Hey guys,
a few weeks ago, I sold my Mac Pro. The reason was quiet simple: It was really oversized for my needs and having it here felt like a waste of money. The idea was to build a nice PC, which is also powerfull but not that oversized with a large storage based on an Areca RAID. When the Mac Pro was sold, I went out out and bought 3 more 1TB HDDs, the Areca RAID Controller, a new mainboard, a new graphics card, a bunch of luxury Noctua fans (incl. CPU cooler) and a Quad Core Q9650 Intel CPU. I spend a lot of money for this. I always had a licence of Vista, so I didn’t had to buy this.
Well, what’s the result of this plan? I fighted with Vista. No – not really, it’s nice and smooth, the Aero optics sucks in my mind, but the new Office 2007 is really nice and was on the list to buy it after evaluating it. But, I just played and solved and built other stuff in and out and honestly, I was not really satisfied with the Windows machine. I thought I could go on with this.
In the last 3 weeks I was thinking about getting a new notebook for my personal needs. Sure, I got a ThinkPad T61 from Cisco for my work and nothing really tells me not to use it to surf on the terrace in the garden, but it still feels wrong and I’m not really sure if I am allowed to do this by the terms of use by the Cisco IT. The challenge was to find a nice notebook that fits my needs. I want a nice one, not a bad looking monster with 15.4″ or more of display width. Even with an eye on the new Unibody MacBooks I made my decision on Tuesday for a Lenovo ThinkPad R61 with 4GB RAM for a very nice price of around about 700 Euro. The R61 is the much heavier version, but 14.1″, of the T61. TrackPoint is cool, but the display is just a regular one with around 170-200cd/m2 what is not really food for outdoor usage.
Yesterday I called CyberPort and canceled the order. For my luck, they hadn’t have it on stock, so it was no problem. I then called a local Mac store in Duisburg which is the neighbour city of my home town and asked if they have a MacBook (smallest version with 2GHz) on stock. Yes. One last was available. They reserved it for me until 8pm, when the store would close. Right after work, my wife and I went to this store and for my surprise I get 100 Euro price-off if I bring in ANY old computer in the next days. I think it’s a great deal to pick up a new MacBook for 1099 Euro, I just have to bring my real old G3 b/w to them on Saturday 
What is the resumé of this story? Well, the first thing is, that I’m absolutely amazed by this nice and very robust MacBook. The keyboard is fantastic (I’m currently typing this article on it) and I get familiar with the large touchpad. Ok – the click thing is a bit new for me, but the gestures with 2 to 4 fingers is pretty cool and handy. Also the display is very nice. It’s LED powered and so I could better use it outdoor if I want to. Yes, the display is glossy and also I had concerns regarding this, but since we’ve got our new Panasonic plasma in December last year which also has a glossy screen, I’m very satisfied with glossy displays. I admit, the MacBook will not become my main computer. I would add my older Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 board and the new CPU; maybe the old Core 2 Duo CPU to this and install my preferred system on it, which is thanks to different forums not a problem (and pretty legal in Germany). I don’t say more, because I think you know what I’m talking about .
But wait a moment, what will I do with the 6TB RAID? Will this work in the old mainboard? No. Honestly, not. But that’s not a thing that doesn’t let me sleep as I still have my AMD64 machine and a nice 19″ 4U case on stock to built a Linux or FreeBSD based server again and put it into the 19″ rack in the basement. I’m very happy that the Areca RAID is so compatible and allows me to use the large volumes (4.6TB available for data 
, 200GB for system) also with Linux or FreeBSD systems and just with Windows. But this is a challenge that is planned for the weekend. Now I’m just happy to have a system (the MacBook) which simply works.
Now, you could place a comment and call me a fool to be so unsure what I want and in parts, you would be right. What did I told a friend yesterday evening on chat? Apple has buggered me with creating an OS that is so nice that you still want to use it, even if it’s sometimes a living behind fences
I wish you all a nice day!
Ciao
Dennis
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