Saturday, August 20, 2005
New iBook First Impressions
Well it wouldn't be an adventure if you didn't start off by electrocuting yourself, so I decided to go ahead and get that out of the way right off the bat with my new iBook. I realized I needed a free endplug on my surge protector in order to fit my new iBook's plug, so I unplugged the plug on the end, which happened to be my laser writer, which I happened to forget to turn off before unplugging, and my fingers just happened to manage to come into contact with the partially-unplugged prongs, and sure enough I was electrocuting myself. It's one thing to get shocked, but having a current running consistently through your body is another thing entirely. I tried to let go, but my right arm didn't feel like cooperating, and I had to grab my right arm with my left arm and pull it off the plug. I fully expected to find myself dead, or on fire, or otherwise on my way to the hospital, or at least have smoke coming off of my forehead or something. But the only side effect was that my right arm was numb for a few minutes, so I suppose I was pretty lucky in that regard.
And fortunately, getting electrocuted was by far the most painful part of getting my new iBook up and running. Everything after that was pretty much a walk in the park. Although I suppose the bar for things going wrong was set pretty high right out of the gate, considering how things started off.
So I fire up my new iBook (thankfully, not literally) and after looking at some cool new splash screens, I'm asked if I want to let the iBook automatically pick up my user account, apps, etc. from another Mac. It's been so long since I've bought a new Mac that I had actually forgotten that this nifty feature existed. I would certainly recommend it to most people, but I was tempted to instead build my new beast piece by piece, moving over things only as I wanted them, installing my apps from scratch, and so on. But I figured I'd give the automatic thingy a try, at least until it pointed out that I didn't have the drive space to let it do its thing. It struck me as odd at first, with both machines having the same 40 GB hard drive, but then I recalled that the new iBook comes with a whole lot more stuff bundled on it. So although I could have easily moved some data out of my home folder and then sat back while the automatic thingy did its thing, I took it as an excuse to go ahead and do the whole thing manually.
Again, I wouldn't recommend this to people who people who don't know what they're doing, but if you know where everything hides, it's not too difficult to go and grab your mail folder, your Safari prefs folder, and so on, until you've got your new machine eerily resembling your old one. It's what the automatic thingy does anyway. But I did borrow one trick from the automatic thingy by booting up my old PowerBook as a FireWire hard drive, as moving thirty gigs of crap isn't all that fun over ethernet, and thinking in wireless terms isn't reality-based when one of the machines is old enough to be running on 802.11b.
So anyway I get everything in place and, oh man, is this fun. The stats say this machine should be roughly twice as fast as my PowerBook, but as I suspected, in certain processor-intensive situations it seems ten times as fast. I can't wait to go and play with Dashboard and the other stuff that my new machine is fast enough for, the stuff I had to leave on the shelf on my old rig because things were slow enough already. And although I'm still getting used to it, I'm loving the small footprint. Finally, a laptop that can actually fit on my lap, something that can be positioned on one knee, or just about anywhere else. Twenty-four hours into it, and I'm not missing those three extra inches at all. And while the PowerBook always felt sufficiently sturdy, this thing feels like a tank.
There are certainly still adjustments to be made. I don't consider the keyboard to be better or worse than my old one, but because the machine is more compact, the keys are at slightly different angles to each other, which takes just a bit of getting used to. Typing in the pitched black will be a little tricky until then. Once I get used to it, I'll be fine. I do wish this machine had a backlit keyboard, but I couldn't have gotten that with a twelve inch PowerBook anyway. And it's nice to finally have my ports on the side of my laptop, where they belong, instead of hiding on the back. A year and a half of using a PowerBook, and I never did get used to that. Two-finger scrolling is deceptively easy to get used to (I didn't even realize I was using it). I hope I never have to find out how well the brace for impact hard drive feature works.
Lastly, I will very much miss the card slot that my old PowerBook sported. Not that I ever once actually put a card in it or anything. But during pauses in my writing, when I was searching for the right word or whatever, I really liked playing with the card slot's release lever.
List of things I need to add to my new iBook to complete the experience, not necessarily in this particular order:
- An extra gig of RAM. This thing is a speed demon already, but with a gig of RAM barely a hundred bucks, there's no reason not to grab it while prices are low. I'll want it eventually.
- A bag or pouch. If I carry around my new 12 inch laptop in the same old 15 inch bag, then there wasn't too much point in buying it. Thanks to everyone who has sent in bag/pouch suggestions so far. I'll likely have to head out to the stores to try some of them out in person.
- An AirPort Express. The next time I head out on a hotel-based trip, I want to do so in style. Also, my current wireless router is 802.11b, which doesn't impact internet speed, but doesn't exactly make for fun file transfer speed. Now that I've finally got an 802.11g machine, I might as well embrace the standard.
- A new surge protector. Really, electrocuting myself once was enough. You pay eight dollars for a surge protector, you get what you deserve. Time for a real one, before I zap myself again and turn the rest of my hair grey.
Well it wouldn't be an adventure if you didn't start off by electrocuting yourself, so I decided to go ahead and get that out of the way right off the bat with my new iBook. I realized I needed a free endplug on my surge protector in order to fit my new iBook's plug, so I unplugged the plug on the end, which happened to be my laser writer, which I happened to forget to turn off before unplugging, and my fingers just happened to manage to come into contact with the partially-unplugged prongs, and sure enough I was electrocuting myself. It's one thing to get shocked, but having a current running consistently through your body is another thing entirely. I tried to let go, but my right arm didn't feel like cooperating, and I had to grab my right arm with my left arm and pull it off the plug. I fully expected to find myself dead, or on fire, or otherwise on my way to the hospital, or at least have smoke coming off of my forehead or something. But the only side effect was that my right arm was numb for a few minutes, so I suppose I was pretty lucky in that regard.
And fortunately, getting electrocuted was by far the most painful part of getting my new iBook up and running. Everything after that was pretty much a walk in the park. Although I suppose the bar for things going wrong was set pretty high right out of the gate, considering how things started off.
So I fire up my new iBook (thankfully, not literally) and after looking at some cool new splash screens, I'm asked if I want to let the iBook automatically pick up my user account, apps, etc. from another Mac. It's been so long since I've bought a new Mac that I had actually forgotten that this nifty feature existed. I would certainly recommend it to most people, but I was tempted to instead build my new beast piece by piece, moving over things only as I wanted them, installing my apps from scratch, and so on. But I figured I'd give the automatic thingy a try, at least until it pointed out that I didn't have the drive space to let it do its thing. It struck me as odd at first, with both machines having the same 40 GB hard drive, but then I recalled that the new iBook comes with a whole lot more stuff bundled on it. So although I could have easily moved some data out of my home folder and then sat back while the automatic thingy did its thing, I took it as an excuse to go ahead and do the whole thing manually.
Again, I wouldn't recommend this to people who people who don't know what they're doing, but if you know where everything hides, it's not too difficult to go and grab your mail folder, your Safari prefs folder, and so on, until you've got your new machine eerily resembling your old one. It's what the automatic thingy does anyway. But I did borrow one trick from the automatic thingy by booting up my old PowerBook as a FireWire hard drive, as moving thirty gigs of crap isn't all that fun over ethernet, and thinking in wireless terms isn't reality-based when one of the machines is old enough to be running on 802.11b.
So anyway I get everything in place and, oh man, is this fun. The stats say this machine should be roughly twice as fast as my PowerBook, but as I suspected, in certain processor-intensive situations it seems ten times as fast. I can't wait to go and play with Dashboard and the other stuff that my new machine is fast enough for, the stuff I had to leave on the shelf on my old rig because things were slow enough already. And although I'm still getting used to it, I'm loving the small footprint. Finally, a laptop that can actually fit on my lap, something that can be positioned on one knee, or just about anywhere else. Twenty-four hours into it, and I'm not missing those three extra inches at all. And while the PowerBook always felt sufficiently sturdy, this thing feels like a tank.
There are certainly still adjustments to be made. I don't consider the keyboard to be better or worse than my old one, but because the machine is more compact, the keys are at slightly different angles to each other, which takes just a bit of getting used to. Typing in the pitched black will be a little tricky until then. Once I get used to it, I'll be fine. I do wish this machine had a backlit keyboard, but I couldn't have gotten that with a twelve inch PowerBook anyway. And it's nice to finally have my ports on the side of my laptop, where they belong, instead of hiding on the back. A year and a half of using a PowerBook, and I never did get used to that. Two-finger scrolling is deceptively easy to get used to (I didn't even realize I was using it). I hope I never have to find out how well the brace for impact hard drive feature works.
Lastly, I will very much miss the card slot that my old PowerBook sported. Not that I ever once actually put a card in it or anything. But during pauses in my writing, when I was searching for the right word or whatever, I really liked playing with the card slot's release lever.
List of things I need to add to my new iBook to complete the experience, not necessarily in this particular order:
- An extra gig of RAM. This thing is a speed demon already, but with a gig of RAM barely a hundred bucks, there's no reason not to grab it while prices are low. I'll want it eventually.
- A bag or pouch. If I carry around my new 12 inch laptop in the same old 15 inch bag, then there wasn't too much point in buying it. Thanks to everyone who has sent in bag/pouch suggestions so far. I'll likely have to head out to the stores to try some of them out in person.
- An AirPort Express. The next time I head out on a hotel-based trip, I want to do so in style. Also, my current wireless router is 802.11b, which doesn't impact internet speed, but doesn't exactly make for fun file transfer speed. Now that I've finally got an 802.11g machine, I might as well embrace the standard.
- A new surge protector. Really, electrocuting myself once was enough. You pay eight dollars for a surge protector, you get what you deserve. Time for a real one, before I zap myself again and turn the rest of my hair grey.
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