I need a new computer
I need to get a new laptop to replace my two-year-old Thinkpad X41 tablet and I’m considering either getting the new version of the Lenovo tablet or getting some kind of Macbook. I was primarily a Mac user until the late 1990s when an accumulation of discontents pushed me into using Windows (poorly built computers, frequent loss of work due to system crashes, difficulty getting reliable information from Apple, random discontinuation of features we needed, etc.). So I’ve missed out on the whole OS-X development.
Some of the things that pushed me toward Windows have changed—there’s now good support for Chinese, and I guess the OS is less flakey than it used to be. Some things have stayed the same—issues of hardware quality, difficulty getting reliable information (for example, battery life in the Macbook and Macbook Pro systems seems abysmal—on the order of 2 hours, in contrast to claims of 5 hours of battery life), and the machines seem particularly heavy and hot.
I think that Macs do have some advantages now for the video work we’re doing, but I need to explore Vista a bit more. I’m intrigued with the new speech recognition in Vista and I’ve heard good reports on the X60 tablet. The original had a very slow hard drive that made it quite underpowered and it may be that hardware has now caught up to the Tablet concept.