Pondering new MacBook
I started using the standard MacBook at work and I quite like it, besides some annoyances I'm trying to solve now (most of them are hardware related, like Apple Keyboard and/or Emacs-like keybindings conflicts etc.)
I am still using my ThinkPad X40 at home, and while I am absolutely in need of Windows apps and love ThinkPad's trackball better than MacBook's (how painful it is to use different keyboards at work and home, especially English vs Japanese), it feels like I should switch to Mac, and the fact is that I own my Mac mini already.
Should I buy a new MacBook (no Air, thanks), or use my work MacBook at home (hmm it's heavy to carry around for 15 minutes every day and night) or keep using ThinkPad and use Mac mini over synergy ... or something else, like eeePC?
The biggest concern about buying new MacBook is that I'll need to sync some desktop data, like that of TaskPaper, Camino Bookmarks and iTunes Library. I guess FolderShare can help on that ...
Comments
Get the new Macbook today, it makes work fun and the apps are way better than anything else out there.
IMHO, I think it's only designed for cyclists who is taking a long trip because it's very light. It's not really very helpful for hackers. I've seen it around several times here, but people pretty much just manually install Windows XP on it, and mostly do web surfing. One of my friends actually use its Office software because he has many documentation need. I personally don't think it's as useful as a 3G smart phone (which might cost more! orz). ;-)
I also got fed up with NNW not syncing what I'd read between the machines. I guess this is less of an issue now there's NewsGator syncing (or less of an issue if you use GoogleReader or some online reader app)
Yeah, and i have 2 PSP consoles already :)
Well, web surfing, ssh, IRC and file sharing is all I need to do on Windows, so any spec XP would work. Hm.
I agree and that's why I tend to avoid "desktop apps" these days and prefer "online apps" for such things as RSS readers. But Mac has really good desktop apps, and that's the problem :)
iTunes playlist syncing is already a nightmare. I have songs purchased from iTunes and AmazonMP3 on my ThinkPad (and play them through Airport Express) but when the hard drive gets full I *manually* move them to Mac mini extra drive, and then I can't listen to these tunes anymore at work, etc.
I thought online locker services like anywhere.fm or whatever Michael Robertson would work, but they never actually do.
There is one area where online apps (and online feed readers) suck: access to private content. I wouldn't give my enterprise LDAP password to online apps.
Try enips.com or xdrive.com for music and photo storage. each site offer 5gb for free. For photos I use snapfish.com it offers unlimited.
from Windows. Currently I use 6-7GB of storage and the initial upload took 4 days (while constantly suspended because of work, etc). The agent just works while the computer is idle and you can suspend or shut down the machine in the middle of backups and it'll resume automatically, so I don't really care when and how it's backed up. All transparent and hence, good.
I never had to restore lost files, but apparently the UI looks pretty slick and easy, as long as you use from Windows. Very good explorer integration using the virtual drive functionality. Not sure if it's available on Mac OSX. Probably using DAV.
Appears there's a smart solution on this: Simplify Media Install the software on both Work and Home Mac (or PC) and it scans your iTunes library (or a folder that contains mp3 files) and publishes as an iTunes share. No router config is needed. I installed it on my Mac over VNC and now can listen to the entire music library at home (minus the ones I still own on my ThinkPad) Now i think it's time to move them all to Mac's drive, and also unDRM these iTunes music so that I can avoid the annoying authentication dialog.