I’ve (finally) got my MacBook Pro back, now with Leopard. The techs said it didn’t show and problems with the new OS, so I’m hoping it’ll be a lot more usable and a lot less crashy now. So far I’ve been using it a fair amount and it’s had one lock up - one too many perhaps, particularly due to the behaviour it showed (screen backlight went out, required hard reboot to fix) but I’ll see if it’s a reaccuring problem. For now I’ve installed a widget to control the MacBook fans and am running them at higher rates than normal - my hunch is that with all the fixes this particular MacBook as had that something might be overheating, so with some extra airflow it might be more stable. We’ll see if that proves true.

I’ve also placed an order for a 20″ iMac to replace my beige box PC. I like Mac OS X as an operating system and it’ll be great to have a desktop capable of running it and Mac apps; I think it’ll make a better workstation than my current computer. I also sprung for the wireless keyboard and mouse, mainly because Apple forces you to get a keyboard and mouse and I’ve already got a wired version of their new aluminium keyboard. I might go back to using the wired model and a corded mouse (the Mighty Mouse is weird, although it does have a nifty horizontal scrolling function), but it’d be useful to have the wireless models as an option for a cluttered desk.

I spent ages deciding between the 20″ and 24″ models; the 24″ looks impressive, and the LCD panel is of noticeably higher quality, but I decided to get the 20″ so I can pair it up with a second display; the 24″ is a bit big for that. To start with I’ll stick with just the iMac, but I’ll keep my eyes open for a good deal on a top notch LCD display to go with it. The Mac1 Apple reseller in Canberra often has firesales where they slash the price of a good-as-new Apple Cinema Display by about a third; so I’ll pounce next time that comes around.

A minor annoyance is that I won’t have a copy of Windows for a while, so I won’t be able to run Win software until I get a license I can use. I might give WINE a go to see how well it runs under Mac OS X, but I’m foreseeing problems. Still, at the moment not being able to run PC games can be considered a benefit; gives me one less thing to be distracted by.