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My new computer, Mac Air, pending Windows 7 installation

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So, after purchasing my Mac Air in Bellevue,WA (would you believe they give Microsoft staff a discount?) I have been playing around with the operating system while I work out a way to borrow, or whether to buy, a dvd drive. I'm on holiday in the UK so can now indulge myself, whilst have a sneak peek at the financial crunch impact over here ($4bn loss in half a year with Lloyds TSB this past 6 months announced today - wow)

In terms of my Mac Air the whole the first time experience from packaging to startup was excellent. And thats where it *largely* ended - for me.

Does it, on face value, do much the same as you would expect from an operating system? Yes. Is it frictionless? No, not for me.

I love the little superbar at the bottom (can it be hidden) and the expandable menu (how do I remove items), but the simplest of operations and even finding applications is an issue (it appears to me that you need to self install to applications and drag to the superbar, or use "finder"). Disclaimer here, is that I am used to my Windows experience - I have used Mac's in the past though. What I have realised, without looking at enterprise features such as federated search, is that many of the features of the Mac OS are menu driven. This rather old inherited structure, the menu bar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu\_bar),  is apparent in all operating systems, but I've found with the advent of fluent UI (aka the Ribbon) and even the use of drop down menus and icons, toolbox's and the like, menus are rather old school. In short, this means in order to do the simplest of functions you either need to know the option key combination or know how to use the menu bar. For example, unless opening a new window is coded into the app as a Dock function, like Safari, you can't do it at all.

Working with MacOs windows has also been a pain for me, I want to resize from anywhere, not just the bottom right corner and I want to auto dock windows and create new ones quickly. Its probably just me but I'm finding the whole process taxing.

So, I read this article for upgrading to 64 bit Windows 7:

https://yougottabekiddingyou.blogspot.com/2009/03/tutorial-apple-boot-camp-for-64-bit.html

So, any day know I'm getting that dvd drive and putting Windows 7 on. I'll find what I've been working on quicker, it will require fewer mouse clicks and its going to handle the way I work with multiple windows much better. Yes, I know I might be getting a bit old and set in my ways, but I know what I like....

** addendum (bit the bullet and purchased an mac air drive)

UK Holiday 2009 012

A more considered view and one I would endorse, please read here:

https://gizmodo.com/5131933/giz-explains-why-the-windows-7-taskbar-beats-mac-os-xs-dock

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2009
    Why don't you try installing windows 7 from a USB key instead of a DVD? It is a supported way of installing now a days.

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2009
    Unfortunately MacOS requires an EFI partition to boot which means creating a bootable USB key is particularly difficult if the boot media is on another partition (NTFS). In short I couldnt get Bootcamp in MacOS or on booting to recognise the EFI and NTFS combination. Since bought the super drive (which required a reboot to work) and installed Windows 7 64 bit build 7600. All good except I need a few drivers which are on the Leopard installation disk. Also, Bootcamp 3.0 looks like it will add some new features (like visibility of HFS drives)