choice
My, I’m ridiculous. I’ve been using my little ThinkPad X41 for a long while now, full time (for writing — desktops handle the heavy lifting). So today I planned to eBay the MacBook I bought earlier last year. The sexy black MacBook with the rippin’ cpu, 2G of ram, 250G hard drive, etc. Etc.
Well, I choked.
Okay. I don’t like touchpads. It’s a little big. And heavy (4 lbs vs. 2.7). But holy shit, there’s nothing like doing without to make you appreciate the finer things in life. If you’re going to be stuck with a touchpad, THIS is the farking one to be stuck with. Taps that consistently register, two-finger anywhere scrolling… It “just works,” like all things Apple.
And the look of — well, EVERYTHING. Fonts that render smooth (not fuzzy) and track properly. When oh when will anyone else (I’m looking at you, Ubuntu) start to understand that this matters… God, I tried not to care, and for the most part, when I’m lost in writing, it doesn’t. Very much. But having what you’re looking at be beautiful is just… Well, it’s a good thing.
X41:
- TrackPoint: A writer’s best friend (no removing fingers to navigate).
- Size/scale/weight. It’s wafer thin and eensy.
- 4:3 screen ratio. Makes best sense for writing (who needs “cinema” ratio for vertical pages?)
- Old school charm; it’s old, it’s cheap, it works. Something cool about that.
MacBook:
- OSX — beautiful, smart and godlike font (and everything) rendering.
- Screen sharpness/clarity/brightness (despite widescreen ratio making the whole thing Too Big)
- Keyboard and touchpad light touch, reliability and accuracy.
- Overall solidness and sleekitude… The T-pad “CLACKS” closed; the M-book simply closes.
So I’m back on the MacBook and damn it’s nice. Oh, I’ll probably “get tired of” this one again at some point (I would imagine even Brad goes through this), but that just seems to be the way it is. I suppose it’s fun switching, configuring, etc. Getting XP up to a place that worked for me was interesting. I think I may try it all over again once “Windows 7” (?) is ready for prime time. Gah.
