Exercise in Amusement

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Sep 30, 2007, Leon Goldstein wrote:
>Bill Campbell wrote:
>>
>>I used a ThinkPad 600 from Aug 1999 until early in 2007 when I got a
>>Titanium Powerbook.  I ran all current versions of Caldera OpenLinux on the
>>TP600, switching to SuSE 8.x Professional in 2002 or so, updating SuSE Pro
>>through 9.2.  Later versions required more RAM (with kde) than was
>>available.  SuSE 10.0 ran, but didn't recognize CardBus cards due to
>>interrupt problems.
>>
>I haven't used a laptop since the crappy Conner HD on my Zenith 286 went 
>south.  I've looked at laptops on and off, and slowly came to the 
>conclusion that an IBM ThinkPad would probably be the best bet for me.

My ideal laptop would have the ThinkPad keyboard and eraser
mouse, running OS X.

>I recently acquired a used titanium G4 Powerbook (640 MB @ 400 mHz).  
>The previous owner used to own a Mac store until Apple squeezed out the 
>independents.  He obligingly loaded WordPerfect 3.5e on it for me.  It 
>has OS X 10.4.  I was originally going to install a PPC Linux, but for 
>the moment I'm having fun using it as is.  My biggest annoyance is the 
>mouse, which lacks a scroll wheel, and the yo-yo shaped wall wart just 
>looks weird.  Other than that, the titanium cased Powerbook is what a 
>laptop should be. 

FWIW, Apple hasn't totally squeezed out the indepents, at least
not here in the Northwest.  ``The Mac Store'' (nee The Computer
Store), http://www.macstore.com has its headquarters near
Portland Oregon, with Oregon stores in Portland, Beaverton,
Salem, Corvallis, and Eugene, and Washington stores in Seattle
and Redmond.  At least, the one in Seattle is a fully authorized
Apple service center.  I am not affiliated with them in any way,
but tend to go there rather than Apple's stores as they offer
products other than Apple's.

It took me a while to get to the point I can use the touchpad on
the Powerbook without cussing, and feel reasonably comfortable
with it.  I much prefer the ThinkPad keyboard/mouse.  Say what
you will about IBM, they do know how to design a keyboard (the
original IBM PC notwithstanding :-).

As for external mice, I'm using the Microsoft wireless laptop
mouse with the Powerbook.  I would really prefer something like
the Logitech 3-button mice without scroll wheel (I use the middle
mouse button a lot, and clicking scroll wheels isn't quite the
same).  This Microsoft and their Natural keyboards are the only
products from Redmond that I will willingly pay for.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics
won't take an interest in you. -- Pericles