Thursday, May 06, 2010

It's a Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac world?


It's official! I've ordered my first Mac and it's on the road, being shipped to me as we speak (well, as I type this anyway). I'm really excited. I never thought I would buy one for myself. On the one hand, I'm a PC person. "Why," you might ask, "in the world would you buy a Mac, then?" Well, I'm pretty comfortable using Macs. I did design work at some design agencies several years ago, and they are all pretty much Mac based. Second, I am getting into video editing. I bought an HD video camera a little over a month ago and I need a new computer with which to edit. My PC laptop that I bought back in 2005 just isn't cutting it anymore. Plus, Macs are apparently better than PCs for video editing.

Sure there are down sides, but I made numerous trips to the local Mac store and grilled the salespeople over many, many features. I've settled on an iMac, which is basically everything built into one piece of hardware. The case you are used to sitting on the floor next to your feet, or up on your desk is built into the back of a 27" wide screen monitor. Something the salespeople clued me into in the last few days before I made my purchase was the $170 3-year service plan that covers any faults as long as there is no visible damage to the outside of the computer (for example, if you are careless and drop your computer, they won't cover that, but if a component in the computer goes bad, it's covered). I thought for three years, that wasn't half bad.

Also, the One to One education service is a deal! For $99.00 you get one hour each week for a year to go into the Mac store and have one on one training for any aspect of the Mac and its software. At first I thought that was per session. THAT is a deal! I'll be up there every week learning something. Just learning a new shortcut, or some obscure functionality will make it worth it.

I have some footage of my trip to St. Louis with Sarah that I can't wait to edit together, and I also have a pretty big project that's related to my job in the works. I'm pretty excited about that. I can't wait!

Many thanks to my buddy Andy for pointing out several things I need to keep in mind as I went into my purchase.

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