A new computer takes some time to get right (even with four Xeon cores)
I guess I forgot to mention on this blog that I pulled the trigger and bought a Mac Pro. It's a thing of beauty not only in terms of its looks, but in its power. I mean, I'm blown away.
As much as I've always loved getting some shiny new hardware to play with, I have to admit that the transition to the new computer is always a something that takes more time than you like. It takes even more time when you're changing platforms entirely.
But in this case, I guess it hasn't been all that painful. I moved all of my iTunes library, which was super easy because of the awesome backup features in iTunes 7. They actually work between platforms. I also moved all of my photos over so I can use iPhoto. Since I had no real solution in the first place on Windows, this was a lot of fun and I made a bunch of new albums. I can't believe I've collected some 3,600 photos since early 2003, when I finally went to having a digital SLR. It should be pretty easy to make dupes for Stephanie too.
Aside from all of my development stuff, the only two Windows programs I need to use are Microsoft Money '97 (don't laugh, it still does exactly what I need) and Quickbooks '99. I'll just install those in Parallels.
The only real question mark I still have is with regards to my backup scheme. I've been using IBackup for years, and with one account I can backup my desktop automatically and my Web server. Now I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that. There are plenty of Mac-centric services that also do this, the cheapest actually being .Mac, but I don't want to pay for another service on top of IBackup if I don't have to. I could use IBackup in Parallels to get stuff from my shared OS X folder, but that feels dirty. At a little over eight bucks a month, I might as well just bite the bullet and get .Mac, and enjoy the doc sync to my MacBook Pro.
Overall though, so far I'm really pleased with all things Mac. I'm planning to do a little HD video experimentation on the nuclear machine later this week or next, and I'm anxious to see just how fast four Xeon cores will crush H.264.