Re: [MLUG] macbook observations

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 1/6/07, Mark Rages <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> > Yeah, I was wondering about that. The first generation white iBooks
> > had a pretty indestructible and finger-print-resistant (or at least
> > inivisible) surface. I don't know why they got rid of that.
>
> > > The PCjr keyboard is just OK.  It doesn't feel mushy, which is good,
> >
> > I sort of know what you mean, but I actually thought the keyboard was
> > pretty decent, although I haven't typed on one for an extended period.
> >
> > >  but my typo rate has doubled.
> >
> > I'm willing to bet that will pass. When I first landed at the NIH, the
> > keyboard they gave me sucked (in my opinion), but now I can't honestly
> > say it's any worse than anything else.
>
> I can get used to different keyboards, but I have borderline RSI in my
> right wrist.  When it starts to hurt I move the mouse to the left side
> and change keyboards.  Then it's OK for a month or two.

OK, that would be an issue. I know a lot of people who use an external
keyboard and mouse with notebooks wherever they can. I'm not sure why
I'm less picky than I probably should be. :-)

> > Fink Commander.
>
> I'll give that a try.  My software includes geda, which is in fink
> "unstable".  There appears to be a whole world of complexity between
> fink-the-repository, fink-the-program, apt, and whatever else.  (I get
> really annoyed when computer programmer types multiply complexity for
> no good reason.)

Fink is not ideal, for the reasons you state, but I find that Fink
Commander cleans up a bunch of the complexity. (I'm not usually a big
fan of GUI tools like this, but apt still gives me the willies.)

> > Highlights of OS X include Preview (my favorite PDF display utility,
> > bar none), Expose, Spotlight, dead-easy wireless networking, seemless
> > PDF generation, iPhoto, overall prettiness, and a file selector box
> > that usually knows where I want to read from or save to.
>
> Agree on most of those.

If I had to pick one, I guess I would go for thorough-going PDF generation.

> Recent Linux desktops come with evince, which a pretty obvious Preview
> clone.  I like it better than Preview, especially the "fullscreen" and
> "fit width" options.  What do you like about Preview?

You can full-screen Preview, so I'm not sure what the advantage is
there. (But I only know evince from Ubuntu on a somewhat under-powered
Thinkpad.) Preview has outstanding and fast searching, the best set of
cut and paste tools I've seen, and I'm very familiar with it, which
helps. At work we use Adobe Professional 7.0, which has some nice
things as well, but I think it must be an embarassment for Adobe that
they aren't far and away the best PDF viewer out there.

> > Plus, of
> > course, the Unix goodness you can also get with a Linux or BSD box.
> > I've sort of made my peace with XP at work, but I still get really
> > annoyed at some of its dorkiness compared to Mac OSX. I haven't used
> > FC6 enough to say anything much about it.
>
> No alt-tab between X11 apps is a big productivity loss for me right now.

If they're all running under X11, shouldn't cmd-~ do what you want
(maybe I'm missing something).

> When I say FC6, I think I really mean "modern GNOME".

Yes, I've noticed that things have gotten much better with GNOME under
Ubuntu, but unfortunately the ThinkPad doesn't (and can't) have enough
RAM to really take advantage.

When I was still teaching all the time, I have to say that Keynote
made my life far, far easier than it would have been, and the three
posters I ended up creating with Pages were the best ones I ever did.
A lot of that was due to the "PDF can be anywhere" design feature of
Mac OS X, and I really think that is key.

jking

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