I don't travel much. To be honest, the largest amount of traveling I do is to the shopping centre over the weekend. My daily work commute is less than 5 minutes (and a similar number of kilometers).
So why do I need a laptop ? Well, I do a fair amount of work from home. This work is not particularly system intensive; it primarily comprises reading e-mail, browsing, some RSS feeds and Skype. The heavy lifting is generally done at work. I've been waiting for Core i7-based quad-coreMacbook's for at least a year, and so have a few other people. Bottom line, I don't forsee it for at least another 6 months to a year, if then.
Meanwhile, the quad-core iMac has been around for a while, is well priced, and gotten good reviews. The 27" also has the added ability to be used as an external monitor, which is useful once the machine outlives its useful life.
So I ordered a custom version; 2.93GHz quad-core i7, with 8GB of RAM. It arrived last week, and I can only say, "Wowzers!". The thing is blazingly fast, and consumes everything I'm throwing at it with ease. I migrated all my data across, and am using it full-time for a week now. All I can say is wow, wow, wow!
So, initial thoughts;
- For what you get, its a great price
- The unexpected Bluetooth keyboard, mouse and trackpad (which I wasn't expecting) is cool - what is mind-boggling is that they were already paired with the machine before unpacking them
- 27" is quite large; obscenely large, actually (maybe a bit too big)
- Its a pity there is no eSATA support, or ability to expand using ExpressCard support
For what I need it to do, its great.
PS. I've ordered a 11" Macbook Air as a companion device to use remotely; its fast enough for what I need (I've played around with a few), the screen is large enough and when used with Dropbox to sync my data, will be flawless. Also, all the stupidity of the previous generation seems to have been sorted out.
I'll survive by using the iPad I'm borrowing in the interim. It sucks.
My Air is only arriving in January 2011 (thanks Apple) for putting Africa at the bottom of your priority list. A post for that when it arrives, for sure!
