My OperaForward to a better life, hopefully
Monday, April 7, 2008 9:34:20 PM
Well I'm on my way towards a Microsoft-free life, hopefully, having been a reluctant Windows user from the start. It's OK at work, but at home I was for years a happy Atari user and only bought my first Windows PC in 98 as Apple looked a bit shaky and I didn't want to switch from one dead platform to another. Luckily things have improved lately, partly due to Microsoft's debacle with Vista: who needs an OS that's in the hands of the record and movie companies, which won't run on anything less than a supercomputer, and which breaks most of your existing software and peripherals?
Step one was the purchase of an Asus EeePC, a remarkable little Linux-powered wonder and my portable friend...
Step two has been precipitated by the demise of the optical drive in my XP laptop - I've just bought a lovely new black MacBook and am having lots of fun finding software to replace my Windows stuff, so far nearly all free/open source.
The adjustment to MacOS is proving to be quite easy, though the odd thing has me occasionally flummoxed - Google is my friend at such times! And it's extremely pretty - I can do shallow with the best of them!
I was seriously impressed with the assistant in the Apple store who was more interested in getting me to buy the right Mac rather than the most expensive option, saving me about £500 in the process. Also impressed by their training options, which I'm not currently using, but I reckon £79 for an hour a week for a year of one to one training is pretty good value even if you only use a portion of it.
So far the only peripheral I've tried which hasn't worked is an old scanner which does work on the Eee, but it looks like there is an open source solution to this problem readily available. Meanwhile XP didn't have drivers for it, so it wouldn't have been any more use with Vista.
Anyway, so far so good and I'm seriously chuffed.
Step one was the purchase of an Asus EeePC, a remarkable little Linux-powered wonder and my portable friend...
Step two has been precipitated by the demise of the optical drive in my XP laptop - I've just bought a lovely new black MacBook and am having lots of fun finding software to replace my Windows stuff, so far nearly all free/open source.
The adjustment to MacOS is proving to be quite easy, though the odd thing has me occasionally flummoxed - Google is my friend at such times! And it's extremely pretty - I can do shallow with the best of them!
I was seriously impressed with the assistant in the Apple store who was more interested in getting me to buy the right Mac rather than the most expensive option, saving me about £500 in the process. Also impressed by their training options, which I'm not currently using, but I reckon £79 for an hour a week for a year of one to one training is pretty good value even if you only use a portion of it.
So far the only peripheral I've tried which hasn't worked is an old scanner which does work on the Eee, but it looks like there is an open source solution to this problem readily available. Meanwhile XP didn't have drivers for it, so it wouldn't have been any more use with Vista.
Anyway, so far so good and I'm seriously chuffed.
Nigel CliffCaptainPenguin # Tuesday, April 22, 2008 5:34:48 PM
However is someone has a Macbook Lite going free I will happily try it out.
Johnbygjohn # Sunday, April 27, 2008 1:56:42 AM
The startup and shutdown times were one of the reasons I bought the Eee - it boots in about 30 secs ans shuts down in about 10-15. I can start it up, check my email and shut it down again while Windows is booting. And it doesn't immediately insist on hogging your internet connection for updates and then demand reboots to install same, or decide to do a virus scan just when you don't want it to. Shutdown on XP drives me potty: sitting for over a minute while it "saves my settings" when I haven't changed any makes me want to fetch an axe...
Meanwhile the Mac is almost as good as the Eee when it comes to fast booting and shutdown, and it has a decent Unix under the hood so it's inherently more secure - NB I'm not claiming imaginary immunity to security issues, which some naive people do.
WRT software, Safari is OK but I prefer Firefox as I use several extensions (particularly AdBlock and NoScript). I've also downloaded but not yet installed Opera, but until it has an ad blocker it's unlikely to become my main browser. iTunes is OK and works well with my iPod, and it seems less weird in its native environment - on Windows it seemed madly quirky and awkward to me.
Whatever, each to his own I reckon, but I do feel happier with the Mac. It just seems to be better thought out.