Saw the iBook now I am sad :(

Sorry for not replying right away. Had some bad weather up here in Boston and I didn't get back until 11. Well, then after that I was installing apps on my new IBOOK 12 IN, YEA BABY. Ok so I opted for the 12 in because they had a "refreshed" unit which they use to take the negative image off of refurbished. Anyways, I paid 900, which was cheaper than my student discount, with tax it was like 945. Then on the way home I stopped at Best Buy cause I figured I am at least gonna put an extra 256 of ram in it. So I got some Kingston ram, 512, after rebates for 64 dollars. Great deal. So for about 1010.00 dollars I got a 12 in iBook with 768 mb of ram. Not to bad. Iwould have paid around 1400 or more for the 14 inch and you know students dont have money. So far I am loving this thing. Thanks to all of you who made me feel better about this and encouraged me to buy it. I just can't say enough about it.
So I put Adium X, Office 2004, Camino, Quicksilver, and I think thats it for now. I am having a problem with entourage accepting my hotmail password. Any ideas? Don't know what else to put on this, suggestions guys?
Also, seems to me that the way mac installs software is it is downloaded in a form of a disk image right? It kind of loads as another drive and when you finish installing it then you drag it to the trash and the trash turns it into an eject symbol which unmounts that image? And is there an easier way to unmount it instead of dragging it over like a key command? Do I always have to drag the app into the apps folder? Because if I don't have it open then I have to use quicksilver search for apps folder open it then drag it in. Any easier way? Can you guys let me know how you have yours set up in that is the easiest in you opinion? Also doesn't quicksilver have a type of dock? I just have an icon in the dock at the bottom. Sorry for all the questions. here are some pics.




IMG]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y38/amartins02/101_0208.jpg[/IMG]

You dont always have to drag the app to the applications folder. Its just an ideal palce to store all your applicatios. You can drag it out of the disk image and store the application on ur desktop if you wanted. (i dont see why you would want that). And yes, the only way to delete something is dragging it to the trash. When i switched i found that quite annoying. Makes it even more annoying with 2 delete buttons.. lol. And quicksilver doesnt have a dock. Its just a icon in teh dock that launches a program (after two clicks) in which you can search for programs. Or atleast thats all i know...

There are 3 ways I can think of to eject a disk image not counting dragging to the trash:
1) You can eject an image from finder, by default it shows all mounted images.
2) Right click on the mounted image and choose eject
3) Click on the mounted image and use <CMD>e

EDIT:
For deleting things <cmd><delete> works the same as dragging to the trash.

With the default install of QS it can be launched either using <ctrl><Space> or tapping <ctrl>. Then you just start typing in what you are looking for.

A couple of suggetions for QS. First check the catalog and see what and where it is looking for things, I like to narrow the default scope. Next look for plug-ins you want. I have added the iTines, iPhoto, Address Book, and Adium modules for instance. Finally check out triggers. I have quite a few <ctrl><cmd><key> triggers. I use <ctrl><cmd>c to launch camino, <ctrl><cmd>a for adium, <ctrl><cmd><space>to open just my music lirary in QS, <ctrl><cmd>x to empty trash (via applescript), etc....

So what exactly do the plugins do if you already have them in your dock?

Plug-ins have nothing to do with the dock. What plug-ins allow you to do is interact with an application from QS. EDIT: I actually have QS hidden from the Dock and the menubar. I start it on load and always have it running so there is no point to me to have it on the Dock.

Take iTunes as an example. With the iTunes plug-in installed and the index built, tap ctrl to bring up QS. Type "bro" (sans quotes) and you will see a series of ways to browse your iTunes Library. Select "Browse Artists" using the up and down arrows then hit the right arrow and you are presented with a list of artists. Choose an artist then right arrow again. Choose an album, hit enter, and the album will start playing. If you sort by playlists you could open QS, start typing in the name of the Playlist, then hit enter once it comes up to play that list.

Similar things can be done with iPhoto, Address book, email, etc... Another quick example would be to select iPhoto, browse to a picture, hit tab, type "sen" for send to, hit tab again, type "Mic" to pull up my contact info from the address book, then hit enter and the selected photo would be sent to me without having to do anything else.

Those are examples of using plugins. For simple use similar to what you would use the Dock for just tap <ctrl> to bring up QS. Then type the beginning of the name of the app or document you want, enter to launch, <ctrl><shift>r to open the folder it is in, <tab> for other options. I rarely use the dock anymore, mostly it is either QS or Finder as appropriate.

The more you use QS the more you learn about how to use it and the more useful it becomes.

EDIT2: Another way to eject. Open QS, start typing in the name of the volume, <tab>, "e" (for eject), enter. Clicking then <Alt>e seems easier but it is another option.

Everytime I start my iBook the date on ical is july 17 and only when I open it and close it does it change to todays date. Any idea why?

one of the coolest features of windows not present in Mac OS is the way the graphics for stuff like notepad are preloaded. 0 lag, just pops up straight away. even the 1 second wait for textedit is annoying sometimes

amartins02 said:

Everytime I start my iBook the date on ical is july 17 and only when I open it and close it does it change to todays date. Any idea why?

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That's just the way it is right out of the box. There is no way to change it that I know of either.

-Chris

i have the ibook and am happy with it but....

I do agree that my initial hesitation to get the ibook was based on the fact it is slower than what i am used to when using a p4 based machine. The initial sluggishness I felt was caused by the ram which i then upgraded to a total of 768mb, and guess what? not much of a difference at all. but now that i primarily use my mac as my personal computer, i have gotten used to it and the lag time is really only a few seconds. however, i do find the perks of using a mac outweigh the slight sluggishness of the ibook. Interesting tidbit though, i have used a powerbook 12 inch with stock 256 mb ram and it did seem to be a bit faster than my loaded ibook. food for thought but trust me, get a mac, BE DIFFERENT.

Computer.Geek said:

Interesting tidbit though, i have used a powerbook 12 inch with stock 256 mb ram and it did seem to be a bit faster than my loaded ibook. food for thought but trust me, get a mac, BE DIFFERENT.

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PowerBooks have a faster bus speed. iBooks are a 133 bus and PowerBooks are a 167 bus, also PBs have slightly faster procs. Therefore, a stock PB will be somewhat faster than a loaded iBook.

If it was a demo in the store who knows what some people do to them. I was in the local Apple store and a woman picked up an ipod photo and froze is some how, i have no idea how, then she walked past an ibook and it kernal Panicted. Talk about bad luck with technology.

amartins02 said:

Everytime I start my iBook the date on ical is july 17 and only when I open it and close it does it change to todays date. Any idea why?

Click to expand...

I think that is the date the laptop was assembled or the program was installed. To change the date to have the current date up, just set iCalendar to startup when your OS starts up. Basically make it a start-up program and everytime your computer turns on, it will say the correct date and leave it running in the background, no big deal!