Me And My Macbook

Today I’m recording another episode of the EduKast podcast (in Dutch). So it is time to think about how I feel about the Macbook after one and a half week.
I have to say, after that first day I hadn’t thought I would actually start liking working on it. Not using the Mighty Mouse that came with the Macbook btw because even with the two button mode enabled it often doesn’t detect the right click when I want it to. But a regular two button mouse works good enough.

I had a Twitter conversation with Fred Zelders, a long time Mac user, about my experiences so far andhe suggested installing XP or Vista alongside Mac OSX. I haven’t tried Parallels or Fusion yet though. I understand that they might require a bit more memory than the 1GB I’ve got installed and given the fact that is still isn’t my Macbook, spending money on either of them (and on a Vista license) hasn’t been at the top of my priority list.

Keeping a log of my experiences using the Macbook has costed some extra time but I’m sure it will help my colleagues to get to know the Macbook quicker once they have a go at it. I’m not sure if I can keep up the steady stream of posts, but if not, at least I’ve got the archive so far.
I’m a bit worried about the domain name thouh. I had registered it before realising that Apple doesn’t always play nice with sites that have a URL which includes one of their trademarks. So maybe I get a mail from one of their lawyers one day soon. We’ll see. Just be on the safe side I made absolutely sure that no infringement of any trademark is intended by including that information in the footer.

Until now I haven’t posted any links to the blog on either my personal blog or sites like Technorati. Maybe now the amount of posts is big enough to start doing that.

Probably not essential to most people, but when you’re sharing your Macbook or like me expect to be using it only for a while, it is useful to create a second user. That second user will have all the same applications available, but will have its own settings, user-names etc.
Because I didn’t  do that right away, I had to redo some of the settings that I did for the first account. But now it is less a problem when I have to hand in the Macbook again. Without my password they can’t log-in using my user and my settings and stored user-names etc. are safe.

To create a new account goto System Preferences > Accounts
You’ll probably first have to unlock the Accounts screen by clicking on the lock in the lower left corner.
After that click on the + about the lock to add a new user.

I gave my user administrator rights so that I could still do everything that I wanted.
If you’re going to share your folders with XP users, you also need an user account which determines the username and password that XP users need to answer to get access. It is best to not use an administrator account for that purpose.

Just like XP you have a number of options for user accounts. You can for example determine which account is used to automatically log-on when the Macbook is started. The account names can be displayed next to the clock in the upper right corner of the screen enabling easy switching between users while staying logged in.

No, I’m not going to give up now. I’m going to find out how this thing works and how I can make it do what I want it to do. And I’m going to learn how to set it up so that I feel comfortable using it. I’m going to learn how to make screenshots, screencasts, how to read my mail, how to check RSS-feeds, share files with my other laptop, use my printer etc.

This has now become a mission!

Today marks the day that we met: me and my Macbook. Technically it isn’t mine. The department that I work for bought one to enable us to support users that use our VLE on Mac OS X.

But I really liked the chance to finally find out what all those Apple users were always talking about. After using Windows since the first 1.0 version on my first PC that my dad bought for me when I was 15 years old, I would now be able to actually use a Macbook for a while.

It felt like a first date, a lot of expectations, a bit nervous about whether I would know how to act.

I created this blog to post my thought about using a Macbook and to have a place to store tips, screencasts, links etc. related to the Macbook. I decided to not do that as part of my regular blog, which is in Dutch and mainly discusses PC and Windows related stuff as far as hands on experience goes.

I don’t know how long I’ll be posting here. Like I said, the Macbook isn’t mine and I’ll probably will have to return it in a while so that someone else can use it for a while and get to know it. But until then I’ll try to tell you about our journey on a daily basis.