search for a new laptop! Next: The Great Laptop Quest.