Replacing the Old Jalopy

At last, I've replaced my Hackintosh - which in many ways is exactly like an old jalopy - with a shiny new MacBook Pro. All I can say is that it's been well worth the wait. The new machine is fast, quiet, cool, has excellent battery life, and a breathtaking screen. Here are some pictures of the "unpacking ceremony" I shot with David's camera. The machine arrived on Monday morning.


The box. I didn't notice that the flash was set to fire before I took the picture, or I'd have turned it off. I'm glad I didn't, though - I like the effect. I also like the barreling effect from the small lens at close distance to the subject. Both technical flaws that I think improve the overall effect.


Inside the box. The styrofoam Apple uses to pack the machines looks cool, I think. Too bad there isn't something useful that could be done with it. For the time being, I've saved the box and the shipping carton in case I decide to sell the machine in a year.


Under the styrofoam. It's a bit like peeling an onion - layer after layer. Especially since there was yet another box surrounding the one in the first picture....


The laptop, on top of the box.


And opened, on the bar. I got the glossy screen, after liking the same on David and Tracy's MacBooks. I feared at first, when Tracy bought hers nearly two years ago, that the glare would be horrible.... But it's not, and the color saturation and the deepness of the blacks makes any small glare completely worth it - for me, anyway. My 24" panel has the normal matte finish, so if color precision is required, I'll just hook the laptop up to that, rather than proofing on the built-in display.

That's all for now. I installed Windows XP Home (I've not yet convinced myself it's worth it to buy Professional for $199, since I already had a copy of XP Home) this morning using Boot Camp and will try out VMWare Fusion later today. I will say this, though: the I/O performance of the machine compared to my desktop is staggering. Aperture loads up photos at least twice as fast from the Apple-provided 5400 rpm disk.