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Old 11-28-2011, 10:31 PM   #223
Jimmy Stang
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So I ended up taking the plunge on Friday and I am now a proud owner of a 13" Macbook Air. Thanks to everyone who helped answer my questions. It made my decision easier to be able to bounce some thoughts off of you.

I opted for the 13" over the 11" after going to the Apple Store on Thursday night and playing around with both. The 11" would definitely be better on a plane (as Russic posted), but figured that I'd go for the larger screen as 99% of my my use will not be on planes. I have found myself actively avoiding work on flights more and more lately anyway.

My initial impressions are good. The physical computer is a thing of beauty. Light and thin, yet sturdy. The display is sharp and easy to look at, and the backlit keyboard is fantastic for typing in bed or other dim places.

Mac OS is taking a little bit of getting used to. I have never really spent any meaningful time on Macs before, other than launching Firefox on a friend's computer occasionally. It feels quick and responsive, and most of my essential programs... I mean apps... are available on Mac as well, so I feel somewhat comfortable. The file system is different, and there are lots of quirks that I'll need to get used to, but that's one of the reasons that I decided to try something new.

As sclitheroe reported, PPTP is built-in and it was a breeze to get connected to my office. Remote Desktop (provided for free from Microsoft) works well to control my office PC, so the work requirements are all taken care of.

Not trying to ramble on - just wanted to thank you all for the input!

So now my questions will shift to more specific operational things, starting with this: I have read that NTFS is supported in Lion, but as read only. This held true when I tried an NTFS USB drive - I could read the files, but not write. No big deal as I can just use FAT32 on my USB drive. Tonight I accessed my NTFS drive on my Windows desktop via the network and I was able to read AND write to the drive flawlessly. This pleasantly surprised me as I was expecting it not to work. Is there a reason why I could read/write to an NTFS drive over the network?
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