Biting that bullet [computers]

[rebeccmeister]

I think this post is just mostly going to be rationalization for the acquisition of yet another computer. It has been just under 1.5 years since I purchased this Ubuntu-machine. This spring, my work cheerfully informed me that I was due for a work computer upgrade; the new computer arrived and yesterday someone from the IT Department came over to assist with file migration.

Well, dear reader, for some reason, the "new and improved" Fruit machine has a 250 Gb hard drive, whereas its predecessor had a 1 Tb drive.

In some regards, this is fine, as it's encouraging me to consolidate all of my lecture videos. I don't really need regular access to them, so I'm moving them over to a backup hard drive.

In other regards, having to deal with computer-hopping is really irritating; I now have to spend a bunch of time updating all of the software I use and migrating bookmarks and whatnot.

In the background, I've been trying to think ahead to some sort of overall computer configuration that will serve me well for the next 5-10 years. I think I may have mentioned that I have some preliminary plans to spend next summer and fall out on the West Coast. I certainly won't be taking my work desktop with me for that. Over the past 1.5 years with the Ubuntu-machine, I'm finding there are multiple aspects of the ergonomics of the machine that are inconvenient and terrible for me. I have a renewed appreciation for Fruit touchpads, for example. Toggling back and forth between an Ubuntu machine and a Fruit machine is very confusing when it comes to muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts. There are some twitchy aspects to window management that I also don't like on the Ubuntu machine. The power cord and adapter are also annoying, and from looking around, manufacturers of PCs seem to think this is totally fine. While I have no great love for the Fruit company's dongle obsession, I do appreciate that they did put some thought into these ergonomic elements of the computer use experience.

Also, thankfully, the Fruit company did listen to the voices of reason a couple of years ago and restored the function row and escape keys.

From the Ubuntu-machine, I will say I've really appreciated some of the software switches it has encouraged; part of my reluctance to give up Amber was the Mud Brick suite (purchased just before they went Subscription Service), but with the platform switch I've begrudgingly learned to use Inkscape and Gimp, alternate PDF editing software, and alternate photo-organizing software.

I'm still going to wind up having to purchase Fruit Company's main competitor's office software suite; it's the default document format for so much academic work.

The final element is: If I do all of this NOW, this is a good time to deal with computer reconfiguration en masse.

So I guess here goes nuthin'.

Comments

[mellowtigger]

LibreOffice can save workplace documents in those other formats. I used it at home to create files for use at work. I never encountered any trouble with the basic kinds of things that I did. Once you get into macro-enabled things, though, then it's a good idea to stick with the licensed application. I've never found Gimp easy to use, unfortunately. It works fine for the simplest stuff that I need, basic cut-paste or resizing. I wish Linux had something minimalist like the old original Microsoft Paint.