Life with the Mac, so far...
OK, we've had the Mac now for exactly a week and since my wife drives into the office I have been using it for my day to day work and I'm still impressed with how well it runs and multitasks. I've made myself an account on the machine so I can install the tools I need, customize the desktop, setup a virtual machine to run Domino 8.5 in, etc. and not affect her OS experience. I'm still having to fight with the keyboard (doesn't have the 10 key keypad) and the Control, Option/alt, fn and Command keys. For those readers that may have just moved to a Mac and can't figure out some of the keys I've come up with this little chart for use in Lotus Notes (running in a terminal window):
| Windows Key | Mac Key |
| Ctrl-Shift | Control-Option-Shift |
| Home | fn-left arrow |
| End | fn-right arrow |
| F9 | Can't seem to get any of the F keys to function in Lotus Notes |
| ctrl-c | Control-c |
| ctrl-x | Control-x |
| ctrl-break | ??? Someone??? |
| shift-end | fn-shift-right arrow |
| shift-home | fn-shift-left arrow |
I have found some pretty cool tools that I've installed and find useful that work the way they are advertised to work:
- Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2 - This lets you connect to a PC running terminal services
- GeekTool - Put text and images on your desktop that refreshes how-ever often you tell it to
- Open Office - The OpenOffice productivity suite
- And of course Firefox - The Firefox browser
After using the huge 24" screen on the Mac it's hard to go back to my 17" dual monitor setup. My monitors are getting old and just aren't as bright and clear as the Mac, not to mention I like all the realestate of the 24" monitor. Working on the Mac, I really want one for myself now... 
Comments
Date: 04/10/2009 12:00:30 PM
Name: Ed Maloney
Website: http://
Did you try Grab in the Applications\Utilities folder? You can also use Apple-Shift-4. These are not as nice as Snagit, but they're free and work well for basic screen capture.
Date: 04/10/2009 03:15:27 PM
Name: mdmadph
Website: http://mdm-adph.blogspot.com
Just get X11 from here first: { Link }
Then install GIMP just fine. :D
And 24in monitors are now cheap! I frequently see deals as low as $220 on the web here and there.
Date: 04/12/2009 08:00:34 PM
Name: Mike Brown
Website: http://www.browniesblog.com
Command-. (that's the Command/Apple key and the period/full stop key) is the Mac Notes equivalent of Ctrl-Break on the PC.
Cheers,
- Mike
Date: 04/13/2009 08:28:36 AM
Name: Keith Strickland
Website: http://www.keithstric.com
@1 - Yeah, while it does take a basic screenshot it doesn't really give you the functionality of SnagIt. But I did find Skitch { Link } over the weekend and it does have quite a few features very similar to SnagIt and it's Open Source
@2 & @3 - Thank you