Day 2 - Digging in

Now that I've had a full day on the system and a bit more time to get familiar with it, I'm able to spend a bit more time using it as an actual computer, instead of just getting excited about touching it.

Today I got rid of my other laptop, trading it for a new desktop. The lack of familiarity with this laptop made this quite a frustrating experience, although technically it was my own fault. My USB stick had been corrupted, and so I had to format it and clean it up, which meant I lost my Live Disc that I had intended to use to install ubuntu. This laptop, obviously, could do nothing, so I ended up having to install Windows and go through that whole process so that I could create an new Live Disc and delete windows. Definitely frustrating, but I should have done more then a spot check before formating.

This led me to realize just how many limitations are currently in place. While I can still access things like Transmissions web interface on this computer, I cannot remote access into my home server, or use it for any real diagnosing of issues on other machines. Unless it involves googling something online, this computer is no help in a situation where there is a technically difficulty. Bummer.

My hand is starting to cramp up from using the touchpad, but I think that's probably because I haven't used anything besides a standard desktop mouse for 6 or 7 months now, and I'm just out of practice. I still like the feeling of the touchpad; I'm just unused to it. 2 finger scrolling is starting to get annoying, though, as it either lags and then jumps or is simply jumpy in the first place. Hopefully smoother scrolling drivers will be released, as well as the addition of momentum.

Reporting bugs is easy as pie. The settings pages and other 'system' pages show a high level of polish and simplicity that make them easy to use and get back to what you were doing.

As of yet, I've made no use of being able to open multiple windows, which behave like Workspaces. It just seems almost silly to do so, at least when I'm just doing basic browsing and internet stuff. I mean, when it's all in the browser anyway, the I can just ctrl-tab through them, right? Alt-Tab scrolls through the other open windows, if you're using any.

I haven't charged it yet (although I haven't used it a whole lot up to this point) and I've only dropped it to 70%, which is pretty cool.

Other then that, I'm starting to get into the app store and figure out some solutions for consuming media. My sort-of personal goal is to try to get it to do all that my iPad does for me, like reading books and playing music and video. I doubt those will happen well, but I'm going to try.