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Just Switched!!! Questions about mice, screen real estate and Sprint PCS

quidire

quidire

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 11, 2004
349
0
Washington DC (in Kalorama Triangle)
after talking about it on this forum for about 4-5 months, my girlfriend and I put in an order last night.

We bought a 12" PB (1.25GB RAM (courtesy of OWC) 80GB HD) and an iPod mini.

We waited until after the iBook update to see how that would go. The graphics subsystem... well it was just too substandard to go with the iB.

I can't tell you how good it feels to know that in a week or so, I can sell my Dell clunker.

I do have a few questions for you all:
a) I'm looking for a BT mouse. I've read all the threads, and so here are the caveats:
I do not want the MX900, nor any MS mouse. The mouse must be able to be turned off. It must have two buttons and a scroll wheel (GF's preference).
I know the MacMice mouse is out. I'm frightened of them after reading about the owner's business practices in the past. Please help.

b) what applications would you recommend to maximize the utlity of (and minimize the frustration from) the fairly small 1024x768 desktop?

c) Where can I find information about using my Mac with Sprint? I have a non BT phone right now, plan to purchase the LG PM 325 as soon as someone else uses it to get onto the Internet w/ a Mac w/o paying per-minute fees.

Thanks so much for all the advice I've already received from all of you. Next stop: 2.5 G5 w/ 23" LCD, hopefully by the time Tiger comes out!

-RS
 
Can't really help you with a or c, but one suggestion for dealing with the small screen is to put your dock on the side. I have a Tibook that's just a bit wider than your screen, but the same height, and I often have an extra horizontal inch or two, but rarely any extra on the vertical. Also, in MS Word, I stretch out my toolbar in the vertical direction, instead of horizontal at the top. And, of course Expose does wonders!

Enjoy!
 
a) MS makes good mice, dunno why not them?
b) Exposé will really help here (F9, F10, F11). Also InDesign and Illustrator have Cmd+0 which will fit the document to the window. You'll probably want to minimize a lot too - or not, I prefer hiding apps instead of minimizing since hat takes up dock space.
c)Dunno, try Sprint tech support.
 
7on, I don't want a MS mouse for several reasons, but the largest is just pure personal preference; I'd prefer any other company over them. I dislike the fact that I am buying MS office S/T ed. I'd rather not. WRT Sprint, they don't officially support macs, so I cannot do that.

-RS
 
This company (http://www.rpiwireless.com/) has data cables for Sprint phones. I'm planning to get one for my Sanyo PM-8200. Supposedly, it will let you use the wireless connection with a computer. I'm not sure how Sprint will charge, though, but I'm assuming that it would just be regular minutes.

I think you'll find that Exposé is helpful, but CodeTek has a virtual desktop product that might help you manage things more usefully. I tend to have a lot of things overlapping at 1024x768 but just manage with the Dock and Command-Tab.
 
bousozoku said:
This company (http://www.rpiwireless.com/) has data cables for Sprint phones. I'm planning to get one for my Sanyo PM-8200. Supposedly, it will let you use the wireless connection with a computer. I'm not sure how Sprint will charge, though, but I'm assuming that it would just be regular minutes.
Click to expand...

thanks for the link; I wonder if I should just wait for the LG or whether I should just pick one up....

bousozoku said:
I think you'll find that Exposé is helpful, but CodeTek has a virtual desktop product that might help you manage things more usefully. I tend to have a lot of things overlapping at 1024x768 but just manage with the Dock and Command-Tab.
Click to expand...

Virtual desktops are great! Desktop Manager (http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/) was what I was going to use for that sort of purpose...

-RS
 
I don't really like having the dock hidden, but I have found that the more you get used to the icons and where you've placed them in the dock, the smaller and smaller you can shrink the dock and still work it efficiently. I keep mine on the bottom, not the side, but it barely takes up any vertical space at all.

Using the app switcher and using expose will help you tremendously.
 
The best advice for coping with 1024x768 is to have the "Show all windows" Exposé command activated by hot corners, whenever I flick my cursor to the lower-left corner of the display, all the windows tile out in pure Expose brilliance. Once you learn to rely on this feature, you can have as many full-screen sized layers of windows as you like, you don't have to worry about keeping a corner showing, etc...

paul
 
...

I just got a BT mouse, it is from radtech (www.radtech.us), model BT-500.

Has on-off switch and is about 1/2 size of standard mouse with 3 buttons and a scroll wheel. Works very well! It paired up immediately with my PB and it's 800dpi, very smooth. You will love this mouse.

crazy n
 
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