Pointers or tips for Mac purchase?

[Bear Bibeault]

Gregg Bolinger wrote:Just drink the kool-aid and all your problems will cease to exist.

Quoted for truth.

[Bear Bibeault]

Bill Gorder wrote:It is probably just stuff I am hanging onto from my Windows 95/98 days

Let it go. Hanging onto Windows notions will be the source of much needless unhappiness.

And before you ask: no, you don't need a defrag utility.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Bear Bibeault wrote:The bits left behind are mostly properties and settings which are wisely not stored with the application.

I've been delighted in the past to re-install an app I thought I didn't need, to find that all my settings and preferences are still there.

I've been both delighted and annoyed by this. Specifically when I deleted it because my settings/preference were the problem.

[Bill Gorder]

Points taken I will try to change my evil ways

Have some cows for all the useful tips!

[Bill Gorder]

The 30 day update...

Verdict: Hands down the best laptop I have ever owned. I would recommend to everyone. After only 30 days the mac keyboard shortcuts are basically muscle memory. Its very quick and responsive. I have the use of linux like utilities and shell, and the only time this thing gets at all warm is when I am watching videos. I have not run any applications requiring the discrete video. Battery life is also excellent.

[Bear Bibeault]

Would we steer you wrong?

[Pat Farrell]

Bill Gorder wrote: I have the use of linux like utilities and shell

I agree, having a real bash shell is critical for my performance. I can't live with pseudo-shells.

[Bill Gorder]

OK I am still happy as can be with my Mac.

Thought I would post a few other gems that are pretty useful.

This one is pretty cool the free version works just fine, it just nags you now and then
http://kapeli.com/dash

And this one is a game changer for me. The below, Homebrew, and Sublime are definitely my top 3 must haves at this point:
https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

I updated the stock zsh shell with homebrew as well. There are some very useful plugins in the plugins directory
https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/tree/master/plugins

Probably the most useful of them all is autojump (which should be installed via homebrew first)
https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump

basically I can do things like type j doc and it cds to Documents I can also type jo doc and it opens documents in finder. Very useful.

The osx plugin is nice as well. For example, If I have a finder window open and some files selected from the command line I can do cp $(pfs) . and it will copy all the selected files into current directory. There are tons of other nifty things as well.