Simon Willison’s Weblog

Congrats. When you _do_ get the PB, I suggest you follow a couple of simple hints:

• Call the default account "Administrator" or something and use that to install the OS, Xcode, etc.
• Do 90% of your tinkering (e-mail, browser, coding, etc.) as a "regular" user (created post-install) and setup "fun" apps under ~/Applications.

This will feel a bit bothersome initially, but with Fast User Switching you can switch workspaces in a flash. The BIG benefit of this approach is that you end up making a lot less "newbie errors" like renaming important folders due to different accelerator keys, etc.

(A friend of mine scoffed at this and he's reinstalling his 12" PB from scratch after only two weeks of wanton fiddling... ;))

Rui Carmo - 21st December 2003 00:33 - #

You won't be disappointed with your buying choice, got my 15"/SuperDrive/80GB HDD/512MB RAM PowerBook last Friday, now it's connected to my ADSL router via 802.11g and I've got a fantastic computing experience anywhere in my house I desire (and perhaps on the road once I've inquired about correct GPRS settings from my mobile carrier).

Wesley Mason - 21st December 2003 01:16 - #

On another note: please post about your experiences upgrading the RAM on your PowerBook. I have had some woe's upgrading to the 1GB of RAM I ordered off Crucial, as I have been unable to unscrew the screws on the bottom of the case of the PowerBook; no problem getting a Philips screwdriver size 00, as the PB manual states, but damn difficult to actually get the buggers to turn (without completely destroying the threads on them by forcing it too much).

I am currently looking at the possibility of going to an Apple certified company to have them put the RAM in (and so not void my warranty), which hopefully won't push the price over the mark I was saving by ordering extra from Crucial.

Wesley Mason - 21st December 2003 01:24 - #

Congratulations! We'll be expecting a review of the hardware and software... ;)

Quasi - 21st December 2003 02:03 - #

Congratulations. Welcome to the Mac fold.

I have to suggest all the usual apps... LaunchBar, NetNewsWire, etc. I'm thinking you'll find developing php/python/web anything apps on a Mac a joy since it's so simple to setup apache and test everything out locally.

Anyhow, look forward to hearing the woes, joys of your Mac experience!

Andy - 21st December 2003 02:04 - #

Did you buy the AppleCare package for it too? I would strongly consider taking it out, if I were to buy another Mac (which I probably will at some point) I'd definitly buy the associated AppleCare package.

I say mostly because I had to claim on it after my iBook failed just outside of the standard warrenty, and I was extremely impressed at the service I recieved. Whether the iBook should have gone wrong aside, it saved me an awfull lot of maney and hassle.

Paul Sowden - 21st December 2003 04:00 - #

I did go for AppleCare, after much deliberation. It was horribly expensive, but I'll be an impoverished student again next year and I'll be doing my finals, during which a laptop failure could be a very nasty problem. I'm also going to look in to some kind of theft insurance for it.

Simon Willison - 21st December 2003 04:08 - #

Wow! I hope you've got enough left for a ipod. :-)

So what's it to be: Transmit or RBrowser; Mail or Mailsmith? What will be on your dock? Are you sticking with the Dark Side for word-processing, etc.?

If you're looking for the hash sign, on a UK keyboard, you need to press alt+3

Michael - 21st December 2003 09:09 - #

That's exactly what I bought and I'm so happy with it. I too saved a ton of money and bought an extra 512 MB of RAM from crucial.com.

Tom Becker - 21st December 2003 09:29 - #

Simon wrote:
I saved nearly a thousand pounds ($1500+) on the cost of the same machine in the UK. Truth be told, it was the amount I would save by buying here...

Yeah, aren't U.S. prices sickeningly cheap compared with those in the U.K.? It seems like a straight $ => £ pricing often: Sharp's lovely LLT19D1 is just over £400 in the US ($700); and £520 in the UK; Canon's Digital Rebel/300D is $900 (~£520) versus over £700 here.

Unfortunately most of these companies won't ship from the U.S. to the U.K. so I can't buy online. OK, the USD prices above don't have VAT added on, but that's still not enough to equalize the difference.

Peter Bowyer - 21st December 2003 23:32 - #

Well i'm palnning to buy one PowerBook/15"/SuperDrive too, when i get my payment (hope in january =p). So i'm especting, too, a review of the overall usage of your new "toy". :)

David Elias - 21st December 2003 23:43 - #

You saved £1000? Can you buy me one? I was looking at almost exactly the machine that you eventually bought earlier in the year, but even with an educational discount, it still came out somewhere around the £2000 mark - which is rather a lot of money.

jgraham - 21st December 2003 23:56 - #

Simon,

How will you cope with the US keyboard layout? Or are you going to use a UK keyboard layout with the US keytops?

You're right about the prices, though - even second-hand Macs are too pricey in the UK...

Tim - 22nd December 2003 09:06 - #

After asking myself some of the questions you asked yourself I went for a 12" PB. The portability won in the end. As well as the price.

Arnaud - 22nd December 2003 14:13 - #

I've been surviving with US keyboards for a few months here now so I should be able to cope with one on my laptop as well. I'm considering switching to Dvorak in any case (if I can train myself up) at which point the keys printed on the keyboard should stop mattering.

Simon Willison - 22nd December 2003 15:53 - #

Congratulations. Funnily enough, after reading all of the advice on your last post I've decided to go for a 12" iBook. But that's probably because I've got a full blown Linux development box already and in this machine I'm looking for portability (and stability) above all else. Oh, and its six hundred quid cheaper than the equivalent powerbook.

Andy Todd - 22nd December 2003 19:43 - #

You should check out Path Finder - it's an alternate Finder, with tons of really useful features and built-in utilities (Terminal, PDF Viewer, Text editor with MSWord read capability [on Panther]), plus all of the major features that the Panther Finder has. I've replaced my finder with this and haven't looked back.

There's a really good review of Path Finder at OSNews: Read it here.

Barry - 23rd December 2003 03:34 - #

Congrats on the purchase, glad you saved some cash. Chiming in on killer apps, the one program I use more than anything else is LaunchBar, definitely the best application launcher I've ever used (Apple-Space to bring up the list at the upper right, then type one or a couple keys to launch your apps [has a learning algorithm])

leonard - 23rd December 2003 04:07 - #

Congrats on the new PB. I'm thinking about making the same switch myself. If you can wrap your mind around the new keystrokes, I highly recommend switching to Dvorak. Once you learn it it seems to be SO much simpler to use than QWERTY. That and looking at the face of the first person who actually tries to use your system is priceless. Most will think your system is possessed and will leave it alone. Mind you, you may want to keep a keyboard cheat-sheet with you for a month or so ... the position of some of the punctuation characters is tough to remember at first.

Nathan - 23rd December 2003 16:42 - #

You wasted your money on that machine. If you won't get a white spotted screen then you'll get that aged G4 CPU with 166 or whatever MHZ bus. The only competitive CPU from Apple is the G5.

G. I. - 24th December 2003 13:46 - #

Unfortunately, they don't make G5 laptops. I'd also say that "competitive" is also a rather vague term to use. I wasn't aware that laptop ownership was some sort of race. Moral: Get what you need (or what you want, if you can ;). Let everybody else do the same.

Nathaniel - 25th December 2003 06:06 - #