I have been pretty lucky over the last month. I have gotten two new toys, a new Macbook Pro and a new iPhone 3GS. I even got someone else to pay for them.

Photo of MacBook Pro - Taken with iPhone

I managed – with my coworkers – to get the budget to get new hardware at work. That allowed me to get a shiny new MacBook Pro. It is one of the new models with the solid aluminum chassis and sealed battery. For a serious road warrior that maybe an issue, but I have had zero battery issues and the battery life has been great. I typically get 5-6 hours of use. That includes continued wireless internet use and video compression from time to time. Along side of the other things that I am doing on the machine at the time. Be it listening to music, coding, running virtual machines, etc.

It is also running Mac OS X 10.6.1 and for the most part was a completely seamless move from my old Mac. Since Macs allow you to move your existing set up from one to another, it could not have been easier. The newest setup let me restore from a prior Time Machine backup. It was odd. It was like a brand new yet oddly the same machine.

Everything is faster. The start up and shut down/sleep times especially. I have had a couple apps that did not work at first but since then have released updates and work with no issues.

We are also using Exchange in Apple mail. The setup could not have been easier (easier than I remember Outlook ever being). With the exception of some calendar things (can’t seem to see private events) it has been a seamless integration with the large MS Exchange beast.

Photo of iPhone - Taken with MacBookPro

I have also gotten a new iPhone. Since many of the students and faculty where I work are now using mobile devices extensively (some exclusively!) we made (and won) the argument that we needed access to these devices so we could support and develop a mobile version of the college website. After an initial test (and an event that confirmed the usefulness) we were green-lighted.

I also got an iPhone for Catherine so I believe with all of the above I can say safely that I helped pay for Steve Jobs’s liver transplant.