Some months ago my Toshiba laptop started to reboot  suddenly, after some minutes of work. I tried to repair it but the cost was superior to the cost of a newer machine. So, because I  was already considering a newer laptop, I decided to switch.

But this time I decided to buy a Mac. For which reason? Ehrr, I must  admit that my decision was heavily influenced by the fact that some people I know and respect, use a Mac.

I was not very worried about using a non-Windows operating systems because I was a Linux user for many years, and  Iwas accustomed to live being a non-windows guy in a windows-dominated world.

I am also a software guy,  a Java/Web developer. So for my job, usually the desktop operating system is not a determinant choice. However, I checked if it is possible to install windows on the machine and dual boot, just in case the mac was not good enough. And the possibility of run windows in a box with parallels, was the determinant choice.

After some month I can say that this was one of the smartest moves of my life. Ok, if the mac would be still a power pc machine, it could not be as good as is an intel core duo mac machine. I used in the past Windows  in VmWare with Linux, and it was noticeable slower. Not unusable but definitely slower than a dual boot.

But Windows in Paralles with a Core DUO CPU is NOT slow. You feel it native, absolutely  native, fast and responsive. Parallels has a system, coherence, to integrate windows application in the mac. I consider it a nice toy,  useful to impress friends, but I do not use it. I simply have windows in a window, and use it as just another program.

But the most pleasant surprise was for me  the world of the mac applications. There are a lot of them, for any purpose, mostly free, and usually pretty well designed. The tend to be SIMPLE, and this is a wonderful advantage over many Windows and Linux programs. Even the most seasoned software developer hates unintuitive and overly complex user interfaces, and I am not an exception to the rule.

So I can say that I try always to use the mac version of everything when I can choose, like thunderbird and firefox, and NeoOffice and Eclipse. And I am really happy of this.

But the think I really make me feel at home as a software developer are the commad line tools. For me, the ability to open a terminal, and find and grep everything, instead of resort to some cumbersome search functions, is really unvaluable. All of these things without even considering the superior hardware support.

So to recap, for the same price of an high end laptop, with a MacBookPro you get:

• a machine able to run OSX, Windows and Linux AT THE SAME TIME at native speed
  
• an unix operating system at your fingertips
• a wonderful user interface and a lot of cheap well designed application,
• the equivalent native for almost everything you can use (for mail, web, office, development, etc)
  
• an overall good  hardware, with integrated almost everything

I can simply say that given what is the value of a mac osx for your money, and the restriction that are today almost no-existent. the only reason to NOT switch can be only inertia and fear of the unknown.