Works Like You Do

The more I read and hear about Vista, the more committed I become to making the MAC my home base. Vista would be the logical next step for a Windows user and no one I know can stand the problems they are having. At least the MAC works like it is supposed to work. I still find it to be in the way of getting work done but I haven’t yet resorted to using Boot Camp and working full-time in the Windows world.

I learned how to change the size of the virtual disk drive in Parallels which menas space on the Windows side is no longer a concern. I also had help setting up a true shared directory so all my files can live in one place and be accesses from either OS. It’s a bit cumbersome - the directory appears as a network resource in Windows and not a folder - but it works. I’ll need to reorganize my file structure so this is less work but it’s an encourageing start.

Things went pretty well this week. I was able to access the on-line apps I needed for my courses and use the LCD projectors without needing to reboot. I didn’t find anything special that allowed it to work, so I’m a bit nervous about it. However, I’d say it looks like this will work.

I also discovered that if I plug in my LCD monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 191Tplus) without opening the laptop, the screen resolution is perfect (no cut off bottom and top screen to match the wide-vision aspect ratio.) This leads me to believe that I can somehow select this view instead of mirror and get to use my monitor fully.

Remember DOS? Before Windows there was DOS. MSDOS actually. Well, I have one program that I have used for almost 20 years and it only runs in DOS. In Windows, it works OK although it can no longer print. The work-around is to save the text files and import them into Word and then I can print. So, I loaded it up in Parallels to see how it worked. Most things have worked pretty well. This one didn’t. Amazingly, it loads and operates. Unfortunately, I have no control over the display and it runs in a very small window under Parallels. It’s close to unusable but I guess it does put to rest the claim that MACs have challenges with being backward compatible. I have to admit that a MAC that can run a 20 year old DOS program is pretty impressive.

I also learned that you can use the Option key if you need to use the F9 above keys. When you hit these, even in full screen mode, it reverts to the Finder commands. By hitting Option first, they act like Windows (or DOS) keys within your program. Score another one for testing intead of researching!

I have an Apple key on my USB keyboard but it is disquised as a Windows key! I had tried it before but I must not have done it correctly. I can now do simple copy and paste from the generic keyboard. I still haven’t figured out the End and Home buttons but I’m beginning to believe there is an answer.

[Time passes while I search. . . . . . . . .]

I found a couple of interesting things to help mitigate if not resolve the problem. But first, I discovered that the home and end keys on the MAC don’t work like the PC. So it wasn’t just my keyboard, it’s a MAC thing. The first interesting site, Garbage In Garbage Out, offers a small program to change the way the MAC keys work. The second site, is from Random Access, the Micro Center newsletter and offers key shortcuts and a link to the Apple site for their listing of shortcuts. It gave me a way to get to the end of lines and the start of a paragraph and that’s a good start.

OK. I hate the long row of mostly unused icons at the bottom of the screen. I also hate trying to see which apps are “live” by searching for the little black dot under the row of mostly unused icons. I know it can be cleaned up but I haven’t bothered. My goal wasn’t to conform the MAC to my Windows-centric preferences but to learn to appreciate a laptop that “works like I do.”

I love the utility that allows me to move the cursor to the corner and see all the open windows. This is a cool way of taking inventory of what you are doing. I rate it GOOD for Apple.

The screen is like an HDTV. I changed the background to the gray scale sea cliffs and it does look better than the basic blue screen (to save memory) I had selected for my Windows desktop.

I started loading up a “few” applications to see how they work in Parallels. This is really a good program. I installed the complete MS Office suite (IT decided it would be OK to include one additional copy in their site license), a .NET application, several open source apps like Firefox, Thunderbird (potentially my new cross-platform email app), Sunbird (because I will now need a cross-platform calendar), Filezilla (is there anything better for FTP?), Dreamweaver 8 (we don’t have the premium suite in the “standard build”), and Flash and Fireworks for good measure. Everything runs and seems to run fast enough to suit me.

One of the first impressions I have of this laptop is that it feels bigger because it is longer but it is actually thinner and shorter than my IBM. That means I can carry it in my Tumi laptop briefcase. This is not standard university issue. This is my bag that I carried for several years and really liked because it could hold everything and my laptop. Of course at that time I had a three-pound Sharp that I imported from Japan, but portability was the most important thing. My new MAC looks like a big screen TV compared to the 12 inch screen on that. So, the form factor wins a “good” posting.