Still not a “Mac Person”
So I’ve got the Macbook.
I like it, I really do, but I’m not ready to brand the Apple Logo to my forehead.
And I DO think that the John Hodgeman/Justin Long ads are idiotic, self congratulatory pieces of shit.
I like the touchpad, I like the simplicity of it, LOVE the “Make everything small, so you can see what all’s open” thing, especially in conjunction with the touchpad.
I do NOT like the missing keys on the keyboard (Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, etc.), the fact that I can’t get in and customize stuff how I want. The dock is a little annoying, either taking up precious space or difficult to get to, or worse, overlaying programs, forcing me to move it.
Basically, I like it about as much as I like XP. No more, no less.
I’m about as much of a Mac person as I am a PC person.
In other news, I’m still working on getting all the programs I need to do the strip again, as well as a couple of others, for other stuff.
I’m trying to figure out if I can use the XP installation disks, etc, from my other laptop. I would assume so, but I haven’t wanted to try, in case I fuck something up.
Anyone know?
Greetings, Mike…
Suggest you share your needs with Les Center probably Bermuda’s best versed Apple IT person…
Long may you keep cartooning and commenting…
Brenda…
(Mike’s note: Edited to protect the… well, innocent isn’t the right word, but…)
Hey Mike,
I don’t see a harm in trying your old disks, they’ll either work or they won’t. Usually if they’re branded (Dell, Sony, etc) the drivers are customized on the install disk and thus the install will usually fail on a different machine. Not sure about Alienware though.
One thing you can do is try getting a windows xp disk off someone else and reuse your key. You may end up needing to call MS to activate it but it shouldn’t be a problem, you should still be entitled to use that license as long as it’s on one machine.
Denis
Bring it around the house. We’ll hook you up with a dual boot to Windows 7
Yeah.. there’s a good idea. Give me TWO operating systems to learn!
I usually put the dock on the left side on my laptop and leave it static. I create folders like ‘Graphics’, ‘Internet’, ‘Games’ and drag and drop alias’(shortcuts) of all my apps to those folders, give them custom icons and then add the folders to the dock and set them to display as folder and view content as list. I remove everything but my ical from the dock for a nice clean space, and only my open apps show along with my custom app folders, which I can right click on to open what I need.
Function (fn) and the up and down keys should give you page up and page down scrolling, not as convenient, but everything is a trade-off with laptops.
Don’t forget you can connect any USB keyboard and mouse up as well, not to mention a larger monitor if you are at home at a desk. Kinda obvious, but useful for artwork. Do you use a Wacom Tablet?
I only have dual boot to WinXp to check my sites, so it comes in handy, I would try the disks, if they don’t work, they don’t work.
What do you use for your artwork? I live in adobe CS, but there are some good cartooning apps out there.
Some useful sites, if anything ever goes wrong, there is almost always someone else who has experienced it, if google does not work I go to the forums here:
http://www.macnn.com
http://www.macrumors.com
http://www.macfixit.com
http://www.versiontracker.com
OOH! That’s a damn good idea! I like! Gonna do that tomorrow!
For the art, I use MangaStudioEX (which has some amazing brushes (most of the ones I use, I made meself, I’m proud to say!) and an interface I like a lot, on a Wacom Cintiq, which is a tablet and monitor all in one (sexiest thing EVER! I love it like a family member (not my family… like the Mafia… that kinda family). It’s droolworthy. You may express your envy now!).
I need to get AnimeStudioPro back up and running (Both of these, I have paid for for Windows versions, hence the need to get XP up and running. The external drive part is a plan for the future.) to finish The Full Monty DVD, which is long overdue, because of all my computer problems. I’m doing a whole animated intro/credits thing.
RenMan has thrown some cool ideas and instructions my way, but keep the tips coming. You might convince me to stay on the Mac side.
Put the Apps in a folder to clean the dock. GENIUS!
Mike the best way to run Windows (or other operating systems) on the Mac is Fusion made by VMWare. It is a program that runs on the mac, and you install windows into it. Both run at the same time and work great. You get the best of Mac native stuff and you can run your Windows only stuff at the same time. I have been using it for about 3 years. Can’t do without it for a lot of the work I do for the cellular companies here.
One more nice thing about Fusion. Once you get the Windows install just how you want it, you can shut it down and COPY the whole “Machine” to another location. If you screw something up in Windows in the future, just shut it down and copy your Backup over the original folder and fire backup! It also does snapshots that allow you to revert back to a working install too. http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/