Wednesday, February 17, 2010
iMac and netbook sync'd for academic work
There's been a lot of talk in my cohort about technologies for academia, so I thought I'd post up my experiences. At the beginning of the semester, my iBook was dying. I could splurge on another iBook, which didn't hold much appeal because it was pretty heavy and expensive. I had just purchased a powerful home machine, a large-screen iMac, so had no desire to buy another one. Instead, I was interested in a smaller and cheaper netbook that could be used independently of the mac, and was full-featured but light. My requirements were:
1. A light netbook I can take with me. Operating system was not important, but I wanted a large screen, bluetooth, battery life, and keyboard.
2. Nothing of consequence will be stored on the netbook.
3. Must be able to run office and do in-text citations (linked between netbook and iMac)
4. All files, notes, and references from the laptop should be seamlessly shared with the iMac
The netbook I chose was the Aspire One with a 11.6" screen, because it was cheap ($329) and had bluetooth (can't deal with trackpads), a nice big screen, moderate battery life (a "6-cell" that lasts around 7 hours), and a full-sized keyboard. At about 2 1/2 pounds, it's still half the weight of an iBook and about a third the price.
Initially I installed Ubuntu on it, which ended up being a mistake. The video card wasn't supported, meaning anything graphical was sluggish. Videos were unplayable. I couldn't get Zotero (a references program based in Firefox) to sync with Open Office. Ubuntu has no reliable software for marking up (highlighting) PDFs. The Evernote client was buggy, both the web-based version and the Windows version run through Wine. Audio would drop out every 5-10 minutes when watching a movie.
I slogged through for a semester before breaking down and installing Windows XP. It ended up being a good move, because everything runs just fine. The video card runs accelerated, which makes the 11.6" screen usable. I'm not thrilled about running Windows, but Ubuntu was getting torturous. All class notes and bits of information are dumped into Evernote, and all other class files are sync'd with Dropbox. So my netbook can get run over by a truck (or dropped in a storm drain) and I've lost no data. All Dropbox data are backed up with Time Machine on the iMac side. For software, I'm running:
1. A light netbook I can take with me. Operating system was not important, but I wanted a large screen, bluetooth, battery life, and keyboard.
2. Nothing of consequence will be stored on the netbook.
3. Must be able to run office and do in-text citations (linked between netbook and iMac)
4. All files, notes, and references from the laptop should be seamlessly shared with the iMac
The netbook I chose was the Aspire One with a 11.6" screen, because it was cheap ($329) and had bluetooth (can't deal with trackpads), a nice big screen, moderate battery life (a "6-cell" that lasts around 7 hours), and a full-sized keyboard. At about 2 1/2 pounds, it's still half the weight of an iBook and about a third the price.
Initially I installed Ubuntu on it, which ended up being a mistake. The video card wasn't supported, meaning anything graphical was sluggish. Videos were unplayable. I couldn't get Zotero (a references program based in Firefox) to sync with Open Office. Ubuntu has no reliable software for marking up (highlighting) PDFs. The Evernote client was buggy, both the web-based version and the Windows version run through Wine. Audio would drop out every 5-10 minutes when watching a movie.
I slogged through for a semester before breaking down and installing Windows XP. It ended up being a good move, because everything runs just fine. The video card runs accelerated, which makes the 11.6" screen usable. I'm not thrilled about running Windows, but Ubuntu was getting torturous. All class notes and bits of information are dumped into Evernote, and all other class files are sync'd with Dropbox. So my netbook can get run over by a truck (or dropped in a storm drain) and I've lost no data. All Dropbox data are backed up with Time Machine on the iMac side. For software, I'm running:
- Openoffice
- Zotero (for citations)
- Firefox (for Zotero)
- Evernote (for note-taking and organization)
- Dropbox (for sync'ing class PDFs and anything not in Zotero)
- Dia (for diagrams and wireframes)
- VLC (for videos)
