Mark Poppen

iMac, I want one

Right now, I’m running a dual core PC with 4gb of ram on Windows Vista, and I need a change. Not that I hate Vista, and I know, I’m probably the only one in the world who actually likes Vista, but because I need something that will improve my productivity.
I hate waiting for Photoshop/Dreamweaver to start up, and when I’m actually doing “my thing” (design stuff), my memory gets clogged up, because next to my Adobe products, I also like to have Twitter, FTP, music, Skype, Google Talk, Firefox with multiple tabs and a few other things open, just to make my work even more enjoyable..

I’ve done some research on iMacs, and asked fellow web designers that use Macs in their work, and they adore the things, but I’m not going to switch from one to the other because “they say so”. I had to experience myself.
So, today I went to the local Future Shop (sort of a Best Buy for those of you who don’t know) and played around with a 24″ 2,8GHz, 2GB version of the iMac.
The nice part of it all that I was left alone, and I could do pretty much anything on the machine, which I did. I really got a good feeling of how a Mac works.
When I asked a sales-guy to help me out with some questions, I got the answers I wanted to hear, except for the lack 5.1 audio, which totally sucks, because I recently bought a 5.1 set.

I like the speed, but this can be deceiving because there was practically nothing installed on the machine, except the standard programs.
I also got the hang of OSX. I think it’s pretty intuitive, although I couldn’t get the shortcuts for the “spaces” to work, but I probably did something wrong.
The built in speakers sounded pretty good, although obviously, it’s not a Logitech set, but it will do for business purposes.

I didn’t know that programs stay open and active in your dock when you press the little red X in the programs statusbar. You actually have to hit command+q (or something) to exit.

I’ll have to get used to the keyboard and mighty mouse.

So, for $ 1899,- + tax this puppy could be mine. Anyone need me for a project, worth around $ 2000,- ?

Seriously, do!
Dropbox is an online backup system and it saved my butt a few times already. You know, you update a website with a wrong css-file? Don’t act all macho, it happened to you, I know I’m not the only one
Dropbox keeps revisions of your files before you change them, so you can always fall back to a previous version.

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… and it was a b!tch…

I don’t know how I did it, but for the first time in YEARS I managed to get a virus on my pc. I’m always protected pretty well with Avast!. It blocks intrusions when it has to, and kills adware instantly, but for some reason Avast! abandoned me this time. It noticed the virus, but I wasn’t able to repair it, move it to the chest or delete it.
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