drinking the kool-aid
One of the things i requested at my new job was that my corporate-issue laptop be a Mac (partly because i was damned if i was going to get stuck with a stinkin' Dell). After some wrangling with the CFO, my request was granted, so now i have in my possession a 15" PowerBook with a gig of RAM. I also have a Kyocera KPC650 EVDO card. I've installed Camino and Firefox, and i downloaded all 800+MB of the developer tools just so i could have gcc kicking around (which i used to build screen, which i configured and compiled with zero hitches).
I like it. The display is crisp and things work, once you get used to the idea of trying stuff that you know would have never worked in Windows. It's a damn sight better to use than the GNOME-RedHat desktop i got (which keyboard [DAMN YOU, DELL!] already triggered both tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome in my left arm — after 3 damn days of work!).
In summary, all computers suck, but the Mac seems to suck less. Huzzah.
no subject
Mine came with the dev tools on the install DVD - I'm surprised you had to resort to downloading?
But yes, the Mac seems to do the best job of a desktop of any of the things I've seen lately (XP, KDE; and Gnome but less recently). The dock in particular seems to be a simpler and better implementation of the notion of a pile of icons and things at the bottom of the screen than the alternatives I've encountered.
no subject
And, agreed on the install of dev tools - if you DID get it on the DVD, install that as well, I occasionally have some issues with gcc's latest version, and when they update the devtools, they leave the older gcc's in place, which can then be called by name.
(I'm sure they updated the gcc/devtools once since Tiger was released... so that DVD copy would still want to update itself.)