Windows

Switching to Macs after 22 years!

Stefanos Karagos | May 9, 2008

In my desk, I still keep the Windows 1.01 disks. I've been working with Microsoft's OS for over 22 years.

Occasional efforts to move to Linux came to nothing, mainly because I couldn't find [since they didn't exist] applications to do my work with, compatible with those used by my colleagues.

About a year ago I moved to Windows Vista, initially with a Toshiba R400 and later with a Fujitsu Siemens T4220 [btw, it's a great notebook!].

And this is the point at which the story begins.
Yes, I am literally a gadget maniac. Yes, I do tend to search every six months for the next notebook I'm going to work with. But I never had the same desire in relation with the OS.

I have to admit that Vista was not the OS that left the best impression on my, mainly because of its performance. As far as the interface is concerned, Vista is by far the best OS Microsoft have ever produced. But, as soon as you load it with a few applications, lots of fonts and some add-ons for the already memory-hungry Firefox, the system starts to show deplorable delays, even if it is equipped with a CPU, memory, hard disks and other subsystems of the latest generation.

For the last eight years, I have been working with a notebook and I didn't want to migrate to a desktop system.

For some months, I studied the user comments about Vista and Leopard in various international forums. And, finally, some weeks ago, I made the decision to try it. I started with the impressive MacBook Air but soon gave it up, because of it's low performance. [I cannot help being a power user :-P]

As soon as the new series of MacBook Pro was released, I ordered a system with a 2,6GHz Intel Core2, 2GB RAM and a 250GB HDD.

The project "Switching to Mac" just started.

Today, after less than two weeks of everyday use, I have to admit that I am IMPRESSED.

Impressed by the speed, the functionality, the stability and, above all, the result of all these for the final user: the PRODUCTIVITY.

Yes, Macs also crash, but not with the way and frequency I was used to :-P

After having used Windows for so many years, it's reasonable that even closing the windows in OSX puzzled me, but the decision to put my new possession on test in extreme conditions of work and productivity forced me to find solutions for [almost] everything.

First of all, in order for my notebook to match my iPhone , I bought a protective case for it from Vajacases.com [yes, I am also a super-consumer ;-P]. Furthermore, I bought the Apple's Bluetooth aluminum keyboard [btw, I hope Logitech and Microsoft will soon come up with something similar…]. Then, I connected the notebook to an 24'' Samsung monitor and I started…

Office:
I'm a fan of MS Office, so I installed its Home Edition for Mac , maintaining compatibility with older files. To be honest, I also installed iWorks , in order to explore a little bit the capabilities of Keynote [Apple's application for presentations]…

MindMaping:
Being a MindMaps evangelist for the last eight years, I use the best application around: MindManager . Luckily, there is also a Mac version of it, so the change was… no change and within an hour the publisher of the application, Mindjet , gave me the new serial number, so I was able to continue my work ;-)

Notetaking:
I had been using OneNote , but some months ago I migrated to the amazing Evernote that allows you to share your notes online. Of course, there is a Mac version of it too…

eMail:
I use only Gmail [I had also bought 150GB from Google], so there was no real change in sending/receiving emails.

GTDing:
In Windows, I used GTDInbox [a GREAT Firefox add-on] for managing my emails, and MyLifeOrganized for managing tasks and projects. Now, I kept, of course, the terrific GTDInbox and for the rest I "play" with OmniFocus .

IM/Voip:
Skype was always my choice regarding VoIP and it still is in Leopard. As far as instant messaging is concerned, the all-in-one solution I found is the very good Adium [that does not support video yet].

RSS Reading:
I stopped using Google Reader because I think it's at least intolerable for use with more than 10 feeds. Since my OPML contains over 800 feeds, I use the superb, cross-platform BlogBridge , the version 6.3 of which allows even Sentiment Analysis!

Since I apply a certain system in order to get informed and not lost among hundred of feeds, I now use the innovative [still in beta] reader Times for quick updates from my most important feeds.

Twittering:
The one and only and very good Twhirl , that plays on almost every platform because of Air, is still my gate to Twitterland...

Web browser:
Having used Firefox with lots of add-ons in the last years, the transition to Mac was easier than I expected. I just installed the Password Exporter add-on, with the help of which I transferred all my passwords to the new installation of FF.

Btw, the add-ons I use in FF are the following: ColorZilla, Diigo BookMarks, DownThemAll, FasterFox, Firebug, Gmarks, Google Notebook, Greek Spelling Dictionary, GTDInbox, MeasurIt, Speed Dial, Tab Mix Plus, Text Formatting Toolbar and the very good Web Developer Toolbar.

FTP client:
My personal search concluded that ForkLift is the best FTP client for Mac. It reminds my of the once unique Norton Commander [what came into my mind now...] and perfectly combines the file explorer with the FTP client.

Torrenting:
In Windows, I used the very good UTorrent , of which there is still no version for OSX. So, after testing Transmission and Azureus , I decided for the second one without thinking around a lot [it's faster and stabler].

Web developing:
There is a Mac version of Dreamweaver , and CSSEdit is much better than almost any of its competitors in Windows. TacoHTML and BBEdit can meet many html/php editing requirements. Finally, the superb Aptana Studio is cross-platform and works everywhere, for serious projects, from Ruby and PHP to Ajax and Air...

Apache, MySQL, PHP:
I have already installed the VERY good MAMP Pro in order to forget LAMP ;-)

Graphics/Photoshoping:
There are OSX versions of Photoshop and Illustrator , so the transition was way too easy. The surprise came from Pixelmator which is very fast and reminds of "Photoshop Light", with many capabilities and, above all, a lot faster than Photoshop ;-)
I miss FiltreForge but I'm sure I will find something similar.

Skitch is great for screen-capturing and uploading to Flickr and ScreenFlow is excellent for screencasting although it still has a long way to go before reaching Camtasia ;-) [BTW the Jing Project has a Mac version too]

Video/DVD:
iMovie , that comes with MBP, is the best tool for those who want to quickly and easily create their custom videos and its preview speed has no match in Windows...
BTW, if I need more capabilities, FinalCut Express brings to Mac almost all features of Premiere.

ImTooDVDRipper is the best application for transferring your movies to iPhone, iPod and so on, while MacTheRipper is a freeware DVD extractor with many capabilities.

Nero , that I used in Windows, has now been replaced by Roxio's Toast Platinum , that leaves nothing to be desired.

As far as the media player is concerned, Miro and VLC are the best solution after the pre-installed QuickTime/iTunes.
To also play MWV and other audio/video files that I already had, I installed Flip4Mac and Perian and now everything is played by the fast MBP ;-0

Audio/DJing:
iTunes [comes pre-installed] is the king of sound in Mac, but there are also other solutions like VLC , that I already used previously.

Once a year, I organize together with friends a super party, in which I play music [8-)]. For years I have been using VirtualDJ along with the Hercules DJ console MK2. Well, I installed the Mac version of VDJ and the Hercules' drivers and everything remained the same ;-)

Utilities:
I already use some utilities for various tasks and I promise to present them to you in an other post, because I want to test them extensively.
But two of them are worth of being mentioned today - iFreeMem does very well exactly what its name suggests [it frees up memory for better performance] and AppZapper is probably the best program for fully uninstall applications in OSX.

Games:
And yet, they exist! Many of them and of different kinds. WoW runs also on Mac, but there also some other Windows flagship-games, that offer OSX versions, like Need for Speed , Quake and Collin MacRay .

Fractals/Processing:
I have created hundred of fractals in the past, but unfortunately I have found no program for Mac, equal to UltraFractal and Apophysis . Luckily, Mojoworld and Processing run perfectly in Leopard, so I can continue with some of the projects I participate in.

The migration from Windows to Leopard is already done and all I mentioned above are only a part of the process. There are positive and negative points, as in every other change we undertake.

The thing is that the journey must be interesting and unexpected, to make the course more adventurous :-)

Don't you agree?

The best processes handling for your PC. Free!

Stefanos Karagos | January 28, 2008

Pitaschio: An essential tool to use Windows, efficiently

Stefanos Karagos | January 16, 2008

Weekend picks #017

Babis Konstantinidis | October 28, 2007

Linux is definitely Getting Things Done

[1]

Getting things done fast
In theory there is nothing wrong about Getting Things Done. The only problem is that sometime the theory of GTD is just a theory and the work you have is time consuming regardless David Allen. I recently had a large number (around 500) of txt files with some URLs in them. I wanted to collect all the URLs in an Excel file. I also wanted to sort them out alphabetically and delete the duplicates. I can’t imagine how much time would take someone to open manually 500 files and copy paste the 5.000 more or less URLs in Excel. I did in less than 5 minutes. In fact the copy paste, the sorting and the removing of the duplicate URLs just took a little more than 2 or 3 seconds. The rest was just me trying to remember and searching the net for the correct syntax of two or three Linux Bash commands.

grep
grep is a Linux program for searching lines inside a text or text files.You can use it to collect lines from a txt file that match a particular pattern. All I had to do is to collect all the lines from the files that started with “http://*” (yes you can use wildcard in grep).
uniq
If you have a sorted file you can use uniq to remove the duplicate lines.
The whole script was just 5 lines. I had to use a “for” command to open the files one after the other and collect the particular lines.

[2]

Cygwin
I recently installed Kubuntu 7.10 so I did all the testing there but I could also have used my Vista installation if I had installed Cygwin
Cygwin is a Linux Like environment for Windows which gives you access to huge number of Linux tools like the ones I used. You can use it to run other Linux programs and scripts within Windows. It’s really something to open up Command Prompt and instead of “dir” to type “ls” to see the files in a directory. The current version of Cygwin runs in all versions of Windows (32 and 64bit) except Windows CE. I tested in Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit and it worked without a problem.

[3]

Exploring Flickr
I really love flickr.com. You can find my photos here. Today I came across a new web application with the name flexplore
How does it work? Well flexplore analyzes your favorites and the photos of your contacts and suggests Flickr photos that you might like. Give it a try, it really works!

Until next time... Keep on talking to your friends.

Weekend picks #014

Babis Konstantinidis | October 7, 2007

I really like searching the net. You start in one point and you never know where you will end up. :-)

[1]

Broadband Speed Test and Diagnostics
If you have problems with your connection to the Internet like I do, then you will find Broadband Speed Test and Diagnostics 1.1 a valuable tool. It is, yet another, extension for Firefox  [I can’t believe it; it seems that there is a Firefox extension for everything]. In the latest version the Broadband Speed Test and Diagnostics can perform a diagnostic check in your Network card, DHCP server, local gateway, DNS server and the web site that the browser failed to reach. It can also run and present a bandwidth performance test [download and upload]. Download it here

[2]

ActiveWords
I came across this blogpost yesterday where someone was saying “let me know and I will shoot you a copy of the WordBase to test. We have had great success with people who use David Allen’s methodology.” Well I always liked free software and testing it in my computer so I left a comment saying that I would like to test Wordbase. Few hours later I had new mail [thanks for the immediate response Buz] with the WordBase attached. Ι had already downloaded and installed Active Words They have a 5 days trial version which you could extend to 60 days trial version by simply registering. Wordbase is actually an add-on for Active Words for the users of Microsoft Office 2007.
ActiveWords is a really different and cool way to use your computer. You can assign a word as a shortcut to everything. Every time you write down this word you have an option by simply pressing F8 to launch a program, site or whatever. The clever part is that you don’t have to write that word in a special box [although you can do that also and press Enter]. You can write it in every program that permits you to insert text. You could for example write down excel in a notepad or a Word document and by simply pressing F8 to lunch Excel. [I have already add the word anb as an active one to lunch in a Firefox window what else, the www.anabubula.com. You can even use it as a Spelling Check program just like Autocorrect in Office but you can use it in every text box even in Windows Explorer when renaming a file. ActiveWords comes with 1800 common misspelled English words that you can use it to correct them automatically as you type them. If you use a tablet PC it is even easier. Just write with your pen the Active word and that’s it!
There a lot of free add-in “applications” for the ActiveWords, you can check them out here .Hey Stefanos there is one for MindManager also.

I was so excited with the ActiveWords that I didn’t “test” the WordBase at all [sorry Buzz]. I will look into it and come back later in the week with a full review.

[3]

Vista Rebooting
What’s this rebooting thing for Windows Vista? I left my computer on last night because I started downloading something only to find out in the morning that a few minutes after I went to sleep the computer downloaded an update from Microsoft and rebooted! I have to start all over again. I thought that UAC [User Access Control] was the most annoying thing about Vista but I now believe that rebooting whenever they feel like it, is by far the winner.

Until next time. Keep on... thinking different!