New MacBook is very ‘light’

I’m the very happy owner of a new, second-hand MacBook, that I’m really enjoying.

I still have my MacBook Pro as my main machine. It has all my photos, movies, podcasts, music files, applications, work, stored emails and documents on it. I use it with a Wacom graphics tablet plugged in all the time, and on a Targus Coolpad to keep some of the heat off my legs. It’s a great machine.

Except for the battery, which had become so useless that when I went to a meeting recently, forgetting the power cord, it kindly ‘died’ moments after I’d managed to get on to the wireless network. I’ve now bought a replacement battery, that lasts 2 to 3 hours or more.

These days most of my work is writing and I rather fancied using a different machine that has ‘nothing’ on it. My idea was to install the minimum of software — only what I truly needed in order to write — and to transfer only the documents and other materials I needed for the task in hand.

Earlier this year my partner bought a white MacBook — for the last few years she’d been using whichever was my old, spare ‘backup’ Mac. Then recently, for various reasons she realised she needed a different model of MacBook. I bought her white one. I’d already envied the battery life.

After wiping the machine I installed Pages and Numbers from my family pack, added Flock, which is one of my favourite browsers, Interarchy for FTP, MarsEdit and NetNewsWire, BBEdit for writing, Jumpcut for multiple clipboards, TextExpander, LaunchBar, and SpyMe so I can control my other machines remotely. I check email via a web interface.

The MacBook feels very ‘light’, because it’s not weighed down with old files, stored files, endless applications, graphics tablet, power supply. It fits into my gorgeous Webstock bag.

It has an unexpected drawback, though. I often work in the dark — if I wake early, for example, I’ll open the blind and sit in the dark while dawn comes. My MacBook Pro has an illuminated keyboard; the MacBook does not. It’s very hard to type in the dark when you’re not a touch typist. Luckily I have one of those little USB flexilights that you can angle over the keyboard, but illuminated keys are better.

This has all had a somewhat unexpected outcome too: I’m ‘going online’. But more of that in a separate post.