A friend of mine is ready for the switch–who could blame him, there is a lot of productivity to waste on a PC. Further twist in this switcher’s tale, his mom will be the first in the family to get a new Mac laptop. She was asking him which one to choose. Below is my answer.Do not hesitate to add your comments at the end of this article for your feedback on the issue.
The choice of a new Mac laptop is pretty straightforward: you either want to save a little money and don’t mind a smaller screen and therefore buy a 13.3″ MacBook; or you want a slightly larger and more refined machine and get a 15.4″ MacBook Pro. In any case, it’s always a good thing to add as much memory as your budget allows. This is the most cost-effective way to get the best out of your machine.
For those with deeper pockets and determined not to have a desktop, there is, of course, the gorgeous 17″ MacBook Pro, but that one barely qualifies as a laptop…
The choice of the size of your hard drive is tied to your usage. If you want to store a lot of music and images, and even movies–as computers, even laptops, become VCRs, too–you may want to get the largest drive possible. If you mostly use your machine for office applications and the internet, then a basic drive is plenty.
If you are not in a hurry, wait for the Core 2 Duo upgrade that should be imminent. And if you are really not in a hurry, you can even wait for the next operating system version, Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, due next Spring. Still, the $129 upgrade cost (the price Apple has charged until now for each new version) is not that big a reason to wait. Especially since you can also wait a few weeks or months to see what the new version will change in your habits before making the jump. The current OS version will still be supported for a good while.
And do not forget to budget in AppleCare. This is superior service. You can generally get someone on the phone quite quickly to help you solve any problem. David Pogue’s Missing Manuals, whether the essential Mac OS X opus or even the Switching to the Mac volume (or both) at O’Reilly* are additional worthy tools one should consider when buying a Mac, especially when switching.
Wishing you a great new Mac!
* O’Reilly offers a discount to TransMUG members. If you are a translator and are using a Mac, subscribe to the group to get this and many more benefits.
Written by Yves
A friend, recent switcher and member of our user group recently emailed me to ask if he should install some kind of security software on his new MacBook. For his virtual PC installation, this goes without saying, but on the Mac side, what am I to tell him? I kept that idea in the back of my mind until I read about the Pwn2Own contest, part of the 
