MacBook Pro, Table Two!!

Holy cow was it scary. Seriously. You have to understand, I don't own a home, car, or other "big ticket" item where dropping a couple thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket. (Incidentally, for those who don't know, I live in New York City, hence the lack of owning those things...I'm not homeless!) Sure, I bought a Dell about 5 years ago out of college, but I was a bit more reckless with money then, so I tended to rationalize things in terms of "this costs 3 nights of drinking." Plus, it was the Internet boom, when everybody in our line of work thought they were going to be millionaires in no time. But there are a few reasons why I was "scared."

First, as much as Apple has become en vogue again, I have to be practical and keep in mind that I will rely heavily on this machine for work. This isn't a vanity purchase by any stretch. So it's important for me to be productive as soon as I receive the machine. Enter the new Apple store on 5th Avenue here in Manhattan (which is the most beautiful piece of architecture I've ever seen for a retail store) and Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Why the Apple store? Well, on Monday after work, I decided to walk up to the store and check out the difference between the 15.4" and 17" MacBook Pro. I spent one solid hour using each machine to get a feel for each. Never once was I told by any of the employees that I was hogging the machine (there were about 10 of each on display, so it's not I had the only one, but still...). Further, when I finally got all my questions in order, I peppered two employees who not only never sighed or gave any indication that I was a pain, but they got incredibly excited that I was looking to switch and spent another half an hour walking me through the OS and pointing out keys things a developer would need to know. I was blown away. I was very up front that I wasn't going to be purchasing from them at that moment and they couldn't have cared less. There were hundreds of other customers they could have easily gone on to them, but they didn't. Great stuff.

As for Parallels, well, they're my life boat. With their Desktop for Mac product, I can still fall back to Windows when I need to. Since Flex Builder 2 doesn't exist for the Mac (yet), I know I'll need to be in there for some things, and it's great to know that one machine can handle both of my needs.

OK, so what did I get? I went with the 15.4" MacBook Pro with 1 GB of RAM and the 100 GB hard drive at 7200 RPM. I also ordered an additional 1 GB of RAM from NewEgg, who is selling it for literally almost half of what Apple wanted for the same amount ($160 USD vs. $300 USD). I chose the 15.4" over the 17" because the 17", while sleek and beautiful was a bit too much machine for me. I was telling somebody yesterday that using the 17" MacBook Pro reminded of a line from the movie Starsky and Hutch towards the end when Ben Stiller is telling Owen Wilson that his mom never "thought he could handle the V8. It was too much car for him." Well, that's how I felt about the 17" model. It was monstrous and noticeably heavier (about 1.5 pounds). If you're looking for a desktop replacement, it's a no-brainer, but not if you truly need a portable machine.

Before closing the entry out, I do want to give a huge shout-out to Adam Wayne Lehman. I met Adam last year at the CFUNITED conference and we've kept in sporadic touch over the last year. Out of nowhere, Adam offered to sponsor my purchase so that I could receive 10% off the price. Apple has this cool program where if you work for the federal government, you can sponsor up to 6 friends and/or family to buy products from the Federal Employee store. This unsolicited gesture saved me almost $500 USD off the total price! This is yet another reason why I can't recommend the CFUNITED conference enough if you're a ColdFusion developer. Thanks again Adam!