Mac = ordered

[hm_murdock]

I'm running 512 on my iMac, and I've noticed a slight decrease in speed. It gets a little slower when I start Dashboard the first time in a session.

[WMD]

It shipped in today, but it's at my dad's office.  He has to bring it home later tonight.

[WMD]

It's here!!

I'd never guess it was refurb - it looks perfect.  It was supposed to come with 10.4, but they just gave me an install DVD for it and put 10.3 on the hard drive.  I'm installing 10.4 now.

For some reason 10.3 wouldn't connect to my ad-hoc wireless network.  Hope 10.4 does. :o

Other than that everything is awesome, I'm so happy!

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Uhh ... I bought my notebook about 2 years ago and it's better than yours ahahahaha !

But it cost 3x as much ... I don't care.

[Deek]

Uhh ... I bought my notebook about 2 years ago and it's better than yours ahahahaha !

They are vaguely compareable.

[WMD]

For some reason 10.3 wouldn't connect to my ad-hoc wireless network.  Hope 10.4 does. :o

Turned out I was putting my WEP key in wrong.  Everything works fine.

10.4 with 512MB RAM seems to be working okay.  Things seem pretty fast.  I am trying to keep the number of open Dashboard widgets to a minimum though - they use like 8-9MB each, all the time!

They gave me trials of MS Office 2004 and iWork, both of which work and seem kinda nice.  Except, the Office trial puts watermarks on all your pages... :rolleyes:

[WMD]

http://dognoodle99.cjb.net/images/screenshot.jpg (kinda slow)

yay

[Dark_Me]

Just grab open office. Voila! No more watermark. As an added bonus it's free.
But you should know this anyway.

[WMD]

Uhh ... I bought my notebook about 2 years ago and it's better than yours ahahahaha !

But it cost 3x as much ...

Talk about killing your own argument :p

@ Dark_Me: Yes I know about OpenOffice, but it's rather lackluster on OS X.  I might just look up product keys for iWork or (gasp) MS Office.  Heck, MS Office for Mac seems rather good, considering.  Now, when NeoOffice/J gets updated to 2.0, that's another story.

[hm_murdock]

MS Office for Mac is good. I've been very happy with MS software for Mac, ever since Office 01 on OS 9. Office X was kinda lackluster when it came out, but it got a patch that made it verrah nice. I still use Office 2001 in Classic, though. It's just that nice.

The problem with OpenOffice.org on OS X is that it runs in X11, which really kills any feeling of integration.

[WMD]

Yeah.  Funny that MS's best developers program for the OTHER platform.

BTW...I had a similar problem with Windows Media Player installation as you, Jimmy.  It didn't sit  for ten minutes on "scanning," but it did take much longer than it needed to.

Some other observations:
1.  The screen is very bright, with a good viewing angle.  I rarely need to run at 100% brightness.  Much improved over my friend's iBook G4.
2.  It's fast, despite how "obsolete" the G4 is.
3.  Dashboard widgets leak memory.  A lot. :o EDIT: Just checked after waking from sleep from last night: they seemed to release a few megs.  Either that or I restarted them all and forgot.  Which I doubt.
4.  System-wide spell checking \o/
5.  Two finger scrolling kicks ass.

[worker201]

I use a program called Mariner Write for all my word processing.  It is lite, fast, and full-featured.  Costs about $60, and is totally OSX.  They have a spreadsheet too, but I don't use spreadsheets often enough to bother.

I like Abiword on Linux, and apparently they have a non-X11 port for OSX.  Never used it, but for free, it might be worth a try.  Let's not forget that a full version of MSOffice costs $400.  That demo will eventually expire.

[WMD]

Let's not forget that a full version of MSOffice costs $400. That demo will eventually expire.

"Hello, piracy?  It's free and only slightly dangerous." - worker201

:p

Having said that, I probably won't pirate MS Office.  I forgot about AbiWord for a minute there - I've tried the Mac port, and it's pretty good except when you delete text, you get artifacts left from it.

[worker201]

http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=12

Are you working on that next great novel or authoring a must-read technical document? There is a good chance your word processor of choice, the tool that is supposed to be helping you, is hindering your efficiency by being either too feature anemic or overwhelmingly bloated.

Try the perfect middle...Mariner Write.

The products are very high quality, the price is more than reasonable, and the company treats its customers well.  Considering how extraordinarily kickass this word processor is, $50 is not a lot of money.

[cymon]

Big deal, it's worth it.

MS Office for mac is one thing I deleted immediately. The fucking "trial almost up" popups irritated the hell out of me.