Evolution of a workstation

[bcholmes]

So when I got my Mac Mini last year, I knew it was a bit of an experiment. I generally suspected that I wasn't going to use it 100% of the time. Initially, I liked toying with it. And after I loaded Firefox and Thunderbird on it, I could accomplish all the casual use stuff on the Mac.

But there were a bunch of things I felt sure that I was going to keep returning to the Windoze box for. I mean, we use Windoze at work, so it seemed likely that the things that I do at work, I'll want to do at home as well. In particular, I suspected that I'd want to use the Windoze box for at least:

• Java development
• Printing and scanning
• Graphics manipulation
• Word processing / Presentations

But, one by one, I've crossed many of those things off the list. I've put Eclipse on the machine, letting me work on Java code without having to learn a new IDE (XCode). I've abandoned Paint Shop Pro in favour of The GIMP. I've hooked a printer to the Mac. My camera cable is directly tied into the Mac. Pretty much all I use the Windoze box for is scanning and (rarely) Microsoft Office documents for work (I have OpenOffice on the Mac, and I consciously chose to not buy Microsoft Office for the Mac). I'm not really a video-game playing person, so that wasn't a factor for me.

Two things haven't been entirely fruitful.

1. I haven't really found a newsreader that I like enough to get back on alt.poly; and
2. My ICQ/AIM client, Gaim, doesn't have a Mac distribution, so I haven't really been chatting (I wonder if the name change to Pidgin will affect that).

Today, I moved the USB splitter cable that connects a USB port on the Windows box to the multiple ports on my monitor. And I realized just how infrequently I use the Windoze box (when Ian was visiting, he failed his saving throw versus new technology and started up the PC to check email; his defence was that he lived in Seattle).

All in all, I think I'm a convert.

Comments

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

If I want to I can ssh into my FreeBSD and use trn. I *really* like trn. Even so, alt.poly is three or four infinite time sinks down the list.