From: thomas.e.elam@gmail.com   
      
   I bought a 14" MacBook Air this week.   
      
   Having used an iPhone and iPad OS for several years has made MacOS an   
   easy transition. I have to admit I wish I had done this sooner. Several   
   CSMA Mac fans "encouraged" me to do so. But years of Windows laptops   
   made it hard to give up all that experience and learning. In the past   
   there were a few other reasons too, but those have vanished in time.   
      
   Then there was the experience of trying a M1 MacBook Pro in late 2021.   
   It needed to run Parallels and Windows for a stats program that is   
   Windows-only. Needed a faster computer to analyze a huge dataset that is   
   far beyond what Excel can handle. Set that all up and 2 weeks later the   
   MacBook failed to boot. I returned it to Apple and bought the Dell I   
   have today. Swore I'd never do that again.   
      
   Why now you ask? This week I took the wife's iPhone 14 to the Apple   
   Store for battery replacement. It hit 79% at 3 years of otherwise   
   excellent service. While there I looked at the Air and an Apple rep told   
   me to take it home, set it up and give a go. If not happy after 2 weeks   
   return it for a full refund. So, why not? Nothing to lose but some time   
   and setting it up would be fun.   
      
   So, less a week into it the Air is not going back to Apple. We leave for   
   Colorado tomorrow and it is going with us. The Dell will stay here until   
   I put it on eBay.   
      
   The Air is a VERY impressive piece of technology. It's at least as fast   
   as the Dell i9 XPS it replaced. It runs all day on a charge, the Dell's   
   aging battery about 3 hours at best. The Dell runs hot even with dual   
   fans. The Air has no fan.   
      
   Then there is storage space requirements. My Dell has a 2 tb SSD. Never   
   needed all that but the upgrade was cheap. Only 420 gb was used. The Air   
   has a 512 gb SSD. That was bit of a worry. I moved about 20 gb of stale   
   data on the Dell files to an external drive and everything else over to   
   the Air. All in, only 262 gb, just over 50%, is used on the Air SSD.   
   That is a lot of OS slop that went away. The Apple migration program was   
   not used. I used the external HD to move data and did fresh app   
   installs. Took a few hours.   
      
   The Air works great with my Dell 4k external monitor, BT Logitech   
   keyboard and mouse, HP printers and 2 external hard drives. I did have   
   to buy a SD card dongle to move my GoPro YouTube channel videos onto the   
   Mac. Also purchased a travel charger. I still need two RC aircraft radio   
   apps that are Windows-only but have a basement Windows 11 laptop that   
   will work for that.   
      
   It's also very nice to have many of my iOS apps now on the laptop too.   
   Other than Quicken my core Windows apps - Office, Edge browser, Roboform   
   and VideoPad - all run just like Windows.   
      
   The only OS transition issue for me is just how different application   
   windows management is on MacOS. Then too there is Quicken. The MacOS   
   version interface is totally different from Windows. Just as capable,   
   but the interface and workflow takes some effort to get used to. In   
   fact, while MacOS version is missing some useful interface features it   
   has a few other functional features missing in the Windows version.   
      
   So there you have it Macaholics. I'm one of you now.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)