

I'm not in the market for a new home desktop system anytime soon anyway, but could use a laptop. My old IBM Thinkpad used a cord we already had at home for a Dell machine, since many Wintel peripherals are interchangable.

Until I saw the price: $79! Sure, it's cool with its magnetic attachment and glowing green light, but for 80 bucks I'll keep fetching the current one from under my desk, thanks. For all the discussion about whether equivalent Mac hardware is more expensive than Wintel alternatives (Harry McCracken did a nice analysis questioning that Microsoft meme), it's fair to say that Apple doesn't have the breadth of low-cost laptop alternatives you can find elsewhere.Īnd then there are the periphals! I was going to buy a second power cord for my MacBook so I wouldn't have to keep crawling under my desk to unplug it to carry the cord home. I know there are open-source alternatives, but what can I say? I remain an Excel fan, and Word still feels like a must-have. I'd also have to buy a Mac version of Microsoft Office. To add to the injustice: Adobe is selling Elements 6 for the Mac for $89.99 direct while I just got an e-mail that the newer Elements 7 for Windows is currently on sale for $59.99. And that's not a trivial problem if I don't want to spend all my time on the Mac running Windows anyway.įor example, if I made the switch at home, I'd have to purchase a new version of Adobe Photoshop Elements - kind of annoying, considering I already have not one but two Windows versions (Elements 5 and 7).Īnd to make things worse, I'd have to pony up to buy an older version: Adobe is up to Elements 7 on Windows but still at 6 for the Mac. Usually, switching operating systems would mean shelling out money for new versions of programs I already bought once. However, that's not the case with most software. I'm pretty happy with TextWrangler as a basic text editor, although am about to look at the more robust paid version, BBedit, as well as test drive highly recommended TextMate.įortunately, ActiveState's licensing for Komodo let me download and install a Mac version of their IDE for my new MacBook now that I'm not using the Windows version anymore. Omniture claims that its SiteCatalyst ClickMap will run on Firefox on Mac OS X, but it won't install on my system. I do need to run Parallels with Windows XP on my Mac in the office so I can check an analytics plug-in that only seems to run on Internet Explorer on Windows. There are plenty of free or low-cost alternatives to most of the software I need (and used on my Windows machine).
