Yep, I just bought this keyboard for $242.10, shipped.

Now let me explain. My RSI/carpal-tunnel symptoms have been getting worse and worse so I’ve been looking for some ergonomic keyboards to help fix it. There is quite a selection of them but I wanted one with mechanical switches leaving only a few (expensive) choices. Among them was the the Kinesis Advantage, one of the highest-regarded ergonomic keyboards. The huge price tag had put me off initially but then I thought about it for a bit. Here’s the rationale I came up with to convince myself into buying it:

• I’m probably going to be making a living typing on a keyboard, might as well make it a nice one and not ruin my hands.
• I’m hoping this will help with the RSI/carpal-tunnel problems. Better get a ergonomic keyboard than have to go to doctor to treat them, right?
• It’ll make me type faster and be more productive (hopefully).
• It’ll look super cool!
• $242.10 is still not that expensive for a keyboard is it? I feel like keyboards are often the most neglected piece of computer hardware and most people buy the cheapest one they can find. As a person who uses the computer for the majority of the day, the keyboard is one of the most important pieces of a system. It’s how you interact with your computer, how you control it (yeah, yeah, there’s the mouse too). It should be on par with the other components of your system.
• IT’S 19.3% OFF!

That last one was what really convinced me to buy it. Can’t mess with the percentages man.

I will probably put up a review when I get it. I’m excited; I love getting stuff in the mail.

Just recently I came across another keyboard layout called Colemak. I’ve actually known about it since I discovered Dvorak but didn’t really look into it but I was trying not to fall asleep today in my EUR201 class and decided to do some research on Colemak. The change in Colemak isn’t nearly as drastic as Dvorak. Many of the keys are in the same place as QWERTY and I think only around 17 key positions moved. Plus, the Ctrl ZXCV shortcut keys are all in the same place unlike Dvorak, where I have to use to take my hand off the mouse to use them. There also isn’t the L and S pinky problem like in Dvorak. I’m thinking about trying out Colemak during the next break from school to see how it is. Hopefully it’ll get rid of the right hand pain but I guess I’ll just stick with Dvorak for now.

Oh and I set my Caps Lock key to Backspace and replaced the Context Menu key with Caps Lock. Seeing how I don’t really use Caps Lock and never use the Context Menu key, I thought it would be nice to have the Backspace at a better location on the keyboard.

I already had my desktop keyboard switched to dvorak. I wanted to seriously learn it this time so I even converted my Macbook’s keys to dvorak. Wasn’t too hard. Just popped them off with a tiny screw driver and put them back in the correct order. Now people who want to use my computer won’t be able to because all the keys are in the wrong places. Awesome!

I’ve been playing typeracer everyday since I’ve switched over to speed up my typing. Right now I’m typing at around 40 wpm (vs 80wpm when I was using qwerty) which isn’t too bad considering I’ve only been using dvorak for four days. But I feel like a noob cause I have to keep looking at the keys. The most annoying thing about dvorak is that all the shortcut keys are now on the other side of the keyboard. Ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-s, ctrl-z are all on the right side. Also I keep typing “ass” when I want to type “all” because the ‘s’ is now where the ‘l’ used to be. Kind of annoying

That’s all for now. Off to play some more typeracer. I’ll revisit this when my typing speed reaches 100+ wpm.

AFTER

Dual 24” LCDs FTW.

Installing Leopard

First I popped the installation disk in and it automatically booted from cd drive. I don’t really remember all the steps but it was really easy. I got stuck on one part with the formatting options. I was used to the NTFS and FAT stuff that windows uses. The Mac installer has like a bunch of different options that I had no idea about. There was Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Extended(Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive), and Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive Journaled).

Found the answer after some googling. Mac OS Extended is HFS+. A Journaled partition does some magic to make it more fault-tolerant or something like that. Case-sensitive makes file and folder names well, case-sensitive (“filename.txt” != “fileName.txt”). And Case-sensitive, Journaled is a combo of both.

I picked the default one, Mac OS Extended Journaled and continued with the install. Installation finished in about 30 minutes or so. I was surprised that there wasn’t any serial number thing or activation. But then again, Apple doesn’t really make money from software stuff. Then came the super cool welcome screen.

Set up my account info. After that, I put in the applications disc and installed all that crap (Garageband, iPhoto, iMovie).

BOOT CAMP BITCHES

And then came Boot Camp. Ran the Boot Camp Assistant and partitioned the drives for about half OSX, half Win7. But oh noooo I have no DVDs for Windows 7! I spent an hour trying to figure out how to install Windows 7 to the Boot Camp partition using a USB drive or something. No dice. I just went to sleep and waited till tomorrow to get some blank DVDs at the bookstore.

I went to the bookstore the next day and bought a 2 pack of blank DVDs. IT WAS FREAKING 5 BUCKS FOR TWO DVD-R DISCS. Shit. So expensive. Stony Brook sure knows how to rip students off.

Windows 7?

Burned the win7.iso to the dvd and installed it through Boot Camp. Win7 install was an easy process, as usual. But when it finished installing and booted to Win7, the cd wouldn’t eject! I kept pressing the stupid eject button on the keyboard over and over again and that crap wouldn’t eject. So I had to restart, boot into Mac OS X, eject the cd from there, put in the Mac install disc and boot back into Win7. Mad annoying. And the Boot Camp driver auto-install thing wouldn’t work at first so I had to find the right install file in the CD.

Zombie Killing Fun

After the driver stuff finished, I immediately installed Steam and L4D to see if that crap worked. I didn’t get the MacBook for gaming but I was wondering how the 9400m would hold up. The L4D installation took FOREVER. It would keep disconnecting and reconnecting. Stupid Stonybrook resnet bullshit. They need to get it fixed. After about an hour or two or three.

L4D finally finished installing. Ran it, played a little single player. Works perfect. Well, I had to dial down the graphics a little to medium but it does work. Sweet. Another L4D gaming machine.

Next next post

This is getting kinda long and boring so I think I’ll split it into multiple posts. Next time:

• Parallels & VMWare
• Why doesnt OS X allow me to customize multitouch gestures
• I don’t like this keyboard
• Glossy screen is a fingerprint + glare magnet
• Spaces + Expose + Quicksilver + Screen Corners = <3
• This trackpad isn’t that great
• and more sheet.

My mom wanted my old Fujitsu tablet so she offered to get me another laptop for it. I took it. I’ve been wanting to try out Mac OS X and get into iPhone development. So I ended up ordering a MacBook ‘cause those things are only available on Macs, well at least legally.

Its Refurbished

I got a refurbished MacBook. 2.4GHz, 2GB, 250GB. Yeah, it’s used but most of the MacBooks that are refurbished were probably returned for minor cosmetic defects. Those returned Macs go through Apples refurbishing process where the computer is fixed up and tested. Anything that’s wrong with it gets replaced so it’s almost like getting a brand new computer. Plus it was $250 dollars cheaper than with the education discount and $300 cheaper than a new one. Too bad there isn’t an education discount on refurbished Macs. That would kick ass.

The Package

I got the package yesterday and was super excited to open it. I’ve opened up a MacBook package before and I’ve gotta say, the refurbished one is much less epic. It comes in a larger, uglier, white box and just lacks the niceness of a new MacBook package. Inside is a long box with only the words “Apple Certified” written on it that contains the discs, papers, power brick, and cables.

Under the box is the actual MacBook wrapped in plastic and encased in foam inserts to protect it from shipment damage. The computer looks brand new despite it being refurbished and all. There aren’t any scratches or defects to be found, looks and feels really study. I booted it up and tested that it was working okay.

Then turned it off.

What?

Here’s where the Newegg package comes in. I took the $250 I saved and bought a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of ram with $100 left over. Take those parts, stick that in my refurbished Mac and I end up with a MacBook that is cheaper and better than a brand new one. Replacing the parts took a measly 5-10 minutes.

Installing the Hard Drive

Opening the latch allowed me to remove part of the back cover and gave me access to the battery and hard drive. The picture on the left is actually the laptop after I finished installing everything cause I forgot to take a picture beforehand. I removed the battery by pulling the tab attached to it. The hard drive is held by a retaining bar with a screw. Unscrewed that, removed the hard drive, and transferred the four Torx T6 screws and plastic tab over to the new hard drive. If you’ve never heard of Torx T6 screws, its okay, neither have I. Luckily I had this little screw driver kit on me that had a screw bit that fit (that’s a lot of “it”s).

Installing the Ram

Now for the RAM. This part was a little more annoying, lots of little screws to deal with. There were 8 of them. After removing them, the whole back panel comes off, exposing the internal components of the MacBook. Fancy. The two 1GB sticks are located right above where the battery should be and are held in by retention clips. The sticks are easily removed. I replaced them with the two 2GB sticks that I got from Newegg.

Screw the back plate back on, put the hard drive, battery, and cover back on and it’s done.

Next Post

This is getting kinda long and boring so I think I’ll split it into multiple posts. Next time:

• WTF is “Mac OS Extended Journaled”?
• BOOT CAMP BITCHES
• WTF 2 DVD-Rs for $5!?
• Why is my spacebar obnoxiously loud?
• Parallels & VMware
• OS X isn’t thaaat great
• I wonder if this can run L4D
• and more sheet.

4gb worth of laptop ram and 500gb laptop hard drive. I didn’t know laptop hard drives were that small.

Now where’s the laptop?

HOLY SHIT. 24 SSD DRIVES IN RAID. 2GB/S.

I give up.

Install

The install was pretty basic.

1. Download and burn the ISO
2. Get the beta key
3. Re-partition hard drive so I can dual boot
4. Restart with Windows 7 disc in drive and boot from CD
5. Wait
6. Install to empty partition
7. Follow install steps
8. Wait
9. Set up Windows 7
10. Windows 7!

I had to install a few drivers for my motherboard but then everything else was ok. After that I followed my usual new computer installation routine. Download and Install Opera, Digsby, Notepad++, Mozilla Thunderbird.

I’ve been playing around with it a couple hours now and I’ve compiled a list of stuff that I like and don’t like about Windows 7.

New Features I Like

1. Improved Performance

This is probably one of the main things I like about Windows 7. Everything is faster: boot times, improved multi-core performance. It also feels smoother too.

2. Start menu search

The Start Menu is pretty much the same as the one in Vista with a few improvements. When you search for something in the search bar it expands to fill up the whole Start Menu allowing you to see the results better. I wish did this with the Programs too.

3. Taskbar tray

Windows 7 allows more control over tray icons, which I like. You can now set Behaviors for them.

4. Notifications

I hated notifications in XP and Vista. Windows 7 allows you to control which notifications to show.

5. UAC control

UAC! The thing a lot of people hated about Vista, including me. That stupid popup that made your screen go dim and asked for you permission to do the dumbest things can now be controlled using a slider in User Account Control settings.

6. Windows Explorer

It looks so much cleaner and more organized! I hated how the tree directory in Vista’s explorer worked. It was so cramped up and small. The new explorer is so much better. The directory is more spaced out and they also added a “Libraries” section to link to all your documents, music, pictures, and videos.

7. Microphone!

Sometimes I record videos of my friends and I playing L4D. Most of the time we use microphones. But in Vista, whenever I recorded a video, I couldn’t record my own voice. It sucked cause when I replayed the video, my friends sounded like they were talking to themselves. Windows 7 adds a feature to the microphone options that allows me to “Listen to the microphone”. Although I’ll be hearing myself speak through the headphones, I can now get my voice in the videos.

8. Windows Peek

When you hover over a taskbar icon, it shows previews of all the windows associated with that icon. When you hover over those previews it makes all other windows transparent, highlighting the selected window. Then you can click on the preview select the window.

Edit: 8. The New Taskbar.

I like that you can pin shortcuts to the taskbar. I hate having icons on my desktop. I usually just press the windows button then type the name to run a program. But now I can pin my most frequently used programs to the taskbar, which is nice.

Now that I’ve sort of gotten use to the taskbar, its not that bad. One thing I would like is to have is a little text label next to the icons. Not like Vista and XP, where it shows the window title, but a shorter one that just shows the program name.

I think a lot of the task bar is wasted. The middle part, for instance, is almost always empty. I tested it out, and I would need to open about 26 different programs to fill it. If I was using small icons, I would need 35 different programs to fill it. That’s A LOT of programs. Maybe if they split the taskbar tray and the start menu/program icons it would be better. The start menu/program icons section would expand as more programs are open.

Features I Don’t Like

1. The New Taskbar The Look of the New Taskbar

It looks so ugly. The boxes around the icons make it look really weird. If it was only the icons and not the boxes, it would look better. Changing it to small icons makes it look marginally better. I think the new Windows Peek, which allows you to preview windows before opening them, is cool but I don’t like these new icons things. Good thing they allow you to change it to the old one in the taskbar properties.

Edit: See #8 of Features I Do Like.

2. Window Gestures

When you drag windows to different sides on the screen in the Windows 7, each side performs a different function. To the left, makes the window dock and expand to half the screen. To the right does the same thing. To the top, maximizes the window. And when you shake the window, all other windows minimize. While it may be helpful for some, it messes me up when I want to move windows. Sometimes I find myself minimizing all other windows when I’m moving a window and its really annoying.

Edit: I just installed Windows 7 on my laptop, which has a significantly smaller screen than my desktop (13.3” vs 24”). I can see the use for this now. On my 24” monitor, there is usually a lot of space for me to have many windows open at once. I like to have all my windows not-maximized so I multi-task and such. Not so much on my laptop. It seems a lot more useful on smaller screens than larger screens. If they added more “sizes”, like half-height half-width, then it would be better. The maximize gesture is kind of useless for me because I double click to title bar to maximize. It seems much easier.

3. Preview desktop button.

There’s a button that makes all the windows transparent when you hover over it. But once you move away from it, they all reappear. I don’t see how this is useful.

3. Internet Explorer 8

…Internet Explorer, you suck. Opera is my browser of choice even though its been crashing a lot on me in Vista. Hopefully, it wont do that in Windows 7.

4. It still takes like 20 clicks to find out your local IP

Sometimes I need to find out my local IP cause I need to do stuff on the network. It was easy in XP, just right click and properties. In Vista was horrible. It took like 20 million clicks just to find it and now its the same with Windows 7. The Network and Sharing Center is useful sometimes but I don’t like clicking that much just to find the IP. So now I just use cmd ipconfig.

Other Features

1. Improved MSPaint

Man, I was so pro at paint back in Windows 98 days. They added a bunch of brushes and other tools. They also improved the User Interface, which is nice. But its still pretty useless. My image editor of choice is Photoshop.

2. Gadgets

Gadgets… they are so useless. The weather one is okay though cause I don’t have to check weather.com when I want to know how cold it is outside. Vista had a sidebar where all the Gadgets were docked. The sidebar is gone in Windows 7 and now gadgets can be placed anywhere.

3. New calculator

I use the calculator all the time to do random calculations cause I don’t like doing them in head. I like the new calculator. They improved the calculator by adding more modes. They have this new “Programmer Mode” which I guess is supposed to help programmers. It has all the binary, hex stuff and also Xor, And, Not stuff. There is also unit conversions, date conversions, and lots of other stuff. I probably wont use it that much but its still cool.

3. Improved Device and Printer management.

There is now a page to see all devices attached to your computer. From there you can right click the device and set options and stuff. Its pretty nice.

More Changes!

These are just a few of the changes in Windows 7. Nearly every part of the Windows user interface as been tweaked and updated. Check out this site I found for a list of more changes in windows 7: http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/windows_7.asp. And a couple of more videos about Windows 7: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-videos.aspx

Features I Wish They Would Put In

1. Mouse gestures!

Opera spoiled me with their mouse gestures. I find myself using mouse gestures in other programs and asking myself why it doesn’t work. Then I realize its not Opera. I use Windows Explorer a lot and sometime I accidently try to use a mouse gesture and it doesn’t work. I wish they included them. Mouse Gestures are so awesome. Right-click, down right.

2. Better built-in unzip, unrar program.

I hate the built-in one cause you have to go through all these steps just to unzip a file. With 7zip, you can just right click and unzip it. The built in one also does not support a lot of other archive formats like .rar or .iso.

I can’t really think of any now. I’ll come up with more later.

Closing

Despite Microsoft’s complete fail trying to launch the beta, Windows 7 is looking to be a pretty awesome operating system. Even though its still in beta, it already seems better than Vista and XP. Hopefully, they wont mess up the final launch of Windows 7.

Edit: I’m going to add another Windows 7 post in a couple of days. This one will be about using it on my laptop. Things like the tablet functions, biometrics, power management, wireless and other things will be covered.