[Discussion] [MAC] Learnings to Date

[D Burch]

29 posts from  my MAC adventure March 7 to Ernie's on Mac 20.  32 Today 
alone.  This list has certainly gained some new life!
 
Hardware.
I am using a HP USB keyboard & mouse which plug into an IOGEAR DVI KVM. 
I share most of my peripherals with my work supplied HP laptop/docking 
station. The only thing on the keyboard I find a pain is the END key 
doesn't take me to the end of line. In Thunderbird it takes me to end of 
document, in most other things no action. I use the mouse because every 
other usb mouse I have tried in the HP docking station only scrolls down.

I have a 20" HP LCD monitor, but my recent work activities were forcing 
me to have many windows open  so I needed more real estate in order to 
keep the text readable. I purchased a 32" Sharp Aquos HD TV. My HP 
docking station has DVI out as does the Mac mini. The HP under W2000 
adapts well to the TV but the graphics are not that crisp. Certainly 
good and satisfies my requirement to do my work. My OS/2 eCS 2.0 RC6a 
with scitech and an Asus AH3450 AGP card didn't fare much better.
The MAC with 1 GB DDR2 667MHz RAM has an Intel GMA video controler with  
- 64MB shared system memory. Detected the monitor, full screen 1920 X 
1080 interlaced output. Fine quality, minimal jaggies on the text. I 
assume this feature is even better on the bigger MACs.
I bought the cheaper Mini - 1.83 Core 2 Duo CPU, 80 GB Hiiachi Drive. I 
had most of my OS/2 life contained inside of a 40 GB partiiton on an 80 
GB drive.

Software
There is lots right in the box. I have added Firefox, Thunderbird, 
VMWare (- runs a decent WXP emulation, I have yet to try a few others 
-DOS, W95B), NeoOffice(Openoffice). VLC for multimedia and Audacity for 
Audio tinkering, ClamXAV - an antivirus. If you want to emulate OS/2 on 
MAC you need Parallels.
I still find myself looking for the X in the upper right corner of each 
window and CNTRL Cut, Copy Paste instead of the CMD key, but that will 
come in time.


Don