I just got a delivery from FedEx with a new toy inside. It’s a shiny 17″ MacBook Pro, bought refurbished from the Apple Store (saving me $700). On first blush, this thing is beautiful. The keyboard is so much better than my iBook. And the screen? Well, let’s just say I have more than twice the room I had before. Moving all my data over via the Migration Assistant took about an hour, and when it came up on the new computer, everything was smushed over in the upper left corner of the screen. I don’t know how I put up with that tiny thing for so long.

I have another stick of memory to drop in it and then I’m going to install Parallels and a fresh copy of Windows XP, and try to get a decent development environment organized. This is very, VERY nice.

Update: Things are humming smoothly along; I’ve found that my external monitor only does 1280×1024, so I can’t make things any bigger than that, which is a slight bummer. I also just realized (slaps forehead with hand) that I can’t run OS9 on this machine, which means that a little legacy piece of software I’ve got called FontMonger is an orphan. I’m going to have to keep an OS9 machine around here just to convert fonts, I guess. The keyboard is sexy and feels great, but it’s taking me some time to get used to the tactile feel, and the backlighting feature is the bomb. Props to Other World Computing for their clear, easy to follow RAM installation guides. If you are buying gear for a Mac, I strongly recommend this company.

I’m also officially in love with the Apple Remote; I don’t know how I survived without one for so long. For those with more than one Apple Remote in the room, this little Technical Article will come in handy: pairing your remote with your particular computer.