Re: Emptying Trash

In article <paul.sture.nospam-90F543.04165611032007@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Paul Sture <paul.sture.nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article
<NOwebmasterSPAM-39BA09.11290211032007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Eric Lindsay <NOwebmasterSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

When I first decided to buy a PowerBook while on holiday, the first
thing I checked at the store was whether Terminal worked, and whether
there seemed a reasonable range of traditional Unix utilities available.
However I was buying a Mac because I was totally pissed off with Windows
(and had been for a fair while), not because I was impressed by Apple
(well, except for the appearance).

I had *very* similar feelings about Windows when I decided to get a
laptop. My regret now is that I didn't go for a PowerBook, but I wanted
to limit my financial exposure if the Mac turned out to be something I
didn't want to pursue.

I certainly didn't like the price of the PowerBook relative to the
iBook. I couldn't have taken any of the other models back home. However
the PowerBook did have features the iBook lacked. It seems to me the
difference between the Macbook and the Macbook pro is not as pronounced
as the PowerBook vs iBook. However in picking the PowerBook, I also
considered that if I were going to trial a Macintosh at all, then a
reasonable trial would be to use the best available model. Another
factor was that at that time the difference between a PowerBook in
Australia, and a PowerBook in the USA (where I bought) was such that if
I didn't like the PowerBook, I could probably have sold it in Australia
at about the price I paid for it. That lowered the risk.

I had looked at Linux again, and yet again didn't think it was really
ready for the desktop.

I'd had a reasonably good run with Linux on the desktop, but ISTR that
laptop support then was a bit dicy at the time. I'd already gone through
the process of replacing video cards and NICs just to get Linux working
on a couple of desktops, and you can't do that with a laptop.

My partner moved to Linux about a year after I went to Macintosh. It
took about another year before Ubuntu really supported everything she
wanted on her Dell laptop. She refused to accept Linux as workable if
she had to compile a program to get it to work. I was sometime asked to
interpret some of the documentation or instructions, but she installed
everything herself. Ubuntu now passes, on certain models of laptop.
However when she is ready to buy a replacement laptop, we will have to
check everything again to ensure drivers are available. I still don't
feel I could really suggest to an end user that they use Linux on a
laptop, unless I happened to know that the model was completely
supported. If there were a shop that offered an install service, I think
you could now suggest Linux as an alternative to Windows. Ubuntu
installs very clean on many laptops. Personally, I prefer to pay more
and let Apple's engineers do the work.

My big problem moving to OS X was that I simply didn't find it
"intuitive". A simple reference card showing some common keyboard
shortcuts would have helped greatly.

Indeed. That would have really been good. At the time I started using
Panther, the Help system was ... fragile. My Help viewer was essentially
unusable while I was travelling for 10 weeks, and most of the time we
didn't have internet access. A few hints would have really helped.

--
http://www.ericlindsay.com
.

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