For political reasons mostly boiling down to craven materialism, I have to carry a Windows laptop on certain client jobs to avoid angering the thin-skinned Redmondites, and never mind the fact that I have sixty-eleven MS licenses for software on my Macbook Pro, or that my employer’s products make MS’s better, or any of that; it’s sort of weird, but there it is.
Anyway, so, this means the firm was willing to buy me a Windows laptop, and since there’s no way I’ll travel without my Mac, it needed to be small. So I got a refurbed Dell Latitude E4200, which is smaller than you’d think was reasonable for a “real” laptop (i.e., not an underpowered netbook). It’s also almost unfeasibly light (about 2 pounds), even with its Lilliputian power adapter factored in. (Also, geek bonus: 128GB solid-state drive.) (Before you ask: Yes, Vista Business. Why I don’t have a netbook for this political officer is a whole ‘nother thing, but it basically boils down to needing a build of Windows blessed for IIS, and MS won’t let netbooks run anything but XP Home, which lacks that ability by design.)
So I get a new toy, which is nice, but it also means I have a Windows machine that is “mine” for the first time in a long, long time, which is weird. I also get to play with some other new tech to keep me from being in perpetual “it’s on the other machine” hell.
First is Evernote, a contender for “brain bucket” software I’ve been aware of for a while. I first played with it about a year ago, but its Mac client was a joke, and the iPhone’s wasn’t much better. In the intervening year I’ve experimented with other contenders, including Yojimbo, DevonThink, and Voodoo Pad, but nothing really stuck. (Yojimbo came closest, but it hasn’t been updated for a year, and Bare Bones are openly hostile to user requests for status, or updates, or new capabilities; I ran into this with BBEdit years ago, which is one reason I use TextMate now.)
But now, with the need to be multiplatform, I gave Evernote another look, and they’ve come a LONG way. Sure, it costs $5 a month (instead of $40 or whatever for a one-time Yojimbo license), but that includes the ability to search, edit, and create notes in a single database from any of four platforms (Windows, Mac, iPhone, and the Web). Totally made of Win, if you ask me. Even if you don’t have cross-platform needs, the ability to keep your “digital notebook” in sync across home and work PCs could be killer; it jumps in appeal again if you have an iPhone. Check it out.
The other thing is Dropbox, which allows me to keep a folder or folders in sync across multiple machines. The Dell is likely to be my “work machine” only when politics dictate it, but having my current work files always available on either platform, or even via the web, is pretty killer.
(On the project in question, we’re also using Windows Live Mesh, which is sort of a (currently) Windows-only multiuser collaborative file sync tool. It’s very slick and cool for what we’re using it for, so folks with a single-platform need for these kinds of things should probably check that out, too.)
And a final note: As I get this Dell up and running in a way I find acceptable, with all my various and sundry apps and files in place, I notice something I’d forgotten about the Windows ecosystem: Would someone please tell me why every fucking Windows app developer feels the need to drop one or more shortcuts on the goddamn desktop when their program gets installed? Seriously, guys, what the fuck? I’ve been jumping through the download-install-delete-shortcut hoop over and over today, and it’s pretty frakkin’ annoying. It’s obviously the idea of some idiot consultard/marketing drone, perhaps the same one who told Windows software firms that they could be cavalier about changing things like default search engines, and that drone should be tarred, feathered, and sold to gypsies just as soon as we figure out who’s behind those auto warranty robocalls.
Get on it, Heathen Nation. I’m counting on you.
Ha ha ha, welcome to the nightmare that is the life of the Windows user, Macboy. I had to buy our current PC under duress (i.e. the pending extinction of the previous computer) and thus had to get Vista right after it came out. Then I found myself welcomed to a land called Unabletoplayyourvideogamesia. Yep, games that played just fine on XP with half the resources wouldn’t even run on Vista until I got a new video card. Even Diablo II (which still may be my favorite game ever–I still play it). I bought a few actual new games over Christmas–I usually wait until games hit the half-off table–and noticed that the system requirements for Vista tend to be twice that of XP, which, as Windows flavors go, is pretty decent. I can now play my games, but Vista is still an offense unto God.
Hmmm, maybe you’re not a Mac-boy but are instead a Linux addict. I tried.
Well, the good news is that I only have to interact with it when the Redmondites are looking. And I don’t do much gaming at all on PCs anymore mostly because I can get the good shit for the XBox 360, at least until they get around to releasing another episode of Half-Life.
No, for desktop or laptop use, I’m firmly in the OS X camp. It’s far superior in user experience and consistency and stability than any form of Windows I’ve ever seen. For servers, it’s all about Linux, but the Linux desktop experience is still absurdly bad for normal humans. The Mac gives you Unixy stability with the ability to (e.g.) install MS Office.
There’s actually one other point of good news: the Dell is just absurdly small. Like, stack to copies of National Geographic together, and you’re almost there. I’ve carried day planners that were more of a pain in the ass than this. It’s really a fantastic amount of computing power in a very small package; it’s just kind of annoying that I have to run Vista on it. However, I’m not 100% convinced it would be materially better than Vista (ie, in terms of my experience using it) with Linux, and OS X isn’t (officially) an option. (The great Apple stability is at least partly due to them controlling both the hardware and the software, so running OS X on non-Apple hardware means you’re forgoing a big part of the equation.)
Ah, but can you play World of Warcraft on it, and would you need a magnifying glass to do so?
I probably could, but I can’t imagine why I would, considering that I’ll have the Mac with me pretty much all the time, too.
Also, the sound on the Dell sucks.
Please don’t tell Sally all this. She so wants to go the Mac route. But I do play games on my PC, so a Mac is really not an option. I had some adventures with Linux back in 97 or so. Good times.
Well, it’s more of an option than you’d think. Macs run on (very nice) Intel hardware now, so you can dual-boot to play games if you want, which is a much better idea than saddling the house with Windows only just to play Diablo III. Dual booting is actually an officially supported OS X feature (Apple calls it “Boot Camp”).
Also, keep in mind two other points:
VMWare, the go-to vendor (with competitor Parallels) for OS X virtualization software, has made huge strides in supporting DirectX in their tool, which means for some older games you wouldn’t even need to reboot; you could just run the game in the VMWare virtual machine. This is trivial and easy.
The other point is that some game firms — Blizzard is the biggest, but there are others — actually release Windows and Mac games at the same time. Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, and World of Warcraft all came out for Windows and Mac at the same time.
So don’t dismiss the Mac out of hand just because you want to play some games. If you’re talking about building a superfancy highly immersive game rig, well, maybe you gotta get a Dell or something, but for casual gameplay you really needn’t make the choice.
(Also, have you considered a console?)