Necessity is the mother of invention.
I’m sitting here, typing on my MacBook Pro, my PC’s wireless keyboard in my lap, and my PC monitor on the shelf above the Mac.
Nothing transfers!
Research said that my Mac would talk to my Samsung monitor – they may now but mine doesn’t and I can’t find a driver to make it work. Also the reports of people who have tried… well it is not optimal.
And the fix is expensive. So expensive in fact that I think I’ll have to live with my little monitor for a while. Christmas is coming…
The lovely and painful thing about Apple is their success in making a plug and play universe. To make the universe work they had to place limitations on what was allowed. They’ve made the Apple experience on par with going to Disneyland – with the same attention to detail. Options are limited so that everyone had the same experience. Unlike the PC universe with is Burger King – you can have it your way.
In our society the amount of choices out there is daunting. Apple has succeeded partly because they limit choice. Rather than having to decide on everything – from the chip to the color of the computer – Apple keeps it simple.
Well simpler…
They increase customer satisfaction my limited choice. Although right now I’m dissatisfied. I can’t get a wireless keyboard with a 10-key. After the disappointment with my Samsung monitor I’m loath to try a non-Mac keyboard. One of the pleasures is the way everything fits together. Eventually all my PC support skills are going to disappear from disuse.
The hardest thing so far?
Learning how to work in a world without a right-click.
This is more problematic than one might think. There are many things that I do without even thinking in Word and Excel that are simple right-clicks. I’m learning my shortcuts. I don’t always remember them – and sometimes I find them by trial and error and then lose them – but I get better all the time.
Someone asked me if I’d reverse this process – give up and go back to a PC. I don’t think so. I really like my MacBook Pro – I’m in love with its battery life and with the fact it takes care of me. I don’t need to set up defragging or worry about viruses as much. Learning a whole new system wasn’t that hard either – I survived the switch from XP to Vista and back again… and working with Office 2003 and 2008 at the same time (laptop/desktop) so this was easy.
The only thing that is worrisome is the cost… the things I need and the things I’d like to have keep piling up.
Keyboards, mice, monitors, and backup systems… oh, My!
The Raven and the Hummingbird 
I just bought a macbook pro about 2 months ago and I love it!
At this moment I’m sitting in a pub – I’ve been here for just over 2 hours and have over 7 hours of battery power!!!! I love it!!! So glad you love yours too!! (any more !!! and I will have to cut myself off). ~ Tess
I had to read the date to make sure this was a current post. You make it sound like you bought a Mac from 1994. Macs have right clicks- you can -single click or buy a MagicMouse (they’re great), or two finger click on the trackpad. Macs can use PC keyboards and mice – no drivers needed (OK, keyboards have to be bluetooth, not wifi… but most PC keyboards were Infrared with a receiver dongle anyways… bluetooth is the new standard),
There are lots of keyboard shortcuts that simulate PC counterparts, like – for a forward delete, And I’ve very surprised that your Samsung doesn’t work. You need the $40 miniDVI to HDMI adapter, but it should just work once you have the right cable. You can format an external hard drive to FAT32 format, and use the drive on both PC’s and Macs. I had to ditch my scanner when I upgraded my MacOS to SnowLeopard, so some hardware incomaptibilities are not even because of the PC to Mac switch. Some are the fault of “improvments” to the OS! I’m a PC programmer at work, but at home I’ve had only Macs… five of them since 1994. Four of them still work, and the newest one is my 15″ MacBook Pro.
Yes they do… if you have a mouse. If you are using the touch pad not so much since I am not that coordinated 😉 so got a mouse and much happier. Rather than upgrade the Samsung got a screen (used but it is beautiful) but yes, I am aware it is an OS upgrade that caused some my compatibility issues. I am loving my Mac, but the cost of conversion was high and it isn’t like my PC world where I have friends with extra bits who can build a computer on the fly for me for free so that was a bit of a shock. ~ Tess