In a way, I hated to do it.  Mac Mail is very nicely put together, with an elegant, simple interface and everything right where it ought to be.  But in my experience the IMAP support was flakey — particularly saving sent messages to a folder on the server.  In the entire time I used Mac Mail (about a week), it only managed to save ONE sent message to the server.  Tinkering with every possible setting never seemed to resolve the problem, and I tried every suggestion from half a dozen “solutions” that I found online.

So I downloaded Thunderbird this evening, and right off the bat it worked flawlessly.  Took about half an hour to configure all the bits and pieces the way I like ‘em and set up a custom signature.  Now everything works great and, sad so say, I have banished Mac Mail from the Dock and given its space to Thunderbird.

By the way, Coda is one wicked cool Web Development tool.  Highly recommended.

My shiny new (refurbished) MacBook Pro arrived this morning via FedEx ground.  The timing stunk — I was up to my ears in alligators due to some network issues at the data center (turned out to be a DDoS targeting another client in the facility, but it was bringing our stuff to its knees).  Phone was ringing off the hook, and I was engaged in some serious geekified troubleshooting to determine if we had a problem.  (“Houston, we have a problem” is a whole different post!)

Anyway, I’ve spent the better part of this afternoon moving in and getting comfortable.  It is not nearly so jarring as I expected it would be.  Nor am I sure why I thought it would be jarring, except that in the past any time I touched someone else’s Mac I was terrified that I’d mess something up.  I guess that since this one is mine, I don’t have to worry about putting something where it’s not supposed to be.

Mail was easy enough to configure, and anything that runs in a browser works just like it does on my PC.  I’ve tried to use the Mac for all of my routine tasks this afternoon.  I figure that’s the quickest way to find those things that I need for day-to-day work: Just start working, and I’ll bump into them along the way.

I’ve installed OpenOffice 3.0, Microsoft’s very nice Remote Desktop Client (which allows me to easily connect to my Windows servers to manage them remotely), Cyberduck (for FTP), and VirtualBox.  My Linux background made it easy-peasy to configure keys in SSH so that I can remote into my Linux boxes; since the Mac runs UNIX underneath, it’s quite happy talking to Linux boxes.  I’ve connected to our file server and updated files with no problems.

As for the hardware itself, all I can say is that i’s stunning, as expected.  The fit and finish is truly amazing, and the little details are wonderful.  For example, close the lid of the laptop and you feel a satisfying pull as magnets lock it in place.  There’s no click-whump of a mechanical latch engaging as the lid closes.  It’s a minor difference, but tremendously satisfying.  The display is fabulous — uniformly bright and crisp.  The trackpad is terrific (although I generally dislike track pads and will likely use a Bluetooth mouse with this one most of the time); gestures are wonderfully intuitive and come naturally — like scrolling through a web pages by dragging two fingers down the trackpad.

All in all, I’m quite happy with what I’ve got here.  Still need to set up a virtual Windows machine for a few things (SQL Server Management Studio, Visual Studio, and Expression Web Developer come to mind).  I’m interested to see how well Windows runs on this thing virtually.

I’ve been watching the MacBook Pro line closely lately, especially since Apple introduced the new unibody design, and I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen.  In addition, OS X seems to be maturing to the point that nearly anything you can do on a Windows machine is do-able on a Mac.  Worst case, you can install Parallels Desktop for Mac or VirtualBox and run a virtual Windows machine for those things that are Windows-specific.

The tipping point for me came with fast enough dual-core processors and sufficient memory to make running a virtual Windows box a reasonable proposition.  Until about a year ago, it simply didn’t make sense.

Anyway, the stars aligned, and I finally decided to give the Mac a shot.

The new machine is a 15″ MacBook Pro, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, 320GB SATA HDD, with dual video cards and 512MB of dedicated video ram for the discrete video processor.  That’s a heck of a lot of hardware.

I actually went with a refurb rather than new – saving about $400 in the process.  My experience with refurbs has been excellent from Dell.  Let’s hope Apple continues the trend.

So now my big challenge is to start the process of identifying Mac replacements for common software I use.  I’ll try to keep you up to date on how the switch works out, and my impressions as I wade into this new world.  Wish me luck.