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It has been some time since I’ve written a post, largely due to being very busy with work. One thing of note has happened.

New laptop

I got a new work laptop, retiring the much loved Thinkpad T41.

The new laptop is a macbook pro, my first mac. There were a number of really good reasons to get a mac, but the major one was we needed a mac to test websites we build with safari. Also with Parallels (and bootcamp), I can work on windows just fine. That is a good thing as I primarily write code that runs on windows.

Some initial impressions after working with it for a little while:

• The hardware is very pretty
• OS X is really, really slick. Very user friendly. Just picking one example, when you’ve used the wireless confguration tools in OS X, anything else seems clumsy.
• Parallels is really good at virtualising windows. I write code for windows, running IIS, SQL Server, Visual Studio and a host of other basic applications. The single issue I’ve run across to date is that SQL Server Profiler doesn’t seem to resume when you pause it.
• The keyboard on the laptop is really, really annoying if you write code. No single page up/down keys. Function keys don’t work as single keys (issue for windows). The killer is that the home/end keys require two keys. Any and every programmer would hit these keys all the time..
• Wide screen sucks for code. I want longer screens, not wider screens.

The keyboard and screen were almost enough for me to wish for the thinkpad back.