MacBook Pro: The bottom line

The MacBook Pro is all packed up and ready to go back to the store.

I can't say that I'll miss it. It's a fine laptop and if someone wanted to give me one, I'd take it and use it. But my employer is giving me a free Windows 8 laptop :) -- so I'm going to take that, and use it instead. And I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, going that route.

The things I really liked about the MacBook:

• It looks pretty. (Actually, I was less enamored with the look than my husband was, because I didn't find it very functional. My Lenovo laptops don't look as pretty, but their slightly rubberized covers are less slippery and feel more cushiony, like they protect the laptop innards better. I think they also cut down on weight -- the MacBook is surprisingly heavy for its size.)
• Battery life. At one point, I used it intermittently over the course of two days, without plugging it in at all, and it still had plenty of battery life left. It blew both of my Windows laptops out of the water in that respect, and that was without any sort of "hibernate" mode. (Hibernating a Windows laptop saves a ton of battery life when unplugged, but it also takes a long time to resume from hibernation.)
• Search.
• Some of the trackpad gestures became very natural as I used the MacBook more and more. Particularly scrolling, which is really smooth and elegant. Now that I'm back to using my Windows laptops, I find myself trying to use the trackpad to scroll in the same way. It doesn't work out too well :)
• Rock solid. I only had to reboot once in three weeks (to make my husband an administrator). Admittedly, my Windows 8 PC doesn't need to be rebooted very much either -- and it's under a much heavier app load than what I put on the MacBook.

There were also plenty of things I didn't like, which I think I've complained about enough in my various posts here.

Bottom line? I still don't understand the hype. Again, the MacBook is a fine laptop. If a Mac user asked me whether there are compelling reasons for her to switch to a Windows-based PC on the grounds of software alone, I would have to honestly say, "No." I'm sure many of the little things that frustrated me about moving from a PC to a Mac would be equally frustrating for someone going the other direction.

If a PC user asked me whether there are compelling reasons for him to switch to a Mac, I would also have to honestly say, "No." Of course, my bias plays in here. But I really didn't find anything about the MacBook that made me say, "Wow, I'm going to miss this, in sticking with Windows."

Granted, this was a three week evaluation. I'm certainly willing to concede that some of the Mac benefits may only appear over the long run. Still, I'm sure that there are quite a few drawbacks that will only appear over the long run, too -- so it may all balance out.

There is also one big difference between PCs and Macs that I haven't touched on at all, and that is price. The MacBook I evaluated had a 13" screen, 2.5Ghz Intel i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD drive. It cost about $1500. Here is a comparably equipped Lenovo (13" screen, 1.7Ghz Intel i5 processor, 8 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD drive) with a touch screen for $1300. That is a significant price difference, so when price matters, PCs definitely win out.

This has been an interesting experiment, for sure, and I feel much better informed about the pros/cons of both Macs and PCs as a result.

On to the iPad...