I’ve been using my MacBook now for exactly one month. It’s great to have a notebook computer. My main PC is in the attic, so up some creaky stairs. The good lady uses the downstairs PC in the evenings, and as the kids are in bed, I don’t like to clatter up and down the creaky stairs. So the laptop is really handy.

So how do I like the Mac OS? Well, to be honest, I haven’t actually used it very much at all. I confess that I installed Parallels to run XP and pretty much use that only to remote desktop to the upstairs PC. Seems a bit daft forking out the premium for Mac hardware and doing that, I admit, but the truth is that I’m so busy with my translation that I haven’t had time to play around very much at all, let alone learn a new OS.

Hardware wise I love the MacBook. I’ve got used to the keyboard now, although the fn key drives me up the wall, as does the CD eject key (right where ctrl and backspace should be respectively). I acknowledge that PC laptops have quirky key positions, too.

On the few occasions when I have tried to use Safari for some quick surfing, I get caught out by the fact that the cursor keys appear to be disabled in password fields. Why, in the name of all that’s Mac, should this be so?. It’s so unbelievably frustrating for me, as my password system requires the use of the cursor keys. And almost as annoying is the missing delete key. Man, it’s doing my head in. Sure, I can hold down fn and then backspace becomes delete, but I navigate in Word with the keyboard and I’m all over the place. It slows me down A LOT.

I’ve been catching up on MacBreak Weekly and The iLifeZone, so I’m well equipped with Mac tips for when I finally get some time to sit down and play. Quicksilver looks like it will be right up my street!

So, the question is, when it comes to upgrade time, do I upgrade my main system to a Mac Pro, or do I just upgrade to a Core 2 Duo, new motherboard and Vista? The way I’m feeling right now, I’m about 80% in the PC camp, but I still really want to give the Mac a chance. I know that I haven’t really done that yet.

Tune in next month for the next instalment!

PS. And if anyone knows how to fix that annoying cursor key/password field thing, I’d be most grateful to hear about it.