new laptop
Sep. 6th, 2009 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationOkay, so I think the netbook experiment is over. I do like my Aspire One, but I tried to do some basic MIDI stuff on ubuntu and it was, well, not exactly successful. (Even with the ubuntu studio distribtion installed.) MIDI and audio on linux, frankly, suck. I read an article a month or so ago about somebody who cheerfully ditched their Mac and audio software for linux and at this point, I don't believe them.
Note please that I am not asking for suggestions, help with linux and audio, or anything like that. Audio is complex, yes, but it's basic enough that it should Just Work. No fucking around with drivers, "audio servers," or even having to care about whether you're running OSS, Alsa, or whatever on the back-end, and no having to deal with Jack (which requires a daemon, which apparently doesn't start on boot and which doesn't necessarily work with various audio back-ends)-- it should JUST WORK. At this point I don't care enough to use half-assed open-source copies of software I know I like on the Mac just for the sake of it being open-source. The linux audio community need to get their act together, pick a standard, and standardize on it.
So, since the whole point of the netbook originally was that my old Powerbook G4's battery doesn't work, making it mostly a nice way to read email in bed, I decided I'd replace it and my netbook at the same time with a MacBook Pro. Yesterday FedEx brought me a very nice 13" MacBook Pro (Mid 2009), the aluminum unibody version. 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, semi-cheesy shared-memory video, a shiny LED-backlit screen, and 2 gig of RAM and a 160GB hard drive which I immediately ripped out and replaced with 4 gig of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. (Holy crap, a 500GB laptop disk? For $120? Without trying to shop around much? Dang.)
It copied the files and stuff from my old PBG4 overnight (140 GB of crap takes a while to transfer) and this morning I've been messing with it and installing software and so on. After a couple of hours of using it, chiclet keyboard and all, I'm enjoying it. It came with MacOS X 10.6 ("Search for the Snow Leopard") which seems fairly zippy and all. One thing I noticed that I don't remember from older versions of OS X is that you can now resize partitions on the fly. Whoo.
I'm going to mess around with Boot Camp and VMware (educational discount!) and see if I can't have a nice portable way to play, mostly, old Bioware games (Planescape: Torment is the first target, and maybe I'll set up Baldur's Gate I and II and Icewind Dale I and II for the heck of it. and I have Fallout 1 and 2 from GOG and the native Mac versions too) and maybe indie games and stuff. I think the video on here isn't quite good enough to play massive 3d FPSses and so on, but you never know.
Anyway, I will now probably be selling my netbook and its accessories, the 7-hour battery and case and so on. Anyone in the market for a well-maintained upgraded Acer Aspire One? Or an old but decent Powerbook G4?
Note please that I am not asking for suggestions, help with linux and audio, or anything like that. Audio is complex, yes, but it's basic enough that it should Just Work. No fucking around with drivers, "audio servers," or even having to care about whether you're running OSS, Alsa, or whatever on the back-end, and no having to deal with Jack (which requires a daemon, which apparently doesn't start on boot and which doesn't necessarily work with various audio back-ends)-- it should JUST WORK. At this point I don't care enough to use half-assed open-source copies of software I know I like on the Mac just for the sake of it being open-source. The linux audio community need to get their act together, pick a standard, and standardize on it.
So, since the whole point of the netbook originally was that my old Powerbook G4's battery doesn't work, making it mostly a nice way to read email in bed, I decided I'd replace it and my netbook at the same time with a MacBook Pro. Yesterday FedEx brought me a very nice 13" MacBook Pro (Mid 2009), the aluminum unibody version. 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, semi-cheesy shared-memory video, a shiny LED-backlit screen, and 2 gig of RAM and a 160GB hard drive which I immediately ripped out and replaced with 4 gig of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. (Holy crap, a 500GB laptop disk? For $120? Without trying to shop around much? Dang.)
It copied the files and stuff from my old PBG4 overnight (140 GB of crap takes a while to transfer) and this morning I've been messing with it and installing software and so on. After a couple of hours of using it, chiclet keyboard and all, I'm enjoying it. It came with MacOS X 10.6 ("Search for the Snow Leopard") which seems fairly zippy and all. One thing I noticed that I don't remember from older versions of OS X is that you can now resize partitions on the fly. Whoo.
I'm going to mess around with Boot Camp and VMware (educational discount!) and see if I can't have a nice portable way to play, mostly, old Bioware games (Planescape: Torment is the first target, and maybe I'll set up Baldur's Gate I and II and Icewind Dale I and II for the heck of it. and I have Fallout 1 and 2 from GOG and the native Mac versions too) and maybe indie games and stuff. I think the video on here isn't quite good enough to play massive 3d FPSses and so on, but you never know.
Anyway, I will now probably be selling my netbook and its accessories, the 7-hour battery and case and so on. Anyone in the market for a well-maintained upgraded Acer Aspire One? Or an old but decent Powerbook G4?