Switch!
Maybe not quite a switch, since I barely have a Windows machine. But anyways, I am the proud owner of a 12 inch PowerBook now. I’ve only used it for 24 hours now, but I’m pleased with my experience so far. And I hope it will continue to please me for years to come since I can’t keep up this one laptop a year rate.
I went with a PowerBook because I found a good deal. And it’s cool. And it is UNIX that runs painlessly on a laptop. Sure I could dump Linux on any old laptop, but between power management issues, wireless issues, and just general hardware compatibility it wouldn’t be too pleasing. I’ll write up something comparing it with my Debian desktop (which I’m also happy with).
Anyways here are some first impressions…
Faults/Desires:
- Wish it had dedicated home/end/page up/page down keys.
- ctrl/alt keys only on one side of keyboard. I guess I’ll be improving my vim skills.
- 3 modifier keys (ctrl, alt, command) - something to get use to. Never really made use of the “windows” or meta key.
- Keyboard shortcuts are (slightly) different (ctrl-v vs command-v).
- Notation for “alt” is funky (in the menus).
- Uh.. Can’t figure out if it is possible to use alt to reach the menus
- Ctrl key isn’t in the very left (function is there instead)
- Heavier than expected, but not a big deal. Maybe it is just denser than my old laptop, and therefore is heaver than I expected.
Pleasant surprises:
- 1024×768 is relatively useable despite the downsize from 1680×1050.
- Expose is more useful than expected.
- Wireless is painless.
- Sleep/hibernate is painless.
- Running fine on 512 megs of ram. Will still max it out anyways in a bit.
Neither negative or positve:
- Big keyboard. Apple makes lots of “full size” keyboard claims. It is definitely larger than my old laptop’s keyboard. Maybe I just use small keyboards but it seems like it is larger than my desktops’ as well.