(Untitled)

[skellington]

So partytrick now has her MacBook...

Any software that is absoutely essential for us to download (or buy)?

We've got firefox, skype and open office currently.

What's the best IM (AIM) client?    Any other cool add-ons?  (The cat-on-keyboard detector?  :-)

Comments

[wiggyfish]

Work bought me one about a week ago ... so far I've just installed Orifice (though I don't like the Maclike UI for Office, and if I'd had to pay, I probably would have given OO.o another chance), replaced Safari with Firefox, activated XWindows, fiddled with widgets and changed some of the default Terminal settings. O also, installed Spore because my windows gaming rig lost its DVD drive; it runs pretty smoothly.

I am considering Bento Box because it looks compatible with my brain. And I ordered a tillymoss cover because nothing on apple.com made me happy. Can give updates on those, if you want.

My fanboy coworker swears that Parallels and VMWare make machines run ridiculously hot, and recommends installing a program for monitoring vital signs and controlling the fan speed. If Jamie expects to do that, I can ask about it on Monday.

It sounds a bit dopey, but one of the most productive things I've done is mess with the mouse settings -- you can enable taps and right-click, and the multitouch settings are as good as a tutorial.

[arasirsul]

I run Parallels on my laptop, and yeah, it generally puts the thing in leafblower mode, but not having the fan spin up has never been an issue. My laptop is almost two years old, though, so they may have changed things to try to keep the more recent units quieter.

One thing about Bento...

[zeekar]

...is that it's not scriptable (whereas FMPro is highly scriptable and probably a plurality of all AppleScript code is written for it). Not sure if you care, but just FYI.

[arasirsul]

1) Flip4Mac. Sadly, we're still in a Microsoft world, so this will let you play wmv.
2) SmartSleep. The default is for the machine to completely hibernate when you close the lid. Good for battery usage, not so good for just shutting it to walk across the room. You can choose the sleep setup with SmartSleep.
3) iStat Pro. She may not care that much about what's going on under the hood, though.

I like Delicious Library, but I may never get around to scanning all my media into it. I use Handbrake to turn DVDs into h264 files to take with me on the road.

Aside from Firefox, I use a lot of the built-in stuff. I actually like iTunes as an media widget, mail.app finally got me to quit using mutt...

Lessee...

[zeekar]

Adium X for chat clients. Beats iChat all to heck

Oh, yeah . . .

[zeekar]

You really want to go into System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts and enable Full Keyboard Access for all controls. Otherwise you can only tab among text and list boxes. Yuckbo.

[anonymous]

Keynote is reasonable if she does presentations - comes in "iWork".

Omnigraffle is very good indeed if she needs to create diagrams.