Up In The Mornin' With The Risin' Sun ...!

or ... Dann Does Bootcamp!

I arrived back in the office earlier this week to find a pile of mail awaiting my attention and one rather large box from the good people of Cupertino, CA. After my joyous time spent picking apart the [in]accessibility of an Apple notebook running OSX 10.4 [Tiger], I had asked our local Apple Rep if I could get my hands on one of the new Intel-based MacBook Pros. Much to my delight [and surprise] there was a 17" top-o-the-line beauty waiting for me while I was still on a tech-high from the AHEAD conference.

The first night home I got it up and running and spent time with updates [it recognized and connected to my home wi-fi effortlessly] and played around to remind myself of how Mac interfaces differently than Windows. The unit came with what I thought at first was an iPod shuffle but turned out to be the mini-remote for the laptop and the FrontRow feature. A few minutes after popping in Disc 1 of the first season of Galactica I found myself amazed by not only the ease of use, but also the picture and sound quality. This is one sweeeet machine!

Last night I Boot-Camped that bad boy using a Windows XP [SP2] disc and a print out of the directions as recommended. The directions are clearly written for individuals more familiar with Macs then with PC's as they take a lot for granted in terms of an individuals knowledge of file locations, boot up operations, keystroke commands and such. Fortunately I know enough about Macs that I was able to work my way through the process. The BootCamp instructions are worded in such a manner as to be both tongue-and-cheek condescending towards Windows users and serve as a propaganda tool for Apple. Reading betwen the lines thay say "Now do you see why Macs are superior" and "What the heck took you so long to 'switch'?"

I've loaded [and reloaded] Windows plenty of times and I have to admit this was one of the faster and easier installs I have ever done - the 2GB of RAM and a lightening fast processor certainly helped. From start to finish it took less than two hours - and that includes doing the usual Windows updates and installing virus protection from my home institution. I partitioned myself a good chuck [20GB] on the Windows side of the harddrive and formatted in FAT as, according to the instructions, this should allow a crossover of saved and shared materials. I have my doubts - but what the heck - it's a loaner. Let's see what this baby can do!

Over the next few days I am going to load up the Windows side with the more common tools of my trade; including

• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PPT, etc.]
• Dolphin EaseReader
• Dolphin Producer
• ZoomText
• JAWS
• Kurzweil 3000
• OpenBook

And whatever else I have kicking around the shop. I am hesitant to load EasePublisher - heaven forbid something happen to the HASP key - but curiosity will likely get the better of me. I also plan to load both the Mac and the Windows versions of OpenOffice as well as some of my other favorite Open Source apps such as FireFox, Freemind, Opera for browsing and GreatNews for RSS. More to come ...