Living on the edge - putting away the macbook for a while

Just a warning that you might see way too much of me here for the next little while as I finally get around to *really* learning how to use this thing.

I'm giving my macbook away to my parents when they come to visit in a couple of weeks, and had *hoped* the Sept. Apple event was going to announce a new Macbook Air revision. I'd send this laptop home with the 'rents and upgrade to an MBA because of all the travel we do.

But, even though the air is way overdue for a new version, I'm preparing for the fact that I might not be stuck "between macs" for a while, and am going to make this my primary machine for the time being. That means I'll be asking dumb novice questions as I do things you guys have long-since figured out how to do, and might be overly excited by minor revelations (like I'm finally using a USB keyboard for the first time today, and it's awesome!)

So my apologies, and thanks in advance for your patience and understanding. It looks like boris came back just in the nick of time! He must have sensed something.

I am here at your service! Ask away!

Welcome back, borisb! (if that is your real name )

BTW, if you put all the money together you've received from Entourage and added 5 quarters to it you'd have enough for a Tim Horton's coffee!

There's an idea!

Welcome with dingo.....

Originally Posted by sarah11918

Just a warning that you might see way too much of me here for the next little while as I finally get around to *really* learning how to use this thing.

I'm giving my macbook away to my parents when they come to visit in a couple of weeks, and had *hoped* the Sept. Apple event was going to announce a new Macbook Air revision. I'd send this laptop home with the 'rents and upgrade to an MBA because of all the travel we do.

But, even though the air is way overdue for a new version, I'm preparing for the fact that I might not be stuck "between macs" for a while, and am going to make this my primary machine for the time being. That means I'll be asking dumb novice questions as I do things you guys have long-since figured out how to do, and might be overly excited by minor revelations (like I'm finally using a USB keyboard for the first time today, and it's awesome!)

So my apologies, and thanks in advance for your patience and understanding. It looks like boris came back just in the nick of time! He must have sensed something.

I'm really glad to see you post this! I was in the first wave of shipments, and have been somewhat frustrated and chagrined that I haven't utilized my eDGe to a greater extent, so it's nice to know I'm not alone. What I have been using it for has been mainly research-oriented, and has been very useful, but I know there's so much more "there" there. So good luck on your re-education mission, and know that you've got company out there. Take care.

I looking forward to read a lot in this thread. And do hope to help where I can.

So my first impressions are that this is *almost* good enough to be my laptop. I'm really pleasantly surprised at how much I can do on this machine alone.

Since I've had to prepare the mac for my parents, I must admit to having had the mac open every now and then. (Cleaning up file systems, deleting the bazillion expired trials of software I apparently have collected over the years etc..) But I would say I've spent about two solid days (and two half/half days) on the edge.

My two big concerns right now are Picasa (Google's photo system) and Google Maps.

Google Maps will technically work, in that it will find a location. But zoom practically crashes the browser, so it's basically useless. I do rely on Google Maps a lot because we travel and I often want to find a hotel near the client site, then check for amenities around the hotel so we're not stuck in the middle of no where with no car. That I have not been able to do. I haven't tried other map software, and I do have an iPod touch so I can rely on that. It's not that I need GPS or anything like that - I need this info when I'm deciding which hotel to book.

The edge directs me to Picasaweb's mobile site with no option to see the standard desktop view. The mobile version doesn't appear to have an upload picture feature. From what I've read, its seems like the camera app on Android phones has a "publish to Picasa" command, so I guess they figure Android users will send pictures via the camera. Admittedly, I haven't yet looked to see whether our camera app has that feature, but it's not pictures taken with the edge I'd want uploaded. On my mac, I have the Picasa software that categorizes your photos into albums/folders etc. and then it's one button to synch an entire local album with the desktop view. So my normal M.O. is to take pictures on the camera, load them onto my mac via Picasa import, then choose which ones I want to show up in the online version of the album. Unless there's a Picasa Uploader app (which there actually is for desktop clients, if you don't have the full photo organization software), then I don't see how to get the pictures into Picasa specifically, since I can't upload via the web. I can get them *online*, just not specifically into Picasa. So either I check out other options like Flikr or I simply decide that photos will have to be done irregularly on the mac. (Hubby still has his MBP and I have my bootable backup on an external hard drive, so whenever I need to I can just use his physical machine and boot to my system.)

Otherwise, I haven't found myself to be limited yet by being solely on the edge. I'm still organizing my files on the mac and then will have to decide whether to store them on some larger SD cards and/or in my online storage so that I can access them from the edge as needed. But, being retired, I don't really *have* to access past documents, and likely wouldn't have to urgently in any cases, and most of our travel planning is online in google documents anyway. So this can also be a boot to Joe's mac when I next get a chance solution. I was worried that the single-tasking nature of the tablet (as opposed to the resize two programs so I can see both at the same time trick I do on the laptop) would frustrate me, but it's perhaps allowed me to be a little more calm/focused. Having the second screen for jotting down notes (phone numbers, flight numbers etc.) far outweighs the disadvantage of not having a chat window visible while working in another window. And, with the "send to reader" function in the browser, if I'm just reading something fairly long, I'll typically send to the reader anyway and put twitter or IM on the LCD screen. So, I think I'm OK with that.

The things I can do just fine but maybe aren't perfectly thrilled with:

GCal - I've been spoiled by some really excellent Mac OS X Calendar software, and right now I'm limited to Google's mobile version. It works, and Executive Assistant is helpful for seeing the next few days in advance. But we live our lives in a variety of google calendars (mine, Joe's, tentative travel planning, Joe's "Where I'm appearing" public calendar for his consultancy, actual booked travel confirmations from Tripit . . . ) and I'm usually most interested in what's going on over the next few months than the next few days. The mobile version is, as one would expect, catered to knowing what you need to do in the next little while. Even the month view is just a small calendar, not the calendar with the items filled in on it. Many of our calendar items are weeklong "Training in Chicago" kind of entries, so it's not something that helps to look at daily for planning purposes. I've had problems with the browser telling me the desktop version is unstable/unsupported, but I can proceed at my own risk. So far it's let me in to view OK, but a better option would be helpul.

Email - Of course, this works and I can send/receive. But, what I find really annoying (and might just have to get over) is that emails sent from the built in email client show up in their own IMAP folder instead of the regular sent folder. When I'm in Gmail on the web, I should be able to live with it (even though I'm just a little fussy about things, and just knowing some sent mail is in two different folders gives me the twitches) because if I need to find something, I should just use search. But if I'm on the device's email where things are folder based, then I don't want to have to know which sent folder to go into to see an email that was sent/drafted from the client vs. on gmail's website itself. (Although, presumably search works there, too. I still don't *love* it.) I downloaded MailDroid last night and while it seemed to be a perfectly fine client, it didn't address that particular issue. So, not yet loving my email options and I have to spend more time figuring out exactly how I want to go about it.

I'm lazy and haven't yet got around to getting Dropbox set up, but that's on the list. (I have lifetime free storage on strongspace.com, so I've tended to use that, but I know Dropbox is supposed to be very easy so I really do intend to give that a shot.) I'm trying to organize my files better on the mac first so that stuff I don't need to access is more deeply buried within folders so that whatever file solution I do use, it's already optimized by the time it gets to the edge so I don't have to do much fiddling with it there.

I think that's the report for now! I know hubby's waiting for me to get to dishes, so I'll stop anyway!

The Google Maps app works on the edge and also knows your general location through your WiFi connection. Precise location is unavailable, because the option to set a my location source in edge system settings is missing. But, if you search for something like food, coffee, etc, it pulls up nearby businesses.

Update:

Some pictures to show how I've been using the edge as my only laptop: http://yfrog.com/mjmedrj (you can scroll back and forth)

I have to say, I'm amazed that I can function so well with this as my primary machine (with some acoutrements, noted below).

Still a thorn in my side:
- I stil can't manage Picasa the way I want to. I can do some things some of the time by using a combination of apps, but I can't do everything. This isn't the edge's fault as much as it is a byproduct of being limited to an almost-useless mobile version of Picasa with no option to view the standard view, like Gmail or Google Calendar has.
- I don't like the built in mail client for more than just checking/reading email. It's not *horrible* but especially because I use filters/folders on Gmail, I don't like that the unread account counts messages both in their original folder and the all mail folder; I don't like that I can't see my folder list as a sidebar while I'm in a folder/reading an email. I don't like that I have to go back to the folder list to see whether there's mail in other folders. So, I end up using Gmail through the browser, which is OK, but therefore doesn't notify me of new emails. I'm using Executive Assistant as a quick peek for email/calendar, then going to the website to actually use those features.

The essential:
- external keyboard
- motion computing stylus
- LastPass - Thanks to LastPass, I didn't even miss a beat moving from one computer to another. There are some idiosyncracies, though. Last Pass is 2 things: a password vault and a browser. If you want it to auto-fill user names, passwords and even "identies" or credit card profiles, you have to use its own browser. The browser is pretty good for not being a stand alone browser, but it has a few quirks. You can't download through links in this browser, for example. And, if you move to another app then back into LastPass, it reloads your current page (as I found out when I lost version 1 of this post!). But, it's still a great browser and more than worth it to have all my information auto-filled. The other thing is that because it's a separate browser, whenever a link takes you to a "new" site (and, I mean when hilton.com redirects you without you knowing to secure.hilton.com, for example), you get a popup window asking you to choose which browser you'd like to complete the action: regular or Last Pass. I'm learning that some sites have a lot of crap going on behind the scenes, because sometiems I'll have to select my browser 3 or 4 times before I get to the destination site! You do have the option to say always use this browser by default, but then trying to go to a site in the other browser will make tHe specified default browser automatically kick in and take over. Not an option when only the native browser can do the send to e-ink function or download links. So, it's a fair bit of clicking at times. But, the other function, the vault, works very well in the default browser with just a few extra clicks. If you need to input a password, you have to open LastPass (I have it on the home screen) and you'll automatically be taken to the vault. Press and hold on the entry you want, and one of the options is Copy Password (you can also copy username etc.). Then go back to the browser, press and hold to paste into the password field. Not onerous at all. But, because it's copy and past, you can only do one field at a time. The nice thing about the native browser is all fields are automatically filled in for you just by virtue of visiting the site. You can also have stored "identities" and credit cards so that it can auto fill all your contact/address/credit card information on a page. USing the vault, you'd have to copy and paste for each field. So, it takes a bit to figure out when it makes the most sense to use which browser, but well worth the $1/month. I honestly didn't even notice that I was on a "new" machine when it came to logging into websites. I also use the vault as mostly my bookmark vault too, since most of the websites I visit are ones I log into. Very, very pleased with this both in terms of being able to hit the ground running on a new machine and in terms of daily functioning.
- SD card plus PicSay app = even easier tweeting pictures than on my Macbook!
- I've completely uninstalled Fring and Nimbuzz does everything I want with resepect to instant messaging.

The single biggest paradigm shift has been moving to one app at a time. I'm still not used to it, but it doesn't suck. I'm the kind of person who would have instant messaging and twitter windows open and at least partially visible while doing other things. I would blow through email/twitter in a big session, opening a bunch of background links and THEN go read them. I can't work this way on the edge.

To compensate, I am constantly using the journal to make notes about what to go back to or remember to check out. Maybe this is the way normal people work, but open windows and browser tabs used to be my "stack." Now, it's scribbles in the journal. This is quite possibly even a good thing, but it's very different. Even just reading this message board, my bookmarked page was the "new posts" and I'd open every post in a new tab, then knock them off one by one. Now, it's pick a message, read it, go back to new posts... lather, rinse and repeat. Heck, I could see picking up the pocket edge just to use for one dedicated app (email/twitter) while I work on this machine! But, all in all, it really is working.

Quick Update: I'm now getting notification of Gmail from Executive Assistant, so that's much better.

If you long press on the home button a small menu will pop up with the last 6 apps you opened. You can go back and forth a little quicker that way. Not quite the same as multiple windows, but a bit faster.

I do that, I'm just used to resizing windows so I can see various apps at once. And, of course, only one browser window at a time in the LastPass browser, which is my main browser. I know the native browser handles multiple windows.

And LastPass is a little funny... if you long press and return to it, you'll return to the browser specifically. You have to hit the icon from the home page (or in your app menu) to reach the vault in one click. If you are in the browser, it's menu-other-open vault to get to the vault. So it's actually quicker (for this app) NOT to do the long-hold on the menu button.