Using Monaco in an xterm

If you split your work between a mac and linux a lot, you may wish to try to have the same terminal font across the two. I like Monaco that comes by default on the Mac, and today I figured out how to use it on my Linux box at work too. (Disclaimer: you might […]

Upgrading the Powerbook Harddrive

I’ve done several notebook hard drive transplants in the past, they all turn out to be not so bad, as long as you have a visual reference of how to take the thing apart in the first place. The Hitachi 7K100 100GB 7200rpm drive can be had for about $160. From experimenting with Aperture running […]

Entourage burns my hands

While from a compatibility-with-Exchange point of view, Entourage is pretty good, from a performance perspective.. it’s just plain horrible. It doesn’t even seem to be properly multithreaded. The UI thread will block up frequently as I’m typing a message.. and while I’m doing nothing, it’s constantly eating 40% cpu on my Powerbook, and making it […]

Back it goes.

Got a reply from Matias. Turns out their manufacturer has exhausted their supply of ALPS switches, so they can’t make any more new ones. So no more new versions left. I guess that’s also why the price has gone up to $150 on their website. They should look into using Cherry switches instead. There are […]

Hope yet…

On two fronts: Keyboard: I’ve arranged for a RMA from OWC for the Tactile Pro, since the ghosting thing is too annoying. But then I found this page: http://www.macintouch.com/keyboards.html where a MacInTouch reader describes the exact same problem that I’m finding, and goes on the recommend that fast typists stay away from the Tactile Pro. […]

The problem with laptops

The problem with laptops, is that the usecases they support are always a subset of those supported by desktops. Sure, you can “move” a laptop, but moving a computer is not a use case in itself. You end up giving up a lot of capability, for the ability to take your task elsewhere. But what […]

A New Hope…

After reading about keyboard ghosting problems on the internet today, it seems that the kind of problem I was seeing is actually unlikely to be a ghosting problem. As my co-worker Edward pointed out, ghosting due to matrix scanning shouldn’t be a timing dependent problem. If it is a ghosting problem, it should be perfectly […]

Back in the box it goes..

It was nice to know thee. But in the end, you were just too expensive to have such a fundamental flaw. In other news, reviews claim that MS’s new Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 has worse switches than the previous models.. so I guess that one is off my list. Does nobody care anymore?

Arghhhhh!

Why can’t anyone just make a keyboard that works anymore.. I discovered that the Tactile Pro has the same kind of weird ghosting key problem as the Smartboard did. On the tactile pro, if I hit ‘o’, ‘p’, and the spacebar in that order with the right timing, sometimes I’ll get a spurios ‘enter’. This […]

Tactile Pro

Just got it today. And so far, I like it. It has almost the exact same feel as the SmartBoard, but a more normal layout. It’s also quite loud, but the keys aren’t as stiff as some others made it out to be. They’re actually quite light, just about what I like. It’s also clear […]