October 22, 2003
Diary of a switcher #1
Following on from ordering a powerbook and my debian machine going wrong, I've had an ibook on my desk.
I'm not using it exclusively (some tasks I don't have time to transfer, like the complicated virtual host and dns setup that let me run many sites at once and develop them in the same context they'd be in on live servers). But I have used it in anger several times already. In preparation for the arrival of the powerbook, I thought I'd make some notes on my experiences. I plan to do this when the powerbook arrives too, in the hope that one day I'll look back on my time as a linux user and laugh at the self-inflicted pain.
So, things I've done on the ibook that I could never do on the debian laptop:
- Just print. Plug the printer in, open a document, and print. No configuring of the printer. No problems with documents stuck in the print queue that I can't remove. No super-slow printing either - the documents flew out of the printer. I didn't know it could print that fast. Suddenly I no longer hate the super-slow noisy printer. I'd buy a roomful of OS X machines just for the ability to simply pick the printer from the drop-down list of local printers. Wow.
- Instant on. I open the laptop, it's ready for business. I close it, it suspends and stops acting like a noisy furnace. That's what life should be like - no waiting for computers to boot.
- The screen. I love the 1400x1050 screen on my laptop. But the iBook's 1024x768 is astoundingly sharp, bright, and a pleasure to stare at. That's kinda important if you're going to be staring at it all day, every day. I didn't realise how average my laptop screen was until I tried the iBook for a time.
- Photoshop. For the first time in three years I was able to edit a photoshop document again. This document has been my testbed for seeing how well the gimp has progressed, and thus far it's not capable of opening and printing this particular file (excessively high resolution, multiple layers, quirky fonts). The iBook had no problems (other than lack of memory).
To be fair, it's not all perfect. There's some things I don't like:
- Slooooooooow. The powerbook should fix that.
- The keyboard sucks. I've seen toy computers with better keyboards than this old iBook. Heck, the dummy computers they have in furniture stores have better keyboards. The powerbook should fix that.
- Mouse. I've got a usb one plugged in, but that shouldn't really be necessary. And why does OS X turn off using the trackpad for clicking by default?
- The Dock. Everyone else has already talked about how it's broken by design, so I'll spare you from reading it one more time. Oh, oops ;-)