Product Review: MacBook Pro

Other priorities called me away this week, so now I'm going to play catch-up with a few posts, using the Article Writing Challenge daily ideas, as I mentioned in my March Motivation Modification post on Sunday, March 1st (though it published after midnight, so it was March 2nd).

Working away on my MacBook Pro laptop - along with a couple of my fur babies keeping me company!

Just a reminder of that schedule of ideas:

Sunday: Video Blog
Monday: Product Review
Tuesday: Top 10 List
Wednesday: Guest Blog Post
Thursday: Infographic
Friday: Three Things I Completed Today
Saturday: Step-by-Step Tutorial

So this belated post for Monday, March 2nd, is a product review of the MacBook Pro, the laptop I've had for a few  years. It's excellent for my writing and educational studies.

I had wanted a laptop for quite awhile, to have the freedom to move around and work wherever I wanted to--and then, out of the blue, a writing client gifted me with this MacBook Pro a few years ago for Christmas!

It took a little while to get used to NOT having a mouse, but instead working with a touch pad. The keys are also much more responsive to touch, so no need to "mash" keys like I had been needing to do on my PC keyboard.

I think my favorite feature, though, is the Retina Display. Text and images alike are super clear and crisp, and with as much time as I spend on my laptop every day, it's nice to have such a crystal clear display. I can really tell the difference when I look at my hubby's computer screen, or even my Asus laptop, which I got after receiving the MacBook.

And that is probably the only negative thing I can say about it--for whatever reason, there's an incompatibility issue between my MacBook and my Epson printer that I use to create my imprinted photo products, such as this one, so I had to have a laptop/computer with Windows:

One imprinted square on a table runner I made.

 

 

 

My Macbook has even survived having a drink dumped onto the keyboard (thanks to a cat walking by on the desk when I was sitting at my hubby's desk) AND a dog biting the charging cord and shorting everything out.

For all the technical details, and to compare models and features, go directly to the Apple-MacBook Pro site (NOT an affiliate link!)

MacBook laptop [Source: Ainslie, Dodie. jan7.jpg. January 2010. Pics4Learning]

So what about you? Do you own a MacBook? If not, what type of laptop or computer to you use? What are your favorite features?

March Motivation Modification: TED Talk by Daphne Koller on Lessons from Online Education

March 2015...I certainly didn't expect to be gone for so long after declaring that my eLearning 4 Life blog was back! However, life happened, with its demands and other obligations that took priority over blogging.

But now, in this month of my birthday, I am working on modifying certain aspects of my life and reigniting my motivation to blog as a means to share my passion for ongoing, lifelong learning.

Blogging, studying, and drinking coffee...seem to go together! 

 [Source: morgueFile free photos]

So to help me revive this blog and get some new content here, I'm following some writing prompts from a group I belong to on Facebook called the Article Writing Challenge. The organizer, Bonnie Gean, offered this as an idea for a blogging schedule, and since it worked well on another blog, I thought I would follow it here:

Sunday: Video Blog
Monday: Product Review
Tuesday: Top 10 List
Wednesday: Guest Blog Post
Thursday: Infographic
Friday: Three Things I Completed Today
Saturday: Step-by-Step Tutorial
  

AND since today is Sunday (or it was when I started this post), I thought I would share this TED Talk by Daphne Koller entitled "What We're Learning from Online Education." 

Here is the description: Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn.

So what do you think of her ideas? Do you appreciate the opportunity to take free courses?