Can you live just with a laptop computer?

I CAN live with just a laptop but really enjoy sitting down at home and using my desktop. With multiple monitors already set up and ready for lots of multi-tasking it has proven to be invaluable. On the other hand the laptop (MacBook Pro 2.33) is indispensable on the road although I have never really liked using the track pad and the keyboard is acceptable at best.

I have not tried syncing between the two but that is one of the next projects. For now my antiquated (G-4 400 Sawtooth) chugs along just fine at home and is getting an upgrade next week to keep up somewhat with the lightning fast MacBook. Most of the time that the MacBook goes on the road with me I tote along a BT Mighty Mouse and BT Keyboard for comfortable functionality.

Bottom line for me, I can't see being without either of them. I have considered the Bookendz but they seem pretty spendy. Getting rid of either of my computers would leave me feeling disabled and with fewer big boy toys to play with. I call them toys but they are also essential tools for a productive life and have helped me many times!

I think the real question is, how can you live with a computer that is stuck to one place? The last desktop (well, mini-tower) I bought was my PowerMac 8600. Ever since then I've done software development, video & audio editing, web development, games, and general office type-stuff laptops. I can't imagine not being able to bring my PowerBook or MacBook Pro with me anywhere I want.

Current model towers have always been more powerful than current model laptops, but current model laptops can outpace previous generation towers, so a new laptop may not be a step back at all.

Ultimately, though, you should get what works for you.

Walls, Bryan K. (MSFC-IS30) wrote:
> Note that you can in fact us a MacBook Pro with two monitors for
> about an extra $150 - $200, using a Matrox DualHead2Go box.
> <http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/support/mac/home.php>
> There are analog and digital versions. They even have a triple-head
> version.
>
> It's a bit odd, in that the Mac thinks it's just one wide screen. So
> you need two monitors that are the same size and resolution, and you
> have less ability to adjust positions and such than with "Arrange" in
> the Displays prefs. Also, the menu bar runs all the way across the
> two displays.
>
> I tested one briefly, and it seemed like it would be very usable.
>
> Using the Digital version on a MacBook Pro, you can run two 1920x1200
> devices. A MacBook is limited to two 1024x768 displays.

Getting back to architects we looked at this option so the laptops could be 15" versions and thus more portable but connected to dual 20" or larger displays in the office as the G5s and MPros are now. But the 2 displays appearing as one has a HUGE drawback in the CAD / graphics world. All CAD programs I've seen, plus most graphics ones like Photoshop, InDesign, etc..., will zoom a window to the full size of what it thinks the display is. Which basically puts the center of your work area with a huge monitor gap down the middle. Dual displays allow you to keep most "other" things on one display and your workspace on the other without a lot of manual screen re-sizing. In CAD many folks can fill 1/2 of a 20" display with tool bars and such.

Something to consider.

David Ross

On Sep 19, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Hudson Barton wrote:

>> I've been telling folks for a long time that I want a screen in the
>> 8" to 10" range. When I need bigger I'll "jack in".
>
> Right. An 8" screen would be pocket size (big pocket), and I suggest
> a dock with a hardware to produce desktop performance. Can you say
> "Duo Dock"?

This is the one area where I still use a Windows machine. I have an
Fujitsu P1610 convertible tablet machine with an 8.9 inch screen.
Feels about the size of those Filofax organizers we used to carry
around before the days of PDAs. It is my travel computer when I
don't have to do serious work. (Picked it up refurb for about $1000
on eBay.) Good enough for email, web browsing and news reading, and
a good place to dump photos from a camera memory card. Small enough
to carry around all day even on vacation, so that I don't have to
leave it in an hotel.

Would love for it to run Mac OS, but don't have the guts to load the
OSX86 version on it. If it could run OSX, it would go with me
everywhere. The new U810 looks interesting, but is probably too
small to be of much practical use.

But if such a Mac were ever to come out, would definitely be a
secondary machine---too many compromises on processor power, memory
and graphics to use as a primary work horse.

Tomoharu

On Sep 19, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> At 07:03 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-17, David Weintraub wrote:
>
>> Can I live with just a laptop? Probably for my home machine, but not
>> at my work! I am a developer and need a full powered, massive
>> storage, high throughput device.
>
> MacBooks have FireWire.

Firewire 400. Not "high throughput" in what I think David's
viewpoint likely is.

There was a bit on Ars yesterday (I think Ars rather than somewhere
else), in an article describing USB 3.0 (5gig, optical connections)
suggesting that the combination of eSATA and USB 3.0 would likely
knock firewire out of the game in not many years.

   --John

On 9/19/07, David Ross <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:

On 19-Sep-2007, at 06:43, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> At 07:03 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-17, Google Kreme wrote:
>> And, the iMac 24" has the best screen I've seen at that size. So for
>> me its a no brainer.
>
> FWIW, when I went shopping for a new display not that long ago, I
> thought
> that perhaps it would make sense to not buy the nice new display to
> hook up
> to my aging PB G4 1.33GHz, but pay a little more and get a much faster
> machine 'for free' as well. So I compared the 24" iMac with the 23"
> Apple
> Cinema Display. I liked the Cinema Display *way* better. After it,
> the iMac's
> screen, as nice as it is, sucked. (I know almost nothing about
> displays, so I
> can't describe what I liked better about it. The only clear
> difference was
> that the iMac's resolution was much lower.)

Are you sure you were looking at the 24" and not the 20"? The screen
on the 20" iMac is not nearly as nice as the 24". I think the 24"
looks a lot better than my two 20" Dell panles which use the same
Samsung screen as the ACDs.

OTOH, I've not seen them in a store, only at someone's house, so I
wasn't doing a side-by-side comparison. Still, I was struck by just
how nice the 24" looked.

At 5:52 AM -0700 9/19/07, David Ross wrote:
>Tom Robinson wrote:
>>On 2007-09-13, at 17:14, David Ross wrote:
>>>Battery life is affected mostly by the number of charing cycles. So
>>>keep it plugged in or unplugged for longer periods. Don't do lots
>>>of short cycles.
>>No longer true since Apple switched to lithium-ion:
>><http://www.apple.com/batteries/>
>>
>I think you misunderstood what was said there. To quote:
>
>"You can charge all lithium-ion batteries a large but finite number
>of times, as defined by charge cycle."
>
>In general LI batteries are better than the previous ones. But
>charge cycles do count and affect battery life. It's just that the
>rules for counting aren't as severe.

Tom is right, but he didn't explain to what he was referring.

1) It is true that there are a finite number of charge cycles to
useful battery. (David is correct.)

2) A charge cycle is NOT defined as each time you plug it in to
charge. (Tom is right.)

A charge cycle is a 100% discharge and charge equivalent. You could
do it in one complete discharge. Or you could do it with 2 50%
discharges, or 4 25%. Any combination of charge/discharges that add
up to 100%. That's one of the advantages to lithium ion batteries.

So, lots of "short cycles" are not a problem. If each is just 5 or
10%, it is their cumulative total that matters, rather than each
counting a charge cycle.

Of course, you DO have to recalibrate the battery every so often if
you do lots of short cycles.

--
=Alex Hoffman
Leadership, Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

David Ross first wrote:
> Battery life is affected mostly by the number of charing cycles.. So
> keep it plugged in or unplugged for longer periods. Don't do lots
> of short cycles.

And then quoted Apple's page:
> "You can charge all lithium-ion batteries a large but finite number
> of times, as defined by charge cycle."

But left out the important part:

"A charge cycle means using all of the battery's power, but that
doesn't necessarily mean a single charge. For instance, you could
listen to your iPod for a few hours one day, using half its power, and
then recharge it fully. If you did the same thing the next day, it
would count as one charge cycle, not two, so you may take several days
to complete a cycle."

In other words, lots of short cycles are not an issue with Li-Ion batteries.

lukas

On 20-Sep-2007, at 13:08, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
> There was a bit on Ars yesterday (I think Ars rather than somewhere
> else), in an article describing USB 3.0 (5gig, optical connections)
> suggesting that the combination of eSATA and USB 3.0 would likely
> knock firewire out of the game in not many years.

It really depends on what USB3's sustained and guaranteed throughput
is. That is the big issue with USB2. Sure, it CALIMS 480MB/s, but
anyone who has synced to a firewire iPod and a USB2 ipod knows that
the firewire is MUCH faster, though only rated at '400' and
supposedly slower than USB2.

But yeah, 5Gig is hard to argue with...

Alexander Hoffman wrote:
> At 5:52 AM -0700 9/19/07, David Ross wrote:
>> Tom Robinson wrote:
>>> On 2007-09-13, at 17:14, David Ross wrote:
>>>> Battery life is affected mostly by the number of charing cycles. So
>>>> keep it plugged in or unplugged for longer periods. Don't do lots
>>>> of short cycles.
>>> No longer true since Apple switched to lithium-ion:
>>> <http://www.apple.com/batteries/>
>>>
>> I think you misunderstood what was said there. To quote:
>>
>> "You can charge all lithium-ion batteries a large but finite number
>> of times, as defined by charge cycle."
>>
>> In general LI batteries are better than the previous ones. But
>> charge cycles do count and affect battery life. It's just that the
>> rules for counting aren't as severe.
>
> Tom is right, but he didn't explain to what he was referring.
>
> 1) It is true that there are a finite number of charge cycles to
> useful battery. (David is correct.)
>
> 2) A charge cycle is NOT defined as each time you plug it in to
> charge. (Tom is right.)
>
> A charge cycle is a 100% discharge and charge equivalent. You could
> do it in one complete discharge. Or you could do it with 2 50%
> discharges, or 4 25%. Any combination of charge/discharges that add
> up to 100%. That's one of the advantages to lithium ion batteries.
>
> So, lots of "short cycles" are not a problem. If each is just 5 or
> 10%, it is their cumulative total that matters, rather than each
> counting a charge cycle.
>
> Of course, you DO have to recalibrate the battery every so often if
> you do lots of short cycles.

Yes I gave an abbreviated answer. Why? Because I get used to telling my wife, kids, mother-in-law, clients who want the "easy answer", etc... So the answer is "Don't jack in and out unless you need to. If you need the battery don't worry about plugging in as soon as possible. If you have power, leave it plugged in."

The nuanced totally correct answer tends to lead to eye rolling.

Sorry for over simplifying. :)

David

At 12:08 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-20, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:

> On Sep 19, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

[...]

>> MacBooks have FireWire.
>
> Firewire 400. Not "high throughput" in what I think David's
> viewpoint likely is.

Sorry, I meant "MacBook Pros" of course (which have FireWire 800).

> There was a bit on Ars yesterday (I think Ars rather than somewhere
> else), in an article describing USB 3.0 (5gig, optical connections)
> suggesting that the combination of eSATA and USB 3.0 would likely
> knock firewire out of the game in not many years.

Yes:
<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070918-intel-announces-demonstrates-usb-3-0.html>.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

I'm a late comer to this discussion but thought I might add my 2 cents worth.

For work, I do a lot of administrative/finance work but also do some development, sitting at the computer for 6-8 hrs/day. For many years now, I've been working on an 15" Mac laptop and haven't been tempted to look at a desktop.

The laptop (currently a MBP) is hooked up to a Dell 24" display, external keyboard, external mouse, ethernet cable, various USB devices (via a powered hub) and for development work, a FW800 hard drive.

Every night, I disconnect everything, take it home, then bring it back the next day to plug everything back in. Even with 5/6 connectors, it doesn't really worry me to do once a day.

One thing pertinent to your query: In the past I used to use the display of my laptop with an additional display (17") along side. But in recent years, the trend is to increase the resolution of laptop displays for a specific size so that you have increasing pixel size disparity between the laptop screen and the external display. I started to find this caused eye strain issues, so convinced my work to shell out for the 24" display and now use my laptop in closed mode.

The only problem with this is that the video option isn't open to me for iChat stuff (given that the isight camera built into the MBP is facing down!) otherwise it is a solution that I'm happy with.

Cheers, Andrew.

ps. for posterity interest, my original laptop was a PowerBook 100 - I have found memories of it <sigh>. After that, I wasn't tempted until the Pizmos (another classic!) and have stayed with PowerBooks and MacBook Pros ever since (I upgrade for work every year...)

On 4-Oct-2007, at 05:51, andrew.s.james wrote:
> ps. for posterity interest, my original laptop was a PowerBook 100

The Powerbook 100 was the first over $1,000 purchase that I
personally made with my own money (in October of 1991, and I think it
was over $2,000). It was a gift for my girlfriend at the time (My
wife now, so I guess it was a good investment :) I really liked that
laptop, as did she, but I never liked the trackball on it.

I do still wish I could get a laptop with a really top-notch 256-grey
screen instead of all this new-fangled color, though. Can you imagine
a 200+ ppi greyscale screen? How lovely would that be?

My wife and I are complete opposites when it comes to laptops. I
look upon them as a nice convenience to have when you don't want to
work (or can't) at your 'real' computer; she resent ever having to
work at a desktop machine and takes over the entire couch as her
workspace on a nightly basis.

At 03:51 10/07/07 -0700, Tomoharu Nishino wrote:
>So, a hi-resolution 256-grey scale reflective screen

The XO claims to use a maximum of 1W to light the screen in full color
transmissive mode, and 0.1W in monochrome reflective mode. I don't know how
good it is -- haven't seen one, don't know anyone who has seen one -- but
it indicates that this mode is at least close to ready for the big time.
The descriptions say the monochrome display is "sunlight readable",
implying that it might not work in office lighting. And it's a small
screen, but still 1W is excellent. And David Pogue sounds as excited about
it as about anything he's written about lately.

http://laptop.org/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/circuits/04pogue.html

>Now, if Apple would give me an MB like that for less than $700, I would
>happily offload the remaining 20% of my stuff that actually requires all
>that computational power (e.g. large scale data analysis and photography)
>to an iMac.

Or perhaps we should ask for a graphics card slot, so that you could
actually add the needed graphics computation and external monitor on
demand. (Currently none of my computers can handle Google Earth, which I'd
like to run even though it's strictly another game, due to inadequate
graphics capabilities.) The only thing I've ever used the PC card slot on
my HP laptop for is USB and FireWire ports; with an adequate supply of
those built in, I'd rather have the graphics choice.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 7-Oct-2007, at 04:51, Tomoharu Nishino wrote:
> To see if I could live like this, I tried running my MBP in grey
> scale mode (using Universal Access)

I do this sometimes, especially late at night or early in the morning
(same thing, really). I use Nocturne to do it; which in my opinion
does a slightly nicer job of it than the built-in UA feature.

> Now, if Apple would give me an MB like that for less than $700, I
> would happily offload the remaining 20% of my stuff that actually
> requires all that computational power (e.g. large scale data
> analysis and photography) to an iMac.

Maybe that long-rumored son-of-Newton will fill this niche.

On Oct 7, 2007, at 6:51 AM, Tomoharu Nishino wrote:

> So, a hi-resolution 256-grey scale reflective screen (which would
> allow you to skimp on the graphics processor, too), a low-power
> processor (1GHz is fine), no optical drive, SSD instead of an HD
> (that tends to get pretty hot)---with a realistic 8 hour battery
> life, and 3lb weight---would be perfect
>
> To see if I could live like this, I tried running my MBP in grey
> scale mode (using Universal Access), and with the processor
> throttled down to 1.002GHz with Coolbook for a week. I found that
> the grey-scale less fatiguing for my eyes (probably having to do
> with being able to turn the backlight way down), that most of the
> time I didn't miss the color, and that the system was responsive
> enough (most of the time I didn't notice that it was throttled down).

Don't leave us in suspense, what was your battery life like? When I'm
on battery, I almost always crank the brightness down to its lowest
setting to extend its life but I've never tried processor throttling.
Presumably grayscale mode on a color screen doesn't affect battery life.

On Oct 8, 2007, at 6:03 PM, Curtis Wilcox wrote:

> Don't leave us in suspense, what was your battery life like? When I'm
> on battery, I almost always crank the brightness down to its lowest
> setting to extend its life but I've never tried processor throttling.
> Presumably grayscale mode on a color screen doesn't affect battery
> life.

I honestly couldn't give you much of a comparison. (And since I am
still using the original post-recall battery, whatever I might tell
you will probably not be generally useful.)

I've been running the MBP with CoolBook when on battery for about a
year now, so I don't remember what my MBP's battery life was like
without it. This time around, what I did was to leave CoolBook on
all the time---even when I was plugged in. And I haven't recently
run the MBP to the point of forced sleep, so I really have no battery
life data.

When I first installed CoolBook I remember noticing some (maybe an
extra 15-20 minutes) but not dramatic improvement. (This is
presumably because the power management features of OSX is already
pretty good about throttling the CPU back under battery operation---
though CoolBook does keep it from throttling back up---so, most of
the power savings is probably coming from the undervolting that
CoolBook does.)

And, like you, I tend to turn the backlight all the way down when I'm
on battery anyway, so the only difference this time was that I was
viewing the screen in grayscale (which, as you point out, wouldn't
make a difference.)

What I can tell you is that when you run the processor limited to
1.002GHz and undervolted, it runs a lot cooler (standard warning
about CPU undervolting applies). It doesn't help with the left palm
area heating up because of the HD, though.

Sorry I can't provide more useful info.

Tomoharu

At 3:51 AM -0700 2007/10/07, Tomoharu Nishino wrote:
>So, a hi-resolution 256-grey scale reflective screen (which would allow
>you to skimp on the graphics processor, too), a low-power processor (1GHz
>is fine), no optical drive, SSD instead of an HD (that tends to get pretty
>hot)---with a realistic 8 hour battery life, and 3lb weight---would be
>perfect

        Sounds a lot like the "$100 - One Laptop per Child" system - Pogue
favourably reviewed it recently
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/circuits/04pogue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *