On Slashdot today there was an article from Computer World entitled 10 Things We Hate About Laptops. As I was reading it, I couldn’t believe some of the things being said. I’ve used laptops for a while, though I’ve never had to support them for other people. However, I found much of what was said to either be fallacious or misleading. > more <

For what it’s worth, here’s a picture of Ubuntu Linux running under VMWare Fusion on my new Macbook Pro. You can’t really see the lighted keyboard very well because the backlight is white.

Linux on Mac

Obviously this makes it very easy when developing software since I can test it on any necessary operating system. An advantage of using VMWare for the virtual machine is that VMWare provides several dozen “pre-built” images that I can download and install, giving me access to components I wouldn’t normally be able to have.

Plus, I can now play games in Windows without having a separate machine and I don’t have to mess with Fink or DarwinPorts to have Linux programs running under OS X.

I just treated myself to an early Xmas present. I bought a new Macbook Pro earlier this week and it’s great.

The laptop it replaces was a Sony Vaio, which is roughly five years old. The hard drive was starting to die (lots of clicking noises) and the CD drive was effectively dead. Oh, and the PC Card slots were also toasted. Linux ran reasonably well on it so that’s why I’ve kept it for so long. > more <

It continues to amaze me that people aren’t willing to try new things. Whether it’s food, books, movies, or software, people stick with the tried and true. My wife’s friend refuses to try any ethnic food besides Mexican and Chinese; we’ve offered to take her to Greek, Thai, Indian, Japanese, etc. but she’s afraid she won’t like it so she doesn’t want to go.

However, the biggest gripe I have is when it comes to computers. I understand that people are “brought up” using Windows (home, work, school, et al.) so they are comfortable with it. It just kills me when people bitch about Macs, saying that they suck yet they’ve never used one; if they have, it’s been for five minutes at an Apple store. > more <