Split personalities

Got my new MacBook Pro, aka Fredricka (Freddie for short), early this week and have been putting her through her paces. I gotta admit she’s a sweet little machine, 3GB RAM and 256MB of video RAM running Intel’s latest 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo. She’s not perfect–there are some things about my mom’s third-of-the-price HP laptop that are better than Freddie’s–but she’s a good choice for me.

The great stuff
Here’s one of the biggest reasons that I bought Freddie:

What you see in this picture is Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with a bunch of Windows applications in the big screen on top, and Apple’s Mac OSX with a bunch of Mac applications on Freddie’s laptop screen. Freddie’s running them both. In a couple of weeks she’ll be running Vista.

I work with creatives. Creatives (mostly) like Macs. I work with business people. Business people (mostly) like Windows. With Freddie, I can talk to both sides of the house equally well.

Freddie’s accomplishing this with Parallels, software that lets me section off some of Freddie’s storage and memory space and stick a “virtual machine” (VM) with a different OS inside. I can give the VM full access to Freddie’s devices, such as a wireless network card, media drives and mice. After some frustrating false starts (see under “not-so-good” below) I installed a copy of XP, hooked it into my wireless network and was off and running.

I installed my regular bunch of Windows software into the VM, and so far it’s running without a hitch. Although I eventually intend to run some of my Adobe software on the Mac side, for now I’m running Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign, etc., inside the Windows VM. Adobe hasn’t released native Mac versions of their software for this processor yet, so there’s not much point in buying new until that happens.

The good stuff
In the last five years I really hadn’t worked with Macs. Boy have they changed. Most of the changes are for the better, including the wealth of bundled apps. I am amazed at how much the unaugmented factory build will do, and spending another $80 or so for the iWork suite, preinstalled, pretty much set me up.

It’s clear that Apple designs its systems for hearts as well as minds. There’s a voice recognition system that works reasonably well and alerts me if an open window someplace needs attention. Working on two monitors as I’m doing now is a simple matter of plugging the thing in–the laptop ships with a DVI-to-VGA converter for older monitors. Windows lets you do that too, but the Mac makes it fun.

There are ambient light sensors under the speakers that figure out light levels and adjust keyboard and screen illumination accordingly.

Lotsa stuff like that not only seems easier on the Mac, but it’s a tad more elegant, for some reason. There’s something about this machine that makes me want to give her presents, sorta like a guy with an impossibly classy mistress. Freddie’s so far received an extra power adapter, sleek new mice, and I’m thinking she might want a better case than my current scruffy green bag.

Performance-wise she’s doing well, although I haven’t really tested her yet. I don’t know if she’s really 39% faster than previous models–and I rarely pay much attention to manfuacturer performance claims anyway–but she didn’t seem to have much trouble keeping up. And the Windows-in-VM is pretty speedy as well.

She attached herself to my home networks automagically (although she asked for the network “password” when what she really wanted was the wireless encryption key). I use Windows briefcases extensively, and was able to attach to my office desktop and create and synch new briefcases pretty much flawlessly.

The not-so-good stuff
Considering that rich media is a key reason to buy the MacBook Pro, I was surprised that, compared to my mom’s HP laptop speakers, Freddie’s speakers are the equivalent of tin can and string. Not a lot of power, somewhat buzzy and tinny. I suppose anybody buying a Mac automatically pops for topline speakers so it doesn’t NEED good ones built in, but still…

It also looks like Windows is doing a slightly better job with streaming video, which is equally surprising and something I intend to investigate. I get some video pixelation that doesn’t happen on my Windows machines.

The biggest hitches, though, have come through the use of the Parallels VM software (not a huge surprise). I followed installation directions (Parallels’ aren’t very good but there are several great tutorials for it online, including Dave Taylor’s). I established a VM, gave it some memory and hard drive space, and specified the devices I wanted attached. Easy.

Easy, that is, until I actually tried to start up the VM and install Windows XP. It crashed. (which is of course more elegant on a Mac than a PC–a darkish transparent curtain slides over the screen from the top and you’re informed that a restart is necessary)

Humpfh. Restarted, couldn’t find the original VM so I built another, and powered it up to install Windows XP. Crash. Did that, or variations of it, for about three hours. I checked the manual, which wasn’t very helpful, and checked the Parallels’ support site, which was even less helpful. Parallels wanted $30 per call for phone support for the product I just bought. Forget that; I sent an e-mail request instead.

At that point, Freddie nearly became an orphan–if the whole “we also run Windows” thing was this much of a hassle, Freddie would rapidly become just another pretty face with an RMA number. Then just for the heck of it I decided to download the latest Parallels build and reinstall.

Success!

Turns out that the new MBP needs the latest Parallels build, 1940, or it crashes. Would have been VERY nice if they said that on the website some place. Just as I finished the installation, Parallels responded to my request for help, explaining what I’d just discovered.

Build 1940 installed beautifully, XP installation was just as smooth, and I had absolutely no problem installing the software. (BTW, you must purchase a full, non-OEM version of Win XP–the Mac store I hit up tried to sell me the OEM version, which according to the docs won’t work) Also had no problem enlarging the allocated storage space when it became clear I needed more.

Mostly it’s a real Windows machine but there are some glitches every now and then. Swap rapidly between Mac and Windows and Freddie can get confused about who owns what hardware. I gave Freddie a Logitech Bluetooth two-button mouse, and sometimes when I’m in XP it just goes on vacation.

It seems to happen mostly when I’m writing–the insertion point gets stuck and it won’t return to an arrow cursor unless I dip down into the Mac side and then go back up to Windows. Or occasionally the cursor just disappears for 30 seconds or so on both machines. So far, it’s always come back, but that’s annoying. I’m assuming it’s a driver issue I’ll need to figure out.

One problem I haven’t encountered yet but expect to: performance as WinXP needs an increasingly large share of the resources to do its work. I’m running PhotoShop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc. in 1GB of allocated memory. So far I haven’t seen any slowdowns, but I suspect I’ll have a hard time keeping more than one or two apps open on this system in just 1GB, and I don’t want to shortchange her Mac personality. Freddie’s maxed out at 3GB…so we’ll have to hope that’s enough.

The minor quibbles
Freddie comes with a surprisingly nice iSight video camera built into the top of the screen. It’s cute but sometimes pops on unexpectedly. It’s a bit disconcerting to scrunge downstairs in my ratty old nightgown, open Freddie to check e-mail and find myself staring at myself.

And Freddie’s much-ballyhooed magnetic power cord (see the ad) does indeed come out rather than crash the machine to the ground when you trip over the cord, but it also can pop out unexpectedly if you shove it just the right way.

All in all, though, Freddie’s settling in and classing up the joint. Welcome home, milady.

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