drinking the kool-aid

[rone]

One of the things i requested at my new job was that my corporate-issue laptop be a Mac (partly because i was damned if i was going to get stuck with a stinkin' Dell).  After some wrangling with the CFO, my request was granted, so now i have in my possession a 15" PowerBook with a gig of RAM.  I also have a Kyocera KPC650 EVDO card.  I've installed Camino and Firefox, and i downloaded all 800+MB of the developer tools just so i could have gcc kicking around (which i used to build screen, which i configured and compiled with zero hitches).

I like it.  The display is crisp and things work, once you get used to the idea of trying stuff that you know would have never worked in Windows.  It's a damn sight better to use than the GNOME-RedHat desktop i got (which keyboard [DAMN YOU, DELL!] already triggered both tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome in my left arm — after 3 damn days of work!).

In summary, all computers suck, but the Mac seems to suck less.  Huzzah.

Comments

[wisn.livejournal.com]

There are a couple LJ Dashboard widgets as well (primary advantage: easier to dismiss from user space), but since they're basically Javascript-loaded miniature web pages I'm not convinced they're that much better than using LJ's own input page. Xjournal is the most mature, and has a lot of nice account maintenance utilities as well, but it also has its quirks, such as saving entries locally as proprietarily-tagged xml files.

I am still ambivalent about Dashboard but now that I've found a couple widgets I can use (a quick, lightweight CSS reference sheet and a PHP reference that uses php.net), I don't actively hate it. The hoopla around it is still primarily because it's shiny rather than useful.

Now that you've drunk the water, you can get involved in emacs/vi/BBEdit arguments.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

iJournal rox, but I'm still mainly using Deepest Sender from within Firefox.

I don't even touch dashboard.