Picked up my iBook after the class. Futzed around with it. I am having many irritating issues with it already. OS X is irritatingly slow, and I know everyone keeps exhorting me to buy more memory, but it bothers me that I have a machine which has 50% more processor speed and memory than my previous one, and it feels significantly slower. Also as a completely separate issue, the wireless card gets ultra-flaky reception in my office. So I figure, well, OS X is a memory- and processor-sucking hog, I'll install linux.
lincoln3 has helped out a lot, but it's really tricky. X is finicky, and suspend and resume do funky things to the video card, but maybe this kernel recompile going on now will fix things. I don't know... But if I can just get a damn working, portable machine with a reasonable battery life that supports fvwm, xemacs, and xdvi, I will be happy. Trying to work on the desktop machine in my office is just impossible psychologically. Sadly my office has turned into one of those places that destroys my sense of productivity, a place of distracting noises and sights. I associate it with novel-reading and useless web-browsing and idle chatter with officemates and passersby -- all fine things, but they are not work. Laptops are wonderful things in allowing me to find places where I feel comfortable working and work there.
