Doo eet.

Post #162,488 by pwhysall 7/1/04 1:04:15 PM Reply	Doo eet. We (I) have a 14" G4 iBook. It's quite the nicest laptop I've ever used. Software picks: 1. Mail is quite sufficient for most folk. 2. However, you want Camino for web browsing. 3. MSN Messenger further demonstrates my theory that Microsoft should abandon Windows because they're really much better at writing very nice Mac software. 4. Office v.X - see (3). 5. I found a decent IRC client - X-Chat Aqua. 6. iChat is fabz0r for gassing to your mates. 7. Tinkertool is also a great way of wasting a vast amount of time. 8. UNIX-heads will spend what little time they have left (after 6 and 7) playing with Fink. 9. You get XCode with it! It's great! Even I can write programs with it. 10. Move the dock to the left, as small as poss, and auto hide it. My overall feeling I get when using the iBook is, "This is how it's SUPPOSED to be, dammit!" Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #162,499 by drewk 7/1/04 1:38:02 PM Reply	ICLRPD (new thread) Created as new thread #162498 titled [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=162498\|ICLRPD] === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Post #162,504 by acagle 7/1/04 1:53:01 PM Reply	One issue. Since I'm not going to be buying a whole suite of new (Mac) software for it right off the bat, how well do emulation utilities work? Some specialized apps I have cheap academic site-licences for (e.g., SPSS, ArcView) I can probably get native, but others (EndNote, replacement for Access) will need to run emulated for a while. And. . . .is the difference between iBook and Powerbook just innards? That is, are the keyboards and displays basically the same, with Powerbooks having larger screens, bigger drives, blah blah blah? I can't stand a cheap keyboard.
Post #162,506 by pwhysall 7/1/04 2:02:03 PM Reply	Re: One issue. Dunno about emulation. There is nothing at all cheap-feeling about the iBook; I can type at very high speed on the keyboard, which has a very pleasant feel (as laptop keyboards go). The screen is nice, bright and has good contrast and viewing angle. One thing I should point out is that you probably want to adjust the colour profile. The default sRGB one is quite horrible. Take 10 minutes to calibrate it properly. You'll thank me. Also note that you can alter the contrast with CTRL-OPTION-COMMAND , and . (that's comma and full stop). You want to do this, because you can only alter brightness from System Preferences. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #164,438 by danreck 7/14/04 2:41:57 PM Reply	Re: One issue. Being in Academia myself, I know that SPSS and Endnote are OSX native. You can also X11/ssh over to your trusty campus Unix clusters and run them from there. Replace Access with Filemaker Pro 7 or (still in X11 land) MySQL immediately. Filemaker is one of those apps that, once you start using it, you say - shit, this is the way databases "should" work. (Big Note - this is not a universal statement. If you are doing enterprise db's, stick with DB2 or Oracle - but you are replacing Access ferchrissakes :-) On to Virtual PC. One, it is S-L-O-W. Having said that, it works reasonably well even on my (now) low end Ti Powerbook that I can Remote Terminal into my servers and administor them. I can also use it to do most testing of Windows apps. Now, more demanding apps... SPSS - Come on! Not in emulation. You haven't got that much time :-) Two, VPC is now a Microsoft product. Enough said? Save the dough from not buying VPC and put it toward a cheap assed Windows box. Powerbook lines are roughly comparable at the moment, so the iBook that you buy will better than my Ti, although I have absolutely no complaints having used it as my primary machine (yes- desktop replacement) for about 3 years. No service calls - no problems. It's survived a couple of drops as well. Just to add a little to the mix, have you checked out the 17 inch Powerbook? Or to really add a lot to the mix, have you checked out the G5's? Just a few thoughts, Danno

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