On WindowsXP I
need to click on "Start", then "Connect To", "Bluetooth
Connection", then press "Dial". This connects me to my
home server so I can use the internet from anywhere I
have mobile phone reception.
On MacOSX I have to click on the "Modem Status" icon
on the menu bar, then selct "Bluetooth", select the
"Modem Status" icon again and select "Connect".
This of course assumes Bluetooth phone is setup on
each of thse computers, and that the "Modem Status" is
visible in the menu bar on MacOSX.
To get my Siemens S55
Bluetooth phone to work with MacOSX I spent an hour
trying all sorts of modem scripts without success. I was
getting connections to the phone and the Windows 200
server behind me was accepting the call, but for some
reason the connection was refused.
I searched online and found
Ross Barkman's Home Page, which contains a large amount
of phone specific modem scripts. I used the "Generic
Mobile Phone Script", which is the first one I tried. I
cannot believe that Apple has not included a generic
mobile phone modem script.
In my comparison of the Powerbook and Thinkpad I
complained about the fact the every time I opened up the
IBM I had to reconnect my Bluetooth mouse. It seems that
was cause by a security setting, I changed the security
settings to "Medium" on my Thinkpad and now I don't need
to reconnect the mouse every time!
Fast user switching is a good bit of eye
candy.
Another great feature
is the backup battery that keeps the computer sleeping
while the main battey is changed. This is something that
should be included as part of every laptop made by every
manufacturer.
Not that I have a second battery, one
battery charge has kept me going for 2 hours at a
coffee shop in the
QVB in the Sydney CBD (Bacio (
#29 on floorplan), in the center of
the QVB's ground floor), with the Bluetooth on over a
period of 30 minutes, and the wireless on for another 30
minutes. The battery gauge on the menu bar still said
2:13 of charge left!
One week down...
The first week
has been a lot of fun. The Powerbook really is a
very good computer. I do sometimes get a little
confused with the change of keyboard shortcuts,
and the "enter" key next to the cursor keys gets
in the way too often. I find that I don't miss the
Page Up/Down keys, but I do miss the Home/End
keys. The substitutes will just take getting used
to.
The backspace delete key does not react
correctly in Adobe GoLive. I know this is not a
MacOSX issue, goLive just can't keep up with the
keyboard repeat rate in layout editing, it can in
source editing, strange.
The Powerbook is a well designed piece of
equipement, the big palmrest area, the large
trackpad, the screen (oh, the screen...), the
battery, the battery checker, the wireless
reception, I can go on, just read the "Good" and
"Bad" boxes for this week. There are problems too,
no harddrive activity LED, one mouse button under
the trackpad and missing keys. The "really bad" is
the game support. Yes most popular games are
available or will be available, but they just
don't seem to be of the same quality as their
Windows versions.
Over the next few weeks and months I will
continue to add to the log in "my
ongoing switch log.", I will do more
performance tests aimed at daily usability of the
computer, not high end Photoshop filters or high
end 3D modelling work they mean nothing to the
average computer user. I will also do some
comparisons between XCode and VisuaStudio.Net as
soon as I am more comfortable with XCode.
Overall this has so-far been a very positive
experience, a far more seamless switch than I
expected, I would suggest the switch to anyone
interested.
Buy a Mac for your work, hobby, internet,
word-processing, home/professional video/music and
keep a cheap AMD based Windows PC with a decent
video card for games that don't get ported or a
quality port.
I really do not understand why Apple has the
market share it has, Apple certainly deserves a
much larger share of the
market.
...many more to go!
