I’ve been a long time Mac fan. I made the switch back in 1996 and was even more hooked after the move to Unix as the core of Mac OS in 2000. I have had an Apple laptop as my primary work machine since the G3 Pismo model. I’ve been working more and more with linux and Windows lately and noticed that I spent a lot of time either working in a VM or doing things on the Mac and then spending time porting them to linux. Not a lot of extra work mind you but enough to be noticed.

I needed get another laptop and I went looking for an inexpensive and small machine. Of course the Macbook Air seemed like a natural fit for me but the price tag is too high and the specs too low. I’m still not connected to the cloud and need storage space. I don’t want to get stuck someplace with crummy Internet and be dead in the water. I like having local copies of my media and my podcast lectures. So the Air was out. It’s pretty and small and light but not enough storage and too expensive.

I looked at the 13″ macbook pro, but we are at the end of a product cycle and Apple is notorious for using the back to school sales window to clean up the sales channel before announcing new models. As a long time Apple customer I’ve been there and done. I don’t know how many times I got something and a month or two later, the next generation comes out. I don’t buy anything from Apple anymore unless I check the buyer’s guide at macrumors.com first.

So here I am in a quandary. Spend too much money for not enough machine or wait. I can’t really wait so I decided that since the price point for Windows netbooks is so low I’d go that route. I got a nice 12 inch Asus eee (the 1215) with maxed out RAM for a third of the cost of a 13″ Air.

As I make the switch I’ll post the progress. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing how the other side lives.