Re: Things we remember...
Robert Carnegie
> Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
> >: Granted, you get more services, but they're not services that I want.
> >
> >So if somebody handed you a cellphone free, and paid the service fees,
> >you'd turn it down?
>
> Would it be outgoing calls only? Or would people, and companies, and
> telemarketers, be able to call _me_ and bother me, on it? If the latter,
> heck yes I'd turn it down. [Effectively I've done so for however many years
> so far they've existed...]
>
> >How about if they offered you a computer, or a metal tool?
>
> Metal tool? I think I need a screwdriver, but that's about it. Otherwise,
> I'd have to find somewhere to put it, and it'd either be "turn it down" or
> "take it and then take time out of my day to go donate it to Fred the
> superintendent".
>
> Computer? Laptop? Turn down. Desktop? What OS does it run? What are its specs?
>
> Yes, I'm picky.
So for the sake of space to put it in, you'd turn down a laptop
computer, but not a desktop? I'm curious to see your argument.
David DeLaney
>David DeLaney wrote:
>> >How about if they offered you a computer, or a metal tool?
>>
>>Yes, I'm picky.
>
>So for the sake of space to put it in, you'd turn down a laptop
>computer, but not a desktop? I'm curious to see your argument.
To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to it, AND
a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on. The last might
be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
So it'd end up being 3/4 of a desktop ANYWAY.
Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor while
it's in use, and leave them there.
I have an Eee netbook, and the touchpad is frustrating and partly-working
enough that I'm in the process of seeing if I can find a handheld mouse for
it. The keyboard is too small as well, -and- doesn't have all the keys you
actually need to move around in files, so it pretends with a special key and
some combos, so you have to use two hands for what one hand on a real keyboard
does. No thank you for something I'd be using for things OTHER than "this has
the list of what I own bookwise on it to use in the bookstore" and "occasional
viewing of .pdf game files".
(Plus, as I understand it, laptops are really hard to upgrade the hardware
components on, since everything has to be specially shaped and Just The Right
Company's Manufacture to fit inside.)
Of course, I could probably accept the laptop and then trade it in towards
a new desktop.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Wayne Throop
: To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to
: it, AND a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on.
: The last might be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there,
: but not the second. So it'd end up being 3/4 of a desktop ANYWAY.
: Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor
: while it's in use, and leave them there.
:
: I have an Eee netbook, and the touchpad is frustrating and
: partly-working enough that I'm in the process of seeing if I can find
: a handheld mouse for it. The keyboard is too small as well, -and-
: doesn't have all the keys you actually need to move around in files,
: so it pretends with a special key and some combos, so you have to use
: two hands for what one hand on a real keyboard does. No thank you for
: something I'd be using for things OTHER than "this has the list of
: what I own bookwise on it to use in the bookstore" and "occasional
: viewing of .pdf game files".
Which has somewhere between little and nothing to the usability
of laptop and/or notebook keyboards. Touchpads, sure. Buy an
extra mouse. (Though I recently disocvered that the touchpad on
my netbook has a strip that acts as a scroll wheel... don't quite
know how I didn't notice it before...)
And, if you are piling paperback books on your monitor, it's not
a modern lcd monitor. So, in the space you save for the crt, you can
build a shallow bookshelf, and still have room in front of it for the laptop
and several partridges in several pear trees.
( Hopefully, you aren't piling them on the vents. When we had
an elderly cat that slept on the monitor, I ended up building
a small platform that elevated the cat above the vents, so they
wouldn't be blocked. )
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
David DeLaney
> d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
>: To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to
>: it, AND a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on.
>: The last might be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there,
>: but not the second. So it'd end up being 3/4 of a desktop ANYWAY.
>: Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor
>: while it's in use, and leave them there.
>:
>: I have an Eee netbook, and the touchpad is frustrating and
>: partly-working enough that I'm in the process of seeing if I can find
>: a handheld mouse for it. The keyboard is too small as well, -and-
>: doesn't have all the keys you actually need to move around in files,
>: so it pretends with a special key and some combos, so you have to use
>: two hands for what one hand on a real keyboard does. No thank you for
>: something I'd be using for things OTHER than "this has the list of
>: what I own bookwise on it to use in the bookstore" and "occasional
>: viewing of .pdf game files".
>
>Which has somewhere between little and nothing to the usability
>of laptop and/or notebook keyboards.
??? See above paragraph, starting from "the keyboard is too small as well".
The keyboard is too small, and doesn't have space for anything but the left
2/3 of a real computer keyboard. The consequences of this make me frustrated
and angry.
>And, if you are piling paperback books on your monitor, it's not
>a modern lcd monitor. So, in the space you save for the crt, you can
>build a shallow bookshelf,
Nope. The desk is already surrounded by bookshelves, and there's no room
for another one behind it because the Dragon magazines are all stacked there.
I honestly think you're thinking everyone's setup is like yours, and everyone's
preferences are like yours, and you can't envision someone having different
needs, wants, or preferences, because your objections don't make any SENSE
otherwise. You sounded _surprised_ that I didn't have a "modern lcd monitor",
by which I'm assuming you mean a flat screen.
>( Hopefully, you aren't piling them on the vents. When we had
> an elderly cat that slept on the monitor, I ended up building
> a small platform that elevated the cat above the vents, so they
> wouldn't be blocked. )
No no, the vents are behind them.
Dorothy J Heydt
David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>
>Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor while
>it's in use, and leave them there.
Well, you can't do that to an LCD screen on your desk either.
And if you're using a CRT, you might be able to balance a couple
of books on the front edge, but hardly eighteen. Unless you have
a CRT with a flat top, in which case your ownly problem would be
the paperbacks trapping the heat and frying the tube. All the CRTs
we used to have had a sloping top surface, books would've slid right
off them. Our intellectually challenged cat Sebastian used to
love to sit atop the CRTs ... they were warm ... but he too would
slide off. Hal finally built a plywood platform that would go
over the top of the CRT, for him to lie on. You could've piled
18 paperbacks atop that, but as soon as Sebastian showed up he
would've nudged them all off.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Dorothy J Heydt
Just as we did; see my other post.
W. Citoan
> On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:55:39 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
> > d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
> >
> >: while it's in use, and leave them there.
> >modern lcd monitor. So, in the space you save for the crt, you can
> >build a shallow bookshelf,
> I honestly think you're thinking everyone's setup is like yours, and
> everyone's preferences are like yours, and you can't envision someone
> having different needs, wants, or preferences, because your
> objections don't make any SENSE otherwise. You sounded _surprised_
> that I didn't have a "modern lcd monitor", by which I'm assuming you
> mean a flat screen.
No, he's just suggested that you make valid comparisons. Your complaint
was that you cannot stack books on a laptop monitor. That's true, but
the space saving between a CRT and laptop monitor is more than adequate
to stack not only those books, but plenty more.
- W. Citoan
--
Whatever you choose, do not seek to carry out easy tasks.
-- Adolf Von Baeyer
Wayne Throop
:: laptop and/or notebook keyboards.
: d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
: ??? See above paragraph, starting from "the keyboard is too small as
: well". The keyboard is too small, and doesn't have space for anything
: but the left 2/3 of a real computer keyboard. The consequences of
: this make me frustrated and angry.
See the part above where you say "eee netbook"?
Problems with a netbook keyboard has somewhere between little and nothing
to do with whether a laptop or notebook would be a problem. Which of
course doesn't mean you wouldn't also dislike notebook keyboards.
Just that disliking a netbook keyboard is a remarkably poor reason to
conclude that you would. And so I remark upon it.
Now mind you, you also may be able to conclude that the keys missing
or moved on a notebook would also annoy you. Just not based on which keys
are missing or shifted on a netbook, since these are often different.
: You sounded _surprised_ that I didn't have a "modern lcd monitor",
No, just being explicit about my assumptions. Given you set books on it,
I assumed it's a crt, and said so. As a setup for why "no room to put
books on top of the monitor" is a silly reason not to want a laptop.
There are plenty of reasons not to want a laptop, so it's not really
necessary to make up silly ones.
Another assumption I made was that when you said you had a netbook,
that you had a netbook and knew the difference between a netbook and
a notebook. I didn't make that assumption explicit, but hypothetically
if I had, then hypothetically you shouldn't have concluded that I
was surprised that you didn't have something other than a netbook,
nor surprised that you knew the difference.
In fact a better conclusion would be that I'd be surprised to learn
you did *not* know the difference, or *did* have a post-crt monitor.
erilar
wrote:
> : d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
> : To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to
> : it, AND a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on.
> : The last might be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there,
> : but not the second. So it'd end up being 3/4 of a desktop ANYWAY.
> : Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor
> : while it's in use, and leave them there.
I have a wireless keyboard(much easier on wrists) and a wireless
mouse for my laptop. Behind it I have a stack of letter trays with
various things stashed there, and a set of bookshelves above the desk
for books and CDs. I DETEST that stupid touchpad! (When I take my
laptop traveling, I do use its keyboard, but I still take along my
wireless mouse. )My old computer is still here, too, but it has too
slanting a top to put books on. There are things I use it for.
> Which has somewhere between little and nothing to the usability
> of laptop and/or notebook keyboards. Touchpads, sure. Buy an
> extra mouse. (Though I recently disocvered that the touchpad on
> my netbook has a strip that acts as a scroll wheel... don't quite
> know how I didn't notice it before...)
I know that and still hate it!
> ( Hopefully, you aren't piling them on the vents. When we had
> an elderly cat that slept on the monitor, I ended up building
> a small platform that elevated the cat above the vents, so they
> wouldn't be blocked. )
Good plan. A friend has a cat who likes to nap on the laptop 8-)
--
Erilar, biblioholic
bib-li-o-hol-ism [<Gr biblion] n. [BIBLIO + HOLISM] books, of books:
habitual longing to purchase, read, store, admire, and consume books in excess.
David DeLaney
>David DeLaney wrote:
>>Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>> > d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
>> >: Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor
>> >: while it's in use, and leave them there.
>
>> >And, if you are piling paperback books on your monitor, it's not a
>> >modern lcd monitor. So, in the space you save for the crt, you can
>> >build a shallow bookshelf,
>
>> I honestly think you're thinking everyone's setup is like yours, and
>> everyone's preferences are like yours, and you can't envision someone
>> having different needs, wants, or preferences, because your
>> objections don't make any SENSE otherwise. You sounded _surprised_
>> that I didn't have a "modern lcd monitor", by which I'm assuming you
>> mean a flat screen.
>
>No, he's just suggested that you make valid comparisons. Your complaint
>was that you cannot stack books on a laptop monitor. That's true, but
>the space saving between a CRT and laptop monitor is more than adequate
>to stack not only those books, but plenty more.
How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to get it to
fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
I suppose I could stack the books on the table, then balance the laptop on
TOP of them - but I hear that that tends to interfere with the heated-air
flow out of the laptop, AND would mean I'd have to find a much higher chair
to sit on. Or I could stack the books in FRONT of the laptop, on the tray,
but then I'd have to reach up and over them to type.
See, I can -see- the space I'm using, where things sit now, and I know what
other tables and flat spaces I have available in my apartment (hint: no other
tables at ALL). He can't see this, so may well be thinking there's some
arrangement involved that's not the case. The configuration I have available
does not allow for the use of a laptop to actually save any space, even
-without- a full-sized keyboard and an actual mouse attached to it to make
it usable.
David DeLaney
>:: Which has somewhere between little and nothing to the usability of
>:: laptop and/or notebook keyboards.
>
>: d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
>: ??? See above paragraph, starting from "the keyboard is too small as
>: well". The keyboard is too small, and doesn't have space for anything
>: but the left 2/3 of a real computer keyboard. The consequences of
>: this make me frustrated and angry.
>
>See the part above where you say "eee netbook"?
>Problems with a netbook keyboard has somewhere between little and nothing
>to do with whether a laptop or notebook would be a problem.
I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. I'm not impressed. None of them
have a full-size keyboard. None of them, as far as I'm aware, come with an
actual mouse attached; they use some sort of touchpad, or a little clitmouse
inside the keyboard, or possibly some ball-in-socket thingy on one side. And
none of them come with a computer-screen-size screen; all are at least
somewhat smaller, to the tune of 25% or more. [My netbook's screen is maybe
half the size of a real computer screen, at most. I've seen & played with an
iPhone and it was ridiculously small.]
Kurt Busiek
> On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:16:23 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
> I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. .... And
> none of them come with a computer-screen-size screen; all are at least
> somewhat smaller, to the tune of 25% or more.
Really? How big is "computer-screen-size"? My wife has the 17-inch
MacBook Pro, and I've had numerous "real computers" that had smaller
screens than that.
Her MacBook, in fact, is large enough that I prefer a smaller one for
travel; it's just too damn big.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Wayne Throop
: I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. I'm not impressed. None
: of them have a full-size keyboard. None of them, as far as I'm aware,
: come with an actual mouse attached; they use some sort of touchpad, or
: a little clitmouse inside the keyboard, or possibly some
: ball-in-socket thingy on one side. And none of them come with a
: computer-screen-size screen; all are at least somewhat smaller, to the
: tune of 25% or more.
How large is your current crt monitor? Mine (the last ones I had)
were 20-in boatanchors. So, note
http://archive.laptopmag.com/Review/Dell-XPS-M2010.ht
which is still classed as a "laptop" seemingly. See also
http://www.google.com/#q=20-in+notebook
most of which have full-sized keyboards.
Of course, none of that means you wouldn't find more things to complain
about, and legitimately so; for example, the keyboard pacement is
often less flexible. Or you might have larger crt now. Nevertheless,
technically, most of your complaints are resolvable. The dell above has
(or technically, had) a detachable, full-sized keyboard. And any latop
can use a normal mouse (indeed, I was just using my netbook with one
the other day).
And at the worst, you can do what I did when one of my desktop
systems croaked; I sat the netbook down in its place, plugged
the 1680x1050 resolution display and keyboard, etc, into it,
took the disk out of the croaked box and used an ide/usb adapter
to plug *it* in, and was back up and in business in short order
while I waited for the delivery of the replacement box.
None of which means you *should* use a laptop.
Merely that most of your objections aren't quite as valid
as you might like to think. Certainly the "I can't set books on it"
is still bogus, since any lcd screen, laptop or not, is going to
take only the first couple of inches of the space your monitor
takes up, and the rest can be used to set as many books as you like.
You can even raise them above the top of the thinner display by
slipping a few phone books underneath them.
Joyce Haslam
> W. Citoan <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> wrote:
> >No, he's just suggested that you make valid comparisons. Your
> >complaint was that you cannot stack books on a laptop monitor.
> >That's true, but the space saving between a CRT and laptop
> >monitor is more than adequate to stack not only those books, but
> >plenty more.
> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just
> to get it to fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
You use the comfy armchair! Typing is only a little bit more
difficult.
Joyce.
Insert smilies as required.
--
"The spear in the Other's heart is in your own: you are he." - Surak
erilar
wrote:
> Really? How big is "computer-screen-size"? My wife has the 17-inch
> MacBook Pro, and I've had numerous "real computers" that had smaller
> screens than that.
Mine is the 15-inch and I find the screen big enough. I've had a
smaller one on a past desk-top computer.
>
> Her MacBook, in fact, is large enough that I prefer a smaller one for
> travel; it's just too damn big.
My daughter has a smaller(non-Mac) because it goes along with her a
lot. Mine only travels between locations where I have a desk where it
can stay put for a while and even then only when I'm staying on the
ground.
netcat
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com says...
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >David DeLaney wrote:
> >> >How about if they offered you a computer, or a metal tool?
> >>Computer? Laptop? Turn down. Desktop? What OS does it run? What are its specs?
> >>
> >>Yes, I'm picky.
> >
> >So for the sake of space to put it in, you'd turn down a laptop
> >computer, but not a desktop? I'm curious to see your argument.
>
> To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to it, AND
> a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on. The last might
> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
> So it'd end up being 3/4 of a desktop ANYWAY.
>
> Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor while
> it's in use, and leave them there.
>
> I have an Eee netbook, and the touchpad is frustrating and partly-working
> enough
The Eee keyboard (assuming you have the 9xx series, I haven't tried
others) is totally atrocious. This has nothing to with the usability of
normal size laptop keyboards.
rgds,
netcat
netcat
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com says...
> On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:16:23 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
> >:: Which has somewhere between little and nothing to the usability of
> >:: laptop and/or notebook keyboards.
> >
> >: d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
> >: ??? See above paragraph, starting from "the keyboard is too small as
> >: well". The keyboard is too small, and doesn't have space for anything
> >: but the left 2/3 of a real computer keyboard. The consequences of
> >: this make me frustrated and angry.
> >
> >See the part above where you say "eee netbook"?
> >Problems with a netbook keyboard has somewhere between little and nothing
> >to do with whether a laptop or notebook would be a problem.
>
> I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. I'm not impressed. None of them
> have a full-size keyboard. None of them, as far as I'm aware, come with an
> actual mouse attached; they use some sort of touchpad, or a little clitmouse
> inside the keyboard, or possibly some ball-in-socket thingy on one side.
Touchpads take some getting used to, but once you do, they're ok. When I
got my first laptop, I went out and purchased a mouse for it
immediately, thinking I could not get along without one. I think I used
it maybe 3 times, tops... After that I found that using the touchpad was
quicker and less distracting.
rgds,
netcat
Wayne Throop
: Mine is the 15-inch and I find the screen big enough. I've had a
: smaller one on a past desk-top computer.
Unfortunately for me, I am prone to the "use grows to consume any
resource" wrt screen area. So on my home system, I have two 20-in
displays of 1680x1050 resolution, and anything less seems cramped to
me now. On the other hand, I can easily get by using a 12-in, or even
a 10-in display for things like... well, typing this. But it'll start
feeling cramped if I end up wanting to refer to a web page while reading
news, or similar.
Of course, way back when, I had only as much display as would now fit
in about 4 or 5 inches worth of the corner of one of the two displays
I have now, and it felt perfectly adequate.
Robert Carnegie
> On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:16:23 GMT, Wayne Throop <thro...@sheol.org> wrote:
> >:: Which has somewhere between little and nothing to the usability of
> >:: laptop and/or notebook keyboards.
>
> >: d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
> >: ??? See above paragraph, starting from "the keyboard is too small as
> >: well". The keyboard is too small, and doesn't have space for anything
> >: but the left 2/3 of a real computer keyboard. The consequences of
> >: this make me frustrated and angry.
>
> >See the part above where you say "eee netbook"?
> >Problems with a netbook keyboard has somewhere between little and nothing
> >to do with whether a laptop or notebook would be a problem.
>
> I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. I'm not impressed. None of them
> have a full-size keyboard. None of them, as far as I'm aware, come with an
> actual mouse attached; they use some sort of touchpad, or a little clitmouse
> inside the keyboard, or possibly some ball-in-socket thingy on one side. And
> none of them come with a computer-screen-size screen; all are at least
> somewhat smaller, to the tune of 25% or more. [My netbook's screen is maybe
> half the size of a real computer screen, at most. I've seen & played with an
> iPhone and it was ridiculously small.]
By now you should be using voice control; it comes as standard with
Windows Vista - I don't know about Seven. And I believe someone made
a mouse that physically fits in one of the slot-in card compartments
that portable PCs often have, such as PCMCIA. Anyway, you can
probably now use the webcam, also. Google "webcam mouse" - ah yes.
Although some of that sounds a little bit like fakeware.
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>> David DeLaney wrote:
>>>> How about if they offered you a computer, or a metal tool?
>>> Computer? Laptop? Turn down. Desktop? What OS does it run? What are its specs?
>>>
>>> Yes, I'm picky.
>> So for the sake of space to put it in, you'd turn down a laptop
>> computer, but not a desktop? I'm curious to see your argument.
>
> To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to it, AND
> a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on.
My laptop has a larger screen than my desktop -- and I sit with it
closer to my face, increasing its relative size in my field of vision.
The keyboard is comparable in size to the one I use on my desktop,
except the laptop doesn't have a number pad.
> The last might
> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
Who needs a mouse for anything other than audio or photo editing?
Use Launchy and keyboard shortcuts for everything else.
> I have an Eee netbook, and the touchpad is frustrating and partly-working
> enough that I'm in the process of seeing if I can find a handheld mouse for
> it. The keyboard is too small as well, -and- doesn't have all the keys you
> actually need to move around in files, so it pretends with a special key and
> some combos, so you have to use two hands for what one hand on a real keyboard
> does.
That's because it's a *netbook*. The whole point of netbooks is that
they're super-small and super-cheap, and you can use them anywhere
you can sit down. They're meant to be portable, not to replace
desktops. If you need more than that, get a full-sized notebook. But
don't generalize from a dinky little Eee to all laptops.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://www.diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
New audio book: As Long as You Wish by John O'Keefe
<http://librivox.org/short-science-fiction-collection-010/>
Sean O'Hara
declared:
>
> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>
> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
James Nicoll
Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
>declared:
>>
>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to get it to
>> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>
>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>
>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
catastrophic battery failure.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Dorothy J Heydt
>declared:
>>
>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to get it to
>> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>
>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>
>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
Except the last time I had a laptop -- it was an IBM ThinkPad,
and a very nice one too -- I were warned *not* to put it on my
lap because it would overheat. So I got a tray-table to put it
on.
Dorothy J Heydt
>declared:
>> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>> David DeLaney wrote:
>>>>> How about if they offered you a computer, or a metal tool?
>>>> Computer? Laptop? Turn down. Desktop? What OS does it run? What are
>its specs?
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I'm picky.
>>> So for the sake of space to put it in, you'd turn down a laptop
>>> computer, but not a desktop? I'm curious to see your argument.
>>
>> To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to it, AND
>> a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on.
>
>My laptop has a larger screen than my desktop -- and I sit with it
>closer to my face, increasing its relative size in my field of vision.
>
>The keyboard is comparable in size to the one I use on my desktop,
>except the laptop doesn't have a number pad.
>
>> The last might
>> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
>
>Who needs a mouse for anything other than audio or photo editing?
>Use Launchy and keyboard shortcuts for everything else.
>
>http://www.launchy.net/
I don't suppose that was around in the early 1990s, was it? That
was when I was reluctantly working in a Mac because that was what
they had in the Cozzlab, and I called Apple to ask if there was a
way that I could hotkey everything so I needn't use the mouse.
Some confused cross-talk ensued, and finally I said, "No, you
don't understand. I want to fix it so I never have to use the
mouse AT ALL." Apple employee, genuinely puzzled: "Why would
anyone want never to use the mouse?" End of conversation.
[Because it takes my hand off the keyboard, you silly git.]
Mike Ash
wrote:
> : erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid>
> : Mine is the 15-inch and I find the screen big enough. I've had a
> : smaller one on a past desk-top computer.
>
> Unfortunately for me, I am prone to the "use grows to consume any
> resource" wrt screen area. So on my home system, I have two 20-in
> displays of 1680x1050 resolution, and anything less seems cramped to
> me now. On the other hand, I can easily get by using a 12-in, or even
> a 10-in display for things like... well, typing this. But it'll start
> feeling cramped if I end up wanting to refer to a web page while reading
> news, or similar.
I recently upgraded from one 23" screen to two. I'm not convinced it was
a good idea, but it's now far too late to go back.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>
> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
> how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
> catastrophic battery failure.
>
I know the northern wastes are a savage land, but surely even the
barbarians of Canadia have invented the lap tray?
http://www.furnituredetour.com/eshop/products/b_98022.gif
Dorothy J Heydt
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
>Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
>>declared:
>>>
>>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to
>get it to
>>> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>>
>>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
>>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
>>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
>>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>>
>>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>
> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
>how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
>catastrophic battery failure.
Unless laptop technology has improve a lot since I had one (about
a decade ago), the computer would fry itself first.
Mike Ash
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In article <hd9nee$g6n$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
> James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> >In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
> >Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
> >>declared:
> >>>
> >>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to
> >get it to
> >>> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
> >>>
> >>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the
> >>> monitor
> >>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
> >>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting,
> >>> which
> >>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
> >>
> >>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
> >
> > Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
> >how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
> >catastrophic battery failure.
>
> Unless laptop technology has improve a lot since I had one (about
> a decade ago), the computer would fry itself first.
How is it that you're familiar with computers and you can even consider
the possibility (much less consider it likely, as this would imply) that
the technology HASN'T improved enormously over the period of a decade?
Yes, a 2009 laptop is ever so slightly improved over a 1999 one.
James Nicoll
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <hd9nee$g6n$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
>>Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
>>>declared:
>>>>
>>>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to
>>get it to
>>>> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>>>
>>>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
>>>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
>>>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
>>>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>>>
>>>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>>
>> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
>>how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
>>catastrophic battery failure.
>
>Unless laptop technology has improve a lot since I had one (about
>a decade ago), the computer would fry itself first.
Under the right circumstances, the batteries can provide
a nice source of light and heat:
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <KsuuL...@kithrup.com>):
> In article <hd9nee$g6n$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
> James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
>>> declared:
>>>>
>>>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to
>> get it to
>>>> fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>>>
>>>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
>>>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
>>>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting,
>>>> which
>>>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>>>
>>> Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>>
>> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
>> how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
>> catastrophic battery failure.
>
> Unless laptop technology has improve a lot since I had one (about
> a decade ago), the computer would fry itself first.
>
>
Ah, no, sorry, but laptop battery fires and explosions and other
unpleasantries are all too common. There's a whole bunch of UTube videos on
them here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWq6rWzChw>. And for further info
go here: <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dell-battery-fire.htm>.
--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.
David DeLaney
>David DeLaney <d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote:
>> W. Citoan <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >No, he's just suggested that you make valid comparisons. Your
>> >complaint was that you cannot stack books on a laptop monitor.
>> >That's true, but the space saving between a CRT and laptop
>> >monitor is more than adequate to stack not only those books, but
>> >plenty more.
>
>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just
>> to get it to fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>
>You use the comfy armchair! Typing is only a little bit more
>difficult.
The comfy armchair is across the room, and using it in this situation means
I have to install some sort of cloth barrier so I don't get laptop-bottom
burns. As I understand it? Plus that means I _definitely_ have to use a
nonstandard mouse, because there's not a flat surface over there.
David DeLaney
>On Nov 8, 10:21�pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. I'm not impressed. None of them
>> have a full-size keyboard. None of them, as far as I'm aware, come with an
>> actual mouse attached; they use some sort of touchpad, or a little clitmouse
>> inside the keyboard, or possibly some ball-in-socket thingy on one side. And
>> none of them come with a computer-screen-size screen; all are at least
>> somewhat smaller, to the tune of 25% or more. [My netbook's screen is maybe
>> half the size of a real computer screen, at most. I've seen & played with an
>> iPhone and it was ridiculously small.]
>
>By now you should be using voice control; it comes as standard with
>Windows Vista - I don't know about Seven.
FORMAT! C! COLON! <pause> YES! ...No.
> And I believe someone made
>a mouse that physically fits in one of the slot-in card compartments
>that portable PCs often have, such as PCMCIA. Anyway, you can
>probably now use the webcam, also. Google "webcam mouse" - ah yes.
>Although some of that sounds a little bit like fakeware.
I'm fairly sure that much of the population of this newsgroup does not WANT
me using a webcam.
David DeLaney
>>How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to get it to
>>fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>
>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
>> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
>> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
>> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>
>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
Methinks you're missing the point of a *desk*top.
Is this where I say 'sheesh' and give up?
David DeLaney
>> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
>
>Who needs a mouse for anything other than audio or photo editing?
>Use Launchy and keyboard shortcuts for everything else.
I play World of Warcraft. And am probably not about to stop any time soon.
(The mouse is also fairly useful for cut and paste processes of various sorts.)
>If you need more than that, get a full-sized notebook. But
>don't generalize from a dinky little Eee to all laptops.
I've seen laptops in action, as noted already. My objections stand. I never
bought one _because_ of said objections. I bought the netbook because it was
as close as I could find to a useful way to finally have access to my current
list of 'what books do I own?' while in $RANDOM_BOOKSTORE. (Note the 'useful'
there; this is taking into account my objections to itty-bitty screens and to
itty-bitty keyboards, cuz the list has to be footnotable while in said
bookstore.)
Wayne Throop
: The comfy armchair is across the room, and using it in this situation means
: I have to install some sort of cloth barrier so I don't get laptop-bottom
: burns. As I understand it? Plus that means I _definitely_ have to use a
: nonstandard mouse, because there's not a flat surface over there.
Well, fwiw, I've used an optical mouse on a non-flat-non-hard surface,
much like the surface of a cushy chair arm. A ball-mouse might have
problems, but the optical mouse didn't.
Not that I recommend it. But it *did* work.
erilar
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> The comfy armchair is across the room, and using it in this situation means
> I have to install some sort of cloth barrier so I don't get laptop-bottom
> burns. As I understand it?
pillow 8-)
My problem with that is the location of my Airport is such that chair
and body can apparently somewhat affect access.
> Plus that means I _definitely_ have to use a
> nonstandard mouse, because there's not a flat surface over there.
My wireless mouse is happy with a chair arm 8-)
erilar
wrote:
> : d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
> : The comfy armchair is across the room, and using it in this situation means
> : I have to install some sort of cloth barrier so I don't get laptop-bottom
> : burns. As I understand it? Plus that means I _definitely_ have to use a
> : nonstandard mouse, because there's not a flat surface over there.
>
> Well, fwiw, I've used an optical mouse on a non-flat-non-hard surface,
> much like the surface of a cushy chair arm. A ball-mouse might have
> problems, but the optical mouse didn't.
That's what mine is. Works fine.
>
> Not that I recommend it. But it *did* work.
>
>
> Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
--
Dorothy J Heydt
David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>the Great and Powerful David DeLaney declared:
>>> The last might
>>> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
>>
>>Who needs a mouse for anything other than audio or photo editing?
>>Use Launchy and keyboard shortcuts for everything else.
>
>I play World of Warcraft. And am probably not about to stop any time soon.
I play Lord of the Rings Online, for which (alas) the mouse is
also sometimes necessary. Only it isn't a mouse, it's a
trackball, so that it stays in one place and doesn't need a
mousepad to crawl over.
Plus, as I've said, I like to keep my fingers on the keyboard
whenever possible. If I have to reach over and do something with
the trackball, I then have to look at my hand and the keyboard in
order to get the one properly positioned over the other, when I'd
rather just keep my eyes on the screen.
Wayne Throop
::: a flat surface over there.
:: I've used an optical mouse on a non-flat-non-hard surface, much like
:: the surface of a cushy chair arm. A ball-mouse might have problems,
:: but the optical mouse didn't.
: That's what mine is. Works fine.
Plus I just now tried and it works fine on my pantleg.
It'd probably even work if the mouse were in your pocket...
<pause> yep, it does. Probably some wireless rodents would
have problems, but plenty would not, eg, rodents with blue teeth.
I got a pocket full of kryptonite
--- Spin Doctors, "Jimmy Olson Blues"
Wayne Throop
: Plus, as I've said, I like to keep my fingers on the keyboard
: whenever possible. If I have to reach over and do something with
: the trackball, I then have to look at my hand and the keyboard in
: order to get the one properly positioned over the other, when I'd
: rather just keep my eyes on the screen.
Huh. I can reach back to the keyboard without looking at it.
Subjectively, my fingers just find the home row by themselves; I expect
actually I'm noticing the general location in my peripheral vision and/or
kinesthesia, and then feeling the keyboard with my fintertips when I get
close, and finally the bumps on the "fj" keys. But it's transparently
fast... "it just happens" without looking or even intending, almost.
Just "I want to type" kind of impulse occurs, and my hands are on the
home row by magic.
For some of the rarer keys, and/or keys I normally don't reach
from the home row, I actually have to look. Sigh.
Dimensional Traveler
--
7 Years - 2265 Experiments - 10 tons of explosives - 705 Myths
Myths - Will - Fall!
Robert Carnegie
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >On Nov 8, 10:21�pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> >> I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. I'm not impressed. None of them
> >> have a full-size keyboard. None of them, as far as I'm aware, come with an
> >> inside the keyboard, or possibly some ball-in-socket thingy on one side. And
> >> none of them come with a computer-screen-size screen; all are at least
> >> somewhat smaller, to the tune of 25% or more. [My netbook's screen is maybe
> >> half the size of a real computer screen, at most. I've seen & played with an
> >> iPhone and it was ridiculously small.]
> >
> >By now you should be using voice control; it comes as standard with
> >Windows Vista - I don't know about Seven.
>
> FORMAT! C! COLON! <pause> YES! ...No.
So don't put me on speakerphone.
> > And I believe someone made
> >a mouse that physically fits in one of the slot-in card compartments
> >that portable PCs often have, such as PCMCIA. Anyway, you can
> >probably now use the webcam, also. Google "webcam mouse" - ah yes.
> >Although some of that sounds a little bit like fakeware.
>
> I'm fairly sure that much of the population of this newsgroup does not WANT
> me using a webcam.
No, see, what I mean is you use gestures to - ah, no, you're
right. :-)
Don Aitken
DeLaney) wrote:
>Joyce Haslam <pen...@ukgateway.invalid> wrote:
>>David DeLaney <d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote:
>>> W. Citoan <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> >No, he's just suggested that you make valid comparisons. Your
>>> >complaint was that you cannot stack books on a laptop monitor.
>>> >That's true, but the space saving between a CRT and laptop
>>> >monitor is more than adequate to stack not only those books, but
>>> >plenty more.
>>
>>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just
>>> to get it to fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>
>>You use the comfy armchair! Typing is only a little bit more
>>difficult.
>
>The comfy armchair is across the room, and using it in this situation means
>I have to install some sort of cloth barrier so I don't get laptop-bottom
>burns. As I understand it? Plus that means I _definitely_ have to use a
>nonstandard mouse, because there's not a flat surface over there.
>
I hate mouses, and have never used one on a computer of my own. A
standard trackball comes with the same buttons, plugs into the same
socket, and doesn't demand a flat surface, or all that acreage I never
have to spare. It can be used anywhere, including sitting on the arm
of the comfy armchair.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
Robert Bannister
> In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful James Nicoll declared:
>> In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>>
>> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
>> how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
>> catastrophic battery failure.
>
> I know the northern wastes are a savage land, but surely even the
> barbarians of Canadia have invented the lap tray?
>
> http://www.furnituredetour.com/eshop/products/b_98022.gif
>
I can't see how you'd use that in an armchair. It looks like the sort of
thing you use when you're ill in bed. The only trays I might describe as
"lap" that I've ever possessed were padded underneath so you could eat
your hot dinner in comfort - called "TV trays" of course.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
Silly indeed, because I'm fairly sure that even then all commands could
be carried out from the keyboard, although some of them (like Restart or
Shut Down were complicated, multi-key commands).
--
Rob Bannister
Dorothy J Heydt
Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>Sean O'Hara wrote:
>> In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful James Nicoll declared:
>>> In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
>>> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>>>
>>> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
>>> how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
>>> catastrophic battery failure.
>>
>> I know the northern wastes are a savage land, but surely even the
>> barbarians of Canadia have invented the lap tray?
>>
>> http://www.furnituredetour.com/eshop/products/b_98022.gif
>>
>
>I can't see how you'd use that in an armchair. It looks like the sort of
>thing you use when you're ill in bed.
Certainly it's the kind of thing I used with my laptop, when I
had one, and was ill in bed more or less nonstop. (Still am, but
I now have a PC sitting on a shelf to my left, a monitor on a
hospital-type over-the-bed table in front of me, and a keyboard
and trackball on a small board which I can hold on my lap.
Dorothy J Heydt
I would've thought so. But this guy at Apple didn't know them.
Possibly because he believed that no one wanted them, therefore
they didn't exist.
Joy Beeson
> Yes, a 2009 laptop is ever so slightly improved over a 1999 one.
Harrumph! I've been wanting a laptop ever since I noticed that the
keyboard of my TRS-80 was hollow. Laptops have been named now, but
they *still* haven't been invented.
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
Don Aitken
That was true (is it still?) on Windows systems, but I don't think it
ever was on the Mac.
Robert Carnegie
Sean O'Hara wrote:
> In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
> declared:
> >
> > fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
> >
> > sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
> > and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
> > would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
>
Well, it's not an /instruction/ for use. And good ergonomics for
normal computer use are to sit upright - imagine someone firmly grips
your head and pulls up, go with it - and having the screen straight in
front of your eyes. Slouched in armchair is not good for the spine.
Robert Carnegie
David DeLaney wrote:
> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >the Great and Powerful David DeLaney declared:
> >>How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to get it to
> >>fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
> >>
> >> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the monitor
> >> sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't needed ...
> >> and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was now sitting, which
> >> would be the space where the monitor sits currently.
> >
> >Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>
> Methinks you're missing the point of a *desk*top.
That it goes on your desk, sure. But how do you feel about a tower?
In the old days it was called a "minicomputer" and it /was/ the desk.
> Is this where I say 'sheesh' and give up?
Before you go, are other users seeing this thread split into lots of
pieces, several started by me? Maybe it's another way for Google
Groups to make everyone's day more of the interesting challenge that
we all crave?
Robert Carnegie
> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:24:04 -0500, Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, a 2009 laptop is ever so slightly improved over a 1999 one.
>
> Harrumph! I've been wanting a laptop ever since I noticed that the
> keyboard of my TRS-80 was hollow. Laptops have been named now, but
> they *still* haven't been invented.
What's a "laptop", Joy?
Robert Carnegie
Aren't they subject to "accessibility" conditions on their prouct
(although not in 1984, I think), and wouldn't this be one?
Robert Carnegie
> Sean O'Hara wrote:
> > In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful James Nicoll declared:
> >> In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>,
> >> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
> >>
> >> Every time I have a laptop on my lap, I can't help but caculate
> >> how many joules could be liberated onto my crotch in the event of a
> >> catastrophic battery failure.
It's written in the specification. How much energy is stored, that
is, not that it should be expelled suddenly from the underside of the
machine. Anyway, in due course they will run on methanol.
> > I know the northern wastes are a savage land, but surely even the
> > barbarians of Canadia have invented the lap tray?
> >
> > http://www.furnituredetour.com/eshop/products/b_98022.gif
> >
>
> I can't see how you'd use that in an armchair. It looks like the sort of
> thing you use when you're ill in bed. The only trays I might describe as
> "lap" that I've ever possessed were padded underneath so you could eat
> your hot dinner in comfort - called "TV trays" of course.
I have something like that that I think is sold as a "laptop tray". I
suppose you could put a small LCD TV on it instead. Convergence.
David DeLaney
>
>The comfy armchair is across the room, and using it in this situation means
>I have to install some sort of cloth barrier so I don't get laptop-bottom
>burns. As I understand it? Plus that means I _definitely_ have to use a
>nonstandard mouse, because there's not a flat surface over there.
(Have mouse now. Will experiment. May be some time.)
Dave "please ignore any reports of explosions" DeLaney
David DeLaney
>>
>> Methinks you're missing the point of a *desk*top.
>
>That it goes on your desk, sure. But how do you feel about a tower?
I'm fine with it; the desk's designed so it fits down under.
>In the old days it was called a "minicomputer" and it /was/ the desk.
In the _extremely_ olden days it was an entire cabinet. Or several.
At some point someone's gonna get the virtual holographic keyboard perfected,
at which point I suspect we'll all converge again on "Hey neat!". Except those
of us whose cats it hypnotically attracts so they always lay down right in the
middle of it.
>> Is this where I say 'sheesh' and give up?
>
>Before you go, are other users seeing this thread split into lots of
>pieces, several started by me? Maybe it's another way for Google
>Groups to make everyone's day more of the interesting challenge that
>we all crave?
It's all together in slrn, but slrn actually uses the References: header
as near as I can tell.
[I do have to partially retract one earlier statement: having looked at
current laptop keyboards, only about 40% of the objection I thought I had
for them pertains. But it's still an important 40%, and since it turns out
that Best Buy sells numeric keypads specifically designed to plug into a
laptop, it can't be just me.]
Jesper Lauridsen
> On 2009-11-08 14:21:36 -0800, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) said:
>
>> On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:16:23 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>> I've _seen_ laptop and notebook keyboards. .... And
>> none of them come with a computer-screen-size screen; all are at least
>> somewhat smaller, to the tune of 25% or more.
>
> MacBook Pro, and I've had numerous "real computers" that had smaller
> screens than that.
I've seen a laptop with a 20-inch (or maybe 22) screen.
I don't remember what the keyboard looked like, but given the space
available for it, I bet it was a full keyboard.
Jesper Lauridsen
>
> To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard to it, AND
> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
>
> Plus, you can't stack 18 paperback books on top of a laptop's monitor while
> it's in use, and leave them there.
But you just told us the laptop screen *wouldn't* be in use, so what's the
problem?
Mike Ash
<a62c386c-f851-47f4...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> Before you go, are other users seeing this thread split into lots of
> pieces, several started by me? Maybe it's another way for Google
> Groups to make everyone's day more of the interesting challenge that
> we all crave?
This is a "feature" of Google Groups. It just can't handle large threads
properly. I recommend getting a proper newsreader and news service. I
use eternal-september.org for the service and they're quite good, and
completely free.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Mike Ash
> > I don't suppose that was around in the early 1990s, was it? That
> > was when I was reluctantly working in a Mac because that was what
> > they had in the Cozzlab, and I called Apple to ask if there was a
> > way that I could hotkey everything so I needn't use the mouse.
> > Some confused cross-talk ensued, and finally I said, "No, you
> > don't understand. I want to fix it so I never have to use the
> > mouse AT ALL." Apple employee, genuinely puzzled: "Why would
> > anyone want never to use the mouse?" End of conversation.
> >
> > [Because it takes my hand off the keyboard, you silly git.]
>
> Silly indeed, because I'm fairly sure that even then all commands could
> be carried out from the keyboard, although some of them (like Restart or
> Shut Down were complicated, multi-key commands).
Not on an early 90s Mac, not unless you count the ability to move the
mouse cursor around (slowly, painfully) with the keyboard as "could be
carried out from the keyboard".
Even on a modern Mac, various common tasks like moving windows around
and resizing them can't be done without using the mouse.
Garrett Wollman
Jesper Lauridsen <uselastname...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I've seen a laptop with a 20-inch (or maybe 22) screen.
One important point, however, is that it's nearly (if not completely)
impossible to get a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio these days -- or a
monitor, for that matter. A 20-inch diagonal works out to:
4:3 12" x 16" (exactly)
16:10 10.6" x 17.0"
16:9 9.8" x 17.4"
I would much rather have a foot of vertical real estate than ten
inches, no matter how wide you made the screen. There are
extraordinarily few things that I ever do that make me say "I wish
this screen were a bit wider". (The fact that with a monitor --
although not a laptop, unless it's a tablet -- you can often rotate
the screen 90 degrees is little help, since ten inches is not nearly
wide enough. But apparently The Industry assumes that the only thing
people do with computers these days is watch movies....)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
I like the IBM (now Lenovo) "trackpoint" so much vs a mouse that I checked
into whether they made desktop keyboards with one. Turns out that they do
or at least did. I looked around a bit online and didn't find any that
day on ebay, but they are out there and one day I'll have one. Hands on
the keyboard at all times..
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
David DeLaney
>Jesper Lauridsen <uselastname...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>I've seen a laptop with a 20-inch (or maybe 22) screen.
>
>One important point, however, is that it's nearly (if not completely)
>impossible to get a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio these days -- or a
>monitor, for that matter. A 20-inch diagonal works out to:
>
> 4:3 12" x 16" (exactly)
> 16:10 10.6" x 17.0"
> 16:9 9.8" x 17.4"
>
>I would much rather have a foot of vertical real estate than ten
>inches, no matter how wide you made the screen. There are
>extraordinarily few things that I ever do that make me say "I wish
>this screen were a bit wider". (The fact that with a monitor --
>although not a laptop, unless it's a tablet -- you can often rotate
>the screen 90 degrees is little help, since ten inches is not nearly
>wide enough. But apparently The Industry assumes that the only thing
>people do with computers these days is watch movies....)
Agreed, from my recent (yesterday) research. In fact, I'm told that the TV
manufacturers here have stopped making TV-shaped screens _entirely_ now -
they're ALL 16x9 (or 16x10) 'widescreen'. Which has unfortunate consequences
- read "big black bars on either side" - any time you try to display content
that is TV-screen-shaped. Like, say, nearly any older TV show... And yeah,
it followed suit over in the computer department too, all the separatable
monitors were both flatscreen and widescreen.
Granted, newer games may have the content available to fill up those
stretches of screen. But that doesn't help those of us with, say, a PS2.
Dave "which I understand are STILL selling pretty well" DeLaney
David DeLaney
Can't buy monitors thicker than an inch or so nowadays, essentially.
Dave "see rest of thread" DeLaney
Robert Carnegie
> Garrett Wollman <woll...@bimajority.org> wrote:
> >Jesper Lauridsen <uselastnamedotfirstn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>I've seen a laptop with a 20-inch (or maybe 22) screen.
>
> >One important point, however, is that it's nearly (if not completely)
> >impossible to get a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio these days -- or a
> >monitor, for that matter. A 20-inch diagonal works out to:
>
> > 4:3 12" x 16" (exactly)
> > 16:10 10.6" x 17.0"
> > 16:9 9.8" x 17.4"
>
> >I would much rather have a foot of vertical real estate than ten
> >inches, no matter how wide you made the screen. There are
> >extraordinarily few things that I ever do that make me say "I wish
> >this screen were a bit wider". (The fact that with a monitor --
> >although not a laptop, unless it's a tablet -- you can often rotate
> >the screen 90 degrees is little help, since ten inches is not nearly
> >wide enough. But apparently The Industry assumes that the only thing
> >people do with computers these days is watch movies....)
>
> Agreed, from my recent (yesterday) research. In fact, I'm told that the TV
> manufacturers here have stopped making TV-shaped screens _entirely_ now -
> they're ALL 16x9 (or 16x10) 'widescreen'.
That is "TV shaped" now. Or soon.
> Which has unfortunate consequences
> - read "big black bars on either side" - any time you try to display content
> that is TV-screen-shaped. Like, say, nearly any older TV show...
I'm planning to run a touchscreen virtual (non-)"remote control"
program on top of "full screen" playback of _The Daily Show_, on my
netbook/tablet. But I'm not 100% sure it will work. I'm considering
AutoHotkey or PowerPro for this. I've used both. I think I can
feasibly have an AutoHotkey form appear /only/ when the video player
is playing, or I can have PowerPro pop up from the side of the screen.
Cryptoengineer
> In article
> <a62c386c-f851-47f4-95a1-d1b527f8d...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > Before you go, are other users seeing this thread split into lots of
> > pieces, several started by me? Maybe it's another way for Google
> > Groups to make everyone's day more of the interesting challenge that
> > we all crave?
>
> This is a "feature" of Google Groups. It just can't handle large threads
> properly. I recommend getting a proper newsreader and news service. I
> use eternal-september.org for the service and they're quite good, and
> completely free.
Too true. Anytime a thread exceeds 1001 messages, GG stops appending
followups, and creates new threads out of any messages that followup
on the first 1001.
This is, I think, the fastest I've ever seen a text thread hit that
marker.
pt
erilar
Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
> In article
> <a62c386c-f851-47f4...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > Before you go, are other users seeing this thread split into lots of
> > pieces, several started by me? Maybe it's another way for Google
> > Groups to make everyone's day more of the interesting challenge that
> > we all crave?
>
> This is a "feature" of Google Groups. It just can't handle large threads
> properly. I recommend getting a proper newsreader and news service. I
> use eternal-september.org for the service and they're quite good, and
> completely free.
That's what I switched to after my ISP cut off my newsgroup access
"because no one was using it" (Apparently there were half a dozen of
us). I used GoogleGroups(UGH) to ask for advice and learned about
eternal-sepember.org.
--
Erilar, biblioholic
bib-li-o-hol-ism [<Gr biblion] n. [BIBLIO + HOLISM] books, of books:
habitual longing to purchase, read, store, admire, and consume books in excess.
erilar
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> [I do have to partially retract one earlier statement: having looked at
> current laptop keyboards, only about 40% of the objection I thought I had
> for them pertains. But it's still an important 40%, and since it turns out
> that Best Buy sells numeric keypads specifically designed to plug into a
> laptop, it can't be just me.]
Tastes differ 8-) I hate the extra width on my wireless keyboard caused
by a numeric keypad I never use that just gets in the way, but only
discovered recently that there ARE some without it. Needless to say,
when I travel somewhere with my laptop, the "missing" 6 inches doesn't
bother me. But I can NOT exist long without my wireless mouse. I HATE
that scrabble-your-fingers-around mucky "touchpad".
erilar
<1c5fef45-0f99-4ff9...@37g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> Well, it's not an /instruction/ for use. And good ergonomics for
> normal computer use are to sit upright - imagine someone firmly grips
> your head and pulls up, go with it - and having the screen straight in
> front of your eyes. Slouched in armchair is not good for the spine.
Laptops are not too bad in a recliner that raises your knees 8-)
Scott Lurndal
>In article <hdaqmc$4fg$3...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>Jesper Lauridsen <uselastname...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I've seen a laptop with a 20-inch (or maybe 22) screen.
>
>One important point, however, is that it's nearly (if not completely)
>impossible to get a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio these days -- or a
>monitor, for that matter. A 20-inch diagonal works out to:
>
> 4:3 12" x 16" (exactly)
> 16:10 10.6" x 17.0"
> 16:9 9.8" x 17.4"
>
>I would much rather have a foot of vertical real estate than ten
>inches, no matter how wide you made the screen. There are
>extraordinarily few things that I ever do that make me say "I wish
>this screen were a bit wider". (The fact that with a monitor --
>although not a laptop, unless it's a tablet -- you can often rotate
>the screen 90 degrees is little help, since ten inches is not nearly
>wide enough. But apparently The Industry assumes that the only thing
>people do with computers these days is watch movies....)
As a programmer, I'll take wider over taller. If I can get three
60-line xterms side by each, I'm a happy camper.
scott
Mike Ash
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
Same here. There are diminishing returns for being able to see more of a
single file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've yet to
reach that point for viewing more files simultaneously horizontally,
despite having nearly 4,000 horizontal pixels now.
If I really wanted to, I could rotate my monitors so that the long
dimension is vertical. I've never felt any need to do so, though.
Michael Stemper
>::: I _definitely_ have to use a nonstandard mouse, because there's not
>::: a flat surface over there.
>
>:: I've used an optical mouse on a non-flat-non-hard surface, much like
>:: the surface of a cushy chair arm. A ball-mouse might have problems,
>:: but the optical mouse didn't.
>
>: That's what mine is. Works fine.
>
>Plus I just now tried and it works fine on my pantleg.
>It'd probably even work if the mouse were in your pocket...
Or are you just happy to see us?
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Life's too important to take seriously.
Michael Stemper
>Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
>>Jesper Lauridsen <uselastname...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>One important point, however, is that it's nearly (if not completely)
>>impossible to get a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio these days -- or a
>>I would much rather have a foot of vertical real estate than ten
>>inches, no matter how wide you made the screen.
I just recently picked up a laptop, and am feeling the vertical
pinch, as well. I'll eventually remedy this with a docking station
and a big monitor.
>manufacturers here have stopped making TV-shaped screens _entirely_ now -
>they're ALL 16x9 (or 16x10) 'widescreen'. Which has unfortunate consequences
>- read "big black bars on either side" - any time you try to display content
>that is TV-screen-shaped.
Simlar to the big black bars above and below any newere movie that I watch
on my TV-shaped TV?
Garrett Wollman
Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>Same here. There are diminishing returns for being able to see more of a
>single file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've yet to
>reach that point for viewing more files simultaneously horizontally,
Funny, I would have said the same thing with the dimensions reversed.
Wayne Throop
: Can't buy monitors thicker than an inch or so nowadays, essentially.
The one I bought most recently (about two years ago iirc, maybe a bit
less) is about 2.75 inches thick (neglecting the base). And it's a model
that's still sold, and it's successors have much the same form-factor.
So if "more than two and a half times as thick" can be included in the
"or so, essentially", then yes. It's a bit tough to buy crt monitors
these days.
Now once you get to oled or other really fancy formats, or maybe even
universally go to led backlighting instead of electroluminescent...
but that day isn't here yet.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Wayne Throop
: Can't buy monitors thicker than an inch or so nowadays, essentially.
Afterthought to previous reply: if you just want to use up the same amount
of space as your crt display, just build one of these out of plywood:
http://sheol.org/display-box.jpg
and set (or bolt) the new display on the little shelf. Then you've got
a place to tuck wires or other mess behind the display, and you can set
books (or cats) on top of it.
erilar
> Same here. There are diminishing returns for being able to see more of a
> single file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've yet to
> reach that point for viewing more files simultaneously horizontally,
> despite having nearly 4,000 horizontal pixels now.
I can have many more things on my laptop monitor at once and still reach
at least part of them than on my squarer old monitor. And they look
pretty much the same size. I prefer the longer rectangle.
erilar
Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> wrote:
> I hate mouses, and have never used one on a computer of my own. A
> standard trackball comes with the same buttons, plugs into the same
> socket, and doesn't demand a flat surface, or all that acreage I never
> have to spare. It can be used anywhere, including sitting on the arm
> of the comfy armchair.
My wireless optical mouse works on all manner of odd surfaces, from the
couch cushion I'm sitting on, the nearest chair arm, or even the corner
of the laptop surface, all better than that horrible little trackpad on
the laptop.
Wayne Throop
: I hate the extra width on my wireless keyboard caused
: discovered recently that there ARE some without it.
Yes, I've been using a so-called "mini-keyboard" (typyically less
than 90 keys on one rather than more than a hundred) for a long time,
which means I have to move my hand only half as far to reach the mouse.
Plus, the keyboard layout is much more similar to my laptop, so there's
no reflex stumbling (or at least less of it) when switching back and forth.
Plus, there's slightly more room for the cats to lay on the desktop,
always a useful feature. (For me, the keyboard and mouse on a tray
under the desktop doesn't work well; feels way too low.)
Even then, it has lots of keys I rarely use. However, improving it in
that regard, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard
means no "fn" keys, which are useful for interacting with the bios of
most computers, and for occasional programs like VNC. Plus, of course,
the HHK is way mega-expensive.
erilar
> ::: I _definitely_ have to use a nonstandard mouse, because there's not
> ::: a flat surface over there.
>
> :: I've used an optical mouse on a non-flat-non-hard surface, much like
> :: the surface of a cushy chair arm. A ball-mouse might have problems,
> :: but the optical mouse didn't.
>
> : That's what mine is. Works fine.
>
> Plus I just now tried and it works fine on my pantleg.
> It'd probably even work if the mouse were in your pocket...
> <pause> yep, it does. Probably some wireless rodents would
> have problems, but plenty would not, eg, rodents with blue teeth.
They are very adaptable little rodents, aren't they? They also work on
the side of the cushion you're sitting on if you're in the middle of a
couch 8-)
Wayne Throop
:: 60-line xterms side by each, I'm a happy camper.
: Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com>
: Same here. There are diminishing returns for being able to see more
: of a single file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've
: yet to reach that point for viewing more files simultaneously
: horizontally, despite having nearly 4,000 horizontal pixels now.
True... thugh, only 3, and only 60-line? My not-extravagant-nowdays
displays fit three-and-a-third 75-line xterms. Though as I said elsethread
recently, perhaps I should be using a larger font.
Web pages, though... I can only fit two side-by-side without going to
extreme contortions. Though the "zoom" feature of firefox3 is nice...
It's amazing how many apps think they should size themselves to take
the whole screen, tsk. Greedy buggers.
David DeLaney
>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
>: Can't buy monitors thicker than an inch or so nowadays, essentially.
>
>Afterthought to previous reply: if you just want to use up the same amount
>of space as your crt display, just build one of these out of plywood:
Okay, so I have to buy a hammer. And nails. Or a screwdriver and screws.
And plywood. And bandaids.
>and set (or bolt) the new display on the little shelf. Then you've got
>a place to tuck wires or other mess behind the display, and you can set
>books (or cats) on top of it.
Alas, the only cat I have is stuffed. (It's probably just as well; I'm home
enough now to keep an eye on a cat, but do not have nearly enough open space
to accommodate one. Or more.)
Dave
Wayne Throop
:: file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've yet to reach
:: that point for viewing more files simultaneously horizontally,
: wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
: Funny, I would have said the same thing with the dimensions reversed.
So... You'd rather have 3 displays of 24 lines of 240 characters,
instead of three displays of 72 lines of 80 characters? Seems... odd.
So I'm probably misinterpreting you. But once there are 80 or maybe 100
characters across, adding more does no good; but adding more lines *does*
do good. So if you want more screen real eastate to see more of each
file, vertical is better. But (as in the above) if you want more screen
real estate to see more files, horizontal is better. Becaise. easier
to have "more of same file" be one direction, and "different file"
be the other, rather than have them both be the same direction; and
"more of the same file" is better vertical. Or so it seems to me.
Wayne Throop
: Okay, so I have to buy a hammer. And nails. Or a screwdriver and screws.
: And plywood. And bandaids.
"In a few days, a clean shirt should be enough
to protect them while they finish healing."
"If I had a shirt, I could wash it, sure.
If I had a bucket. And soap."
--- Dag Bluefield and Ford Chicory,
in The Sharing Knife: Passage
Brad Sims
>
> I like the IBM (now Lenovo) "trackpoint" so much vs a mouse that I checked
> into whether they made desktop keyboards with one. Turns out that they do
> or at least did. I looked around a bit online and didn't find any that
> day on ebay, but they are out there and one day I'll have one. Hands on
> the keyboard at all times..
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/en104wh.html
104 key, IBM Model M style buckling springs with the trackpoint.
USB or PC/2 connections
$99.00
--
"Remember, when the tea was taxed they threw it in the harbor,
but when they came for their guns they shot the bastards dead!"
-- Ted Nugent
Mike Ash
wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) wrote:
> In article <mike-C3FB3F.1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
> >Same here. There are diminishing returns for being able to see more of a
> >single file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've yet to
> >reach that point for viewing more files simultaneously horizontally,
>
> Funny, I would have said the same thing with the dimensions reversed.
Probably depends greatly on individual habits.
I try to keep functions/methods fairly short. If one goes beyond the
ability of my 1100 vertical pixels to display it, it's time to start
breaking it up. If I need to cross-reference within a file, it's
probably far enough away that a little more vertical space won't get me
there, so I'm better off just opening a second editor window on the same
file. Meanwhile I tend to work on a ton of different files
simultaneously, and being able to see them all is a huge bonus.
If your habits differ from this then I'm not surprised you'd prefer
things to be different. In particular, in my experience, the habit of
having multiple editor windows open simultaneously is uncommon.
Scott Lurndal
>:: As a programmer, I'll take wider over taller. If I can get three
>:: 60-line xterms side by each, I'm a happy camper.
>
>: Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com>
>: Same here. There are diminishing returns for being able to see more
>: of a single file vertically once you reach a certain point, but I've
>: yet to reach that point for viewing more files simultaneously
>: horizontally, despite having nearly 4,000 horizontal pixels now.
>
>True... thugh, only 3, and only 60-line? My not-extravagant-nowdays
>displays fit three-and-a-third 75-line xterms. Though as I said elsethread
>recently, perhaps I should be using a larger font.
"larger font" bingo. That, and I use the same xresources/xsession on a
dozen or so systems, some with 1200 vert pixels but some with 768. 60
lines is a comfortable compromise.
1/3 of an xterm doesn't seem very useful :-)
I tend to, when editing a large project, run a full-screen gvim split
both vertically and horizontally into 6 windows (3 x 2) editing either
different files, or different portions of the same file. No mouse required
to move between windows in this environment (twm doesn't support alt-tab)
scott
W. Citoan
> In article <hdaqmc$4fg$3...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Jesper Lauridsen <uselastname...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I've seen a laptop with a 20-inch (or maybe 22) screen.
>
> impossible to get a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio these days -- or a
>
> 4:3 12" x 16" (exactly)
> 16:10 10.6" x 17.0"
> 16:9 9.8" x 17.4"
>
> extraordinarily few things that I ever do that make me say "I wish
> this screen were a bit wider". (The fact that with a monitor --
> although not a laptop, unless it's a tablet -- you can often rotate
> the screen 90 degrees is little help, since ten inches is not nearly
> wide enough. But apparently The Industry assumes that the only thing
> people do with computers these days is watch movies....)
The ability to have two documents side by side and have the current page
of both of them fully readable is such a nice feature for me that's gone
to a must have.
- W. Citoan
--
An enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips, but in his heart he imagineth how
to throw thee into a pit: he will weep with his eyes, but if he find
opportunity, he will not be satisfied with blood.
-- Ecclesiasticus (Book of Sirach)
Wayne Throop
: If your habits differ from this then I'm not surprised you'd prefer
: things to be different. In particular, in my experience, the habit of
: having multiple editor windows open simultaneously is uncommon.
Really? Don't you count emacs tiled buffers as "mutliple editor windows"?
Of course, those most naturally seem to split vertically (last I used emacs,
which is some time ago). I prefer to manage screen real estate with
the window manager, rather than have a pseudo-window-manager inside one
of the windows (except, of course, for tabs, and maybe remote desktops).
Wayne Throop
: 1/3 of an xterm doesn't seem very useful :-)
Actually, it's surprisingly useful, if the window manager allows you to
do things like select text out of it without fronting it. The first
third of the lines are usually enough to figure out what lines you
want to snag, and... well, it's useful, IME. Sadly, few window managers
nowdays allow you to operate on a window without fronting it. NAICT.
You don't happen to know how to do that with gnome or xfce?
I can get a similar effect by turning wrap off and shrinking the window,
but I pine for the fjords of just having it peek out from the background,
which was in some ways more convenient.
erilar
> : erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid>
> : I hate the extra width on my wireless keyboard caused
> : by a numeric keypad I never use that just gets in the way, but only
> : discovered recently that there ARE some without it.
>
> Yes, I've been using a so-called "mini-keyboard" (typyically less
> than 90 keys on one rather than more than a hundred) for a long time,
> which means I have to move my hand only half as far to reach the mouse.
That's one of the reasons I dislike the extra keys.
> Plus, the keyboard layout is much more similar to my laptop, so there's
> no reflex stumbling (or at least less of it) when switching back and forth.
That would also be nice.
> Plus, there's slightly more room for the cats to lay on the desktop,
> always a useful feature.
I have a friend with cats who do things like that. My dog owns all
the other furniture in the house, but not the desk 8-)
> (For me, the keyboard and mouse on a tray
> under the desktop doesn't work well; feels way too low.)
My desk is an ancient and venerable teacher's desk with all manner of
space on top, but no keyboard tray. There IS a pull-out section on the
right I can use for more space for papers and such or for an armrest 8-)
>
> Even then, it has lots of keys I rarely use. However, improving it in
> that regard, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard
> means no "fn" keys, which are useful for interacting with the bios of
> most computers, and for occasional programs like VNC. Plus, of course,
> the HHK is way mega-expensive.
Would those be those F# keys? I only know what they're for by
looking at the little symbols on the ones on the laptop 8-)
>
>
> Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
--
Robert Carnegie
In the Lite 2 for Mac model, at least, it appears to have a laptop-
style Fn key. If that /is/ like the laptop Fn, I gather it will
generate "real" key scancodes, or whatever, at about the lowest level
of keyboard/computer communication, for the Fn combinations - this
means that you can't really remap them, unless it's very clever about
that - but Fn 1 through 0 appear to have functions written on the key
"fronts" which may be F1-F12 (it goes on after 0).
<http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/26/happy-hacking-keyboard-lite-2-for-
mac-touts-apple-key-demotes-c/>
Robert Bannister
> In article <7lrqouF...@mid.individual.net>,
> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>> In article <7lr3tmF...@mid.individual.net>,
>>> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
>>>> declared:
>>>>> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>>>>> David DeLaney wrote:
>>>>>>>> How about if they offered you a computer, or a metal tool?
>>>>>>> Computer? Laptop? Turn down. Desktop? What OS does it run? What are
>>>> its specs?
>>>>>>> Yes, I'm picky.
>>>>>> So for the sake of space to put it in, you'd turn down a laptop
>>>>>> computer, but not a desktop? I'm curious to see your argument.
>>>>> To use a laptop correctly, I'd need to attach a full-size keyboard
>> to it, AND
>>>>> a mouse, and a computer screen large enough to see things on.
>>>> My laptop has a larger screen than my desktop -- and I sit with it
>>>> closer to my face, increasing its relative size in my field of vision.
>>>>
>>>> The keyboard is comparable in size to the one I use on my desktop,
>>>> except the laptop doesn't have a number pad.
>>>>
>>>>> The last might
>>>>> be mitigatable if there's large-size laptops out there, but not the second.
>>>> Who needs a mouse for anything other than audio or photo editing?
>>>> Use Launchy and keyboard shortcuts for everything else.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.launchy.net/
>>> I don't suppose that was around in the early 1990s, was it? That
>>> was when I was reluctantly working in a Mac because that was what
>>> they had in the Cozzlab, and I called Apple to ask if there was a
>>> way that I could hotkey everything so I needn't use the mouse.
>>> Some confused cross-talk ensued, and finally I said, "No, you
>>> don't understand. I want to fix it so I never have to use the
>>> mouse AT ALL." Apple employee, genuinely puzzled: "Why would
>>> anyone want never to use the mouse?" End of conversation.
>>>
>>> [Because it takes my hand off the keyboard, you silly git.]
>>>
>> Silly indeed, because I'm fairly sure that even then all commands could
>> be carried out from the keyboard, although some of them (like Restart or
>> Shut Down were complicated, multi-key commands).
>
> I would've thought so. But this guy at Apple didn't know them.
> Possibly because he believed that no one wanted them, therefore
> they didn't exist.
>
I don't know whether you're talking about the Apple website or an Apple
shop - the latter seem to attract particularly unhelpful staff. Your guy
didn't believe no one wanted them - /he/ didn't want them and therefore
had no interest.
I go in to buy a microphone and get a guy whose only interest is MP3; I
go to buy an external storage device and get a guy who only knows about
something I don't even understand... somehow, these shops are a lure for
one-track mind sales staff.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
> On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:34:38 +0800, Robert Bannister
> ever was on the Mac.
>
I'm pretty sure it always was and is. With my previous Mac, the monitor
frequently wouldn't start up and I quite quickly learned to select my
log-in icon, log in and either restart or shut down using only keys.
It used to be that most menus could be accessed with Command + the first
letter of the menu item, but now there are too many menu items, but I
don't doubt there are key strokes for most things if not everything
somewhere. What is annoying is that this kind of information is not easy
to track down.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Carnegie
Uh, yeah - except that a 4:3 aspect programme should look about
equally good on a black-bars showing on 16:9 or on a 4:3 screen of
equal height - but in a letterbox movie you're really losing picture
quality. Having said that, I'm not too sure that they're making
movies in 16:9 either. So you still get the letterbox.
Wayne Throop
: Uh, yeah - except that a 4:3 aspect programme should look about
: equally good on a black-bars showing on 16:9 or on a 4:3 screen of
: equal height - but in a letterbox movie you're really losing picture
: quality. Having said that, I'm not too sure that they're making
: movies in 16:9 either. So you still get the letterbox.
Hm. For an equivalent resolution, are you really using more, or are
you just supposing the letterbox-on-4:3 situation is starting from
480 pixels (or less) vertically, while the others are starting from 720
or 1080, and so have more to spare?
In fact... if I've done my arithmetic right (which I may not have),
displaying 16/10 on 3/4, the letterbox has 83 percent of the pixels in
use, while going the other way 'round, only 72 percent of the pixels
are in use.
I suppose it's the "of equal height" comparison, meaning the 16/10 screen
starts with more pixels. But... why not make them equal width?
But in any event, rather than putting bars on the side to watch 4/3
formatted shows, I tend to zoom in and chop off the top and bottom of
the image. It's amazing how seldom that matters, compared to chopping
off the edges going the other way. So at least I'm using all the pixels
of the screen, if not of the image. Of course, some folks just stretch
the picture horizontally. That drives me nuts, and can barely stand
to watch it. And then there's displaying the center third in correct
ratio, and stretching the outer thirds even more to cover the pixels;
that drives me even worse nuts, especially when there's a pan going on.
It astounded me that a majority of folks didn't even notice it.
"I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning,
Like a whirlpool it never ends."
--- Tommy Roe
Dorothy J Heydt
I am talking about Apple, Inc., in Cupertino. I called them, got
transferred to a techie, and the conversation was as I described
above.
I don't think Apple had a website in the early 1990s; I don't
think anybody had back then. I do recall seeing a Mac store in
Berkeley, but the Mac I was using belonged to the lab, not me, and
hadn't been bought through the store.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Garrett Wollman
>: sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>: 1/3 of an xterm doesn't seem very useful :-)
>
>Actually, it's surprisingly useful, if the window manager allows you to
>do things like select text out of it without fronting it.
The jargon here is actually "raising". The inevitable refrain, of course, is
"...and that's why click-to-focus[1] is *evil*". (And the accompanying
subliminal message goes "twm is my friend... twm is my friend...".)
-GAWollman
[1] Yes, I know that click-to-focus is actually orthogonal to the
issue that Wayne's complaining about. But all of the click-to-focus
environments I've ever seen, without exception, automatically raise
the focused window, so the easiest solution to Wayne's issue is to
switch to a window manager that isn't hard-wired for click-to-focus.
I once had Emacs configured to automatically raise itself whenever it
got the focus, but after a while I realized how annoying that was and
turned it off. VM, I think, will still raise itself in some
circumstances, but I almost always have my mail-reading frame on top
anyway. I've been a twm user for twenty years now, and some of the
stuff in my .twmrc was written (by the guy I cribbed it from) to
emulate the behavior of uwm, which was twm's predecessor. Long live
twm!
Garrett Wollman
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>I don't think Apple had a website in the early 1990s; I don't
>think anybody had back then.
I suspect you will find that a fairly large proportion of the regulars
in this newsgroup did.
(I was a late bloomer: I didn't start a Web site until 1994.)
-GAWollman
John F. Eldredge
> In article <7lr4crF...@mid.individual.net>, Sean O'Hara
> <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>In the Year of the Earth Ox, the Great and Powerful David DeLaney
>>declared:
>>>
>>> How, when I'd have to separate the keyboard from the monitor just to
>>> get it to fit onto my computer-table-with-tray the same way?
>>>
>>> Or else I could stick the laptop up on the table proper, where the
>>> monitor sits now, and keep the tray always tucked in because it wasn't
>>> needed ... and still have lost the entire space where the laptop was
>>> now sitting, which would be the space where the monitor sits
>>> currently.
>>
>>Methinks you're missing the point of a *lap*top.
>
> Except the last time I had a laptop -- it was an IBM ThinkPad, and a
> very nice one too -- I were warned *not* to put it on my lap because it
> would overheat. So I got a tray-table to put it on.
A lap-board (a flat piece of plywood or hardboard) would also work. The
key thing is not to block the air-flow to any vents on the underside.
Any hard, flat surface will do, but wood or hardboard will be more
comfortable than metal if the machine produces a lot of heat.
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria