Monday, March 1, 2010...8:30 am
End of my netbook nightmare
Yes, I finally cracked and bought this. My Samsung N140 has been cast aside in favour of the sleek, white sexiness of the new Apple MacBook. And don’t forget usability. Oh yes.
As many readers will know, I am not all that fond of my Samsung N140 netbook. Now I don’t have to use it as my main computer, which probably means I’ll start liking it more for certain limited things (keeping up with email on holiday, say, which is a bit sad).
In comparison, how has the MacBook been? A delight, frankly. Easy to set up, easy to use, nice to look at and, crucially, with a magnetic clip-on power adaptor, which means I won’t ever have to take this one apart, please god.
Unsurprisingly, the one heart-stopping glitch happened when I tried to install Windows XP using Apple’s BootCamp thing, so I can use my MacBook as a Windows laptop (something I have to do occasionally when I work on some badly written content management systems).
The CD stuck in the drive and suddenly I faced the notorious Apple “White Screen of Death™”. Luckily a quick call to Teja somewhere in Mumbai sorted it out (just zap the PRAM – hold down the Command, Alt and “p” and “r” keys while you boot up, then let the machine chime three times before you let go. Worked like a dream).
It’s like sinking into a nice warm, comfortable bath. The big question is whether coming home to Mac will help me boost posting frequency on Freelance Unbound…
6 Comments
March 1st, 2010 at 12:54 pm
And in other “Top Tips for When the CD/DVD Won’t Come Out of the Macbook….”
Simply lift up keyboard to 45 degrees, then eject. Works every time.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Useful – though not when the Mac isn’t responding to any keyboard command at all…
March 1st, 2010 at 3:25 pm
All those shiny new computers are incredibly powerful monsters. You could actually use some of the Laptops computing power if you wouldn’t install Windows as a seperate operating system, but install it within a virtual machine (e.g. with Sun’s VirtualBox). That would at least save you the occasional reboot and instantly boost your productivity.
Hey, that was an appleism, so it must be true? 😉
March 1st, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Ah-ha! You are so right Lukas. I’m actually using Parallels Desktop, which does exactly that and works really well. Very fast, very efficient…
February 7th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Hi. If you still glance with intense dislike at your Netbook, I’d love to give it a space in my place 😀
Too bad I’m in South Africa though…
February 9th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Hey Luke
Unfortunately my Netbook is long gone – sold on Amazon to a lucky new owner! Otherwise you could have had it with pleasure…
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