iMac!

[Ashen-tan]

one-button mouse

This part, though, still winds me up. Apple have even made a multi-button mouse themselves, and ship it with new iMacs, but still my laptop only has one mouse button! Grr...

Yeah, it's especially a pain when you are running Boot Camp on Macbook, as "right-clicking" with the trackpad requires touching two fingers on the pad while you click. Unfortunately, two fingers on the pad also enables scrolling (which becomes especially touchy in Windows), and you can imagine how difficult sometimes it can be to aim a right-click at something .

This is why I used the time-tested method of using "Ctrl + clicking" to get my right-clicking done. Or else, if the keyboard has a "menu" button, I'll use that. Then again, I haven't used Windows on a Mac quite yet. I get my MacBook at the end of August.

[Jake]

This is why I used the time-tested method of using "Ctrl + clicking" to get my right-clicking done. Or else, if the keyboard has a "menu" button, I'll use that. Then again, I haven't used Windows on a Mac quite yet. I get my MacBook at the end of August.

Mm, that's the annoying thing. The Windows drivers for the laptop touchpads don't use Ctrl-click to perform a right-click, because Windows has had the two as separate functions forever, so there might be some application that actually requires a ctrl+left-click action. You only get the two-fingers-and-click option.

[Scout]

I got a MacBook Pro recently (like, last week), and honestly, I got used to the one button for most purposes pretty quickly. The touchpad is pretty irritating in general-- I wouldn't want to use it for Photoshop or games or anything that requires even a shred of precision, which is around the only time the three fingered right click is irritating. But for most regular stuff? It's fine enough by me.

Which is funny, because back before scroll wheel mice became ubiquitous, I was always the one bitching about the missing third button...

[Sin]

But carelessly some people don't seem to provide Mac (or, I guess, Linux) versions of their software

..and why do you think that is?

The reverse is also true; Windows PCs don't run everything available to the Mac.

True, but with the abundance of windows compatible software that's hardly as big of an issue for the Windows user.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not picking sides. Just raising some questions.
It bothers me when I open up a Linux magazine and there's always a new article on some VM software that let's you run Vista. It just seems so counter-productive. Buying a Mac only to install Windows is just as backwards to me.

[Jake]

But carelessly some people don't seem to provide Mac (or, I guess, Linux) versions of their software

..and why do you think that is?

Well, die-hard Mac fandom would tell you it's because those people haven't used a Mac yet.

Sometimes, I think it's because people are lazy; there are cross-platform options for a lot of things which don't really take much more effort than developing for a single platform. Mostly, though, it's pretty obviously just because fewer people use Macs than use Windows-based machines, so for commercial software it often makes more sense to develop for the larger audience.

Buying a Mac only to install Windows is just as backwards to me.

Buying a Mac only to completely wipe the OS and install only Windows is pretty backwards. But buying a Mac and installing Windows into a second partition, or into Parallels, allows you to run two lots of software with one computer. You can't [trivially] run Mac software on Windows, so if you want to be able to run software intended for both OSes it makes perfect sense to buy a Mac and install Windows through Parallels on it. It's always going to be cheaper then buying a second computer, right?

Similarly, if I wanted to run Linux at home, I'd be tempted to set up an XP VM, because then I could install the MS document viewers to look at Word documents and Excel spreadsheets (such as the ones I sometimes have to read from work) and use Remote Desktop to work from home occasionally.

[DaFool]

Alright! I have successfully installed Windows XP on the iMac, so I have a 125GB partition for windows and 155GB for OSX.

Now I'm scratching my head wondering how to max out the system. My brother (he used a Mac in college) just uses a computer to watch Youtube nowadays, that's hardly what I call maximizing a dual core machine with 2GB ram. Whereas I tend to always maximize machines and bring the CPU levels to 100% and max out on resources -- like playing Quake on 16mb of ram back in the day, or lately watching HD anime on a 1.3Ghz machine. So it was a change that I was able to watch Macross Frontier without the skipping.

Lately I've been making ridiculously large Photoshop files (on my old machine) that I can't even open on my work computer. I've downloaded some 1GB game demos to play around, but I've long since "outgrown" gaming except for the occasional RPG. I'm going to install Final Cut this weekend and mess around with that.

I need some apps (WinXP or OSX) that will max out the system, free is preferrable. And definitely something that's actually useful instead of something that screams "Dude your PC is powerful, so yeah!" The previous computers I was able to write term papers on, do some programming (even in assembly language), and toy with linux. So they were maximized. But since I stopped hardcore gaming and don't do programming anymore, this time I think our PC will be primarily a media and graphics machine for videos. I would like to create fresh new memories doing new things with my persocom! Help me!

[Jake]

Huh. I've always been happier when I can't max out a computer's capacity with things I do all the time...

[PyTom]

Code: Select all

eileen:~$ python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, May  7 2008, 15:21:12) 
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

In [1]: while True:
   ...:     pass
   ...: 

"My computer is so fast, I can do an infinite look in three seconds flat!"

[denzil]

Code: Select all

eileen:~$ python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, May  7 2008, 15:21:12) 
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

In [1]: while True:
   ...:     pass
   ...: 

"My computer is so fast, I can do an infinite look in three seconds flat!"

That's nice but doesn't he have dual core? That would be only one core used (and just 50% load for the CPU).
Well he can always run it twice...

Jokes aside, if you want to do your computer something useful then there are things like BOINC client that can use your computer for things like searching for cures and other useful (as well as useless) things.

[DaFool]

Ah yes, volunteer computing would be a sweet way to save the world during idle time! I'm just waiting for the DSL upgrade. I used to be a contributor to Folding@home.

[mikey]

I used to be a contributor to Folding@home.

Of course, me being me, at first glance I read: Fondling@home.

[denzil]

I used to be a contributor to Folding@home.

Of course, me being me, at first glance I read: Fondling@home.

I don't think that computers are THAT far yet. (:

But before my computer become too noisy, I used to be in top 100 of the User Friendly team. Now with the new PSU it's quiet again, so maybe I start computing again.