If you remember, I was just complaining about Vista two weeks ago… coincidentally (and special thanks to my co-worker Blaine), I was given a MacBook Air for work yesterday. How crazy!

Like any piece of shiny, new and expensive gadget, I delicately opened the packaging and attempted to use dainty fingers (with my pinky in the air, you know what I’m talking about) to lift out my newest toy. Unfortunately, this 3/4″ thick thing weighs more than it looks and I was forced to utilize all 5 of my fingers to get it out of the box.

So if you’ve ever made the switch from Windows to Mac, you’ll know what I’m talking about here – First I read the manual cover-to-cover (and I’m not one of those people that does this with everything), then I carefully turned it on, filled out some forms, repeatedly took my user account picture using the iSight and watched the amazingly smooth intro video for Mac OS X Leopard with the preset volumn that is almost inappropriate for work. Finally, I spent the rest of the day trying to familiarize myself with Mac and doing the following:

• Expecting app install by double-clicking instead of click-n-dragging
• Attempting to “right click” on the trackpad by pressing the right half of the single button
• Looking for the app menu within the app window itself
• Clicking on the red ‘x’ in the app window and expecting that application to quit/close completely
• Trying to locate the scroll bar while browsing instead of the two finger trick
• Hitting ctrl + something instead of command + something and waiting for something to happen (MacBook Air is so quiet and has no extra flashing lights anywhere for me to ever know if it’s doing something or if I just used the wrong key-combinations)

Today, I plan on installing all sorts of things to make it work-usable. I had never noticed before how many things are PC-only so I’m on a quest to find equivalent Mac counterparts for things like XMLSpy, Outlook, QuickBooks, etc. If you’re in the same boat, then definitely check out the list here to get a nice jump start.