Too Many Words

I don’t often write about work, and that serves me perfectly well. But the improvement in my productivity (and interest) in my work over the last few days has been noticeable (if not impressive). Don’t get me wrong, I am always interested in what I do at my job (I love it) but certain tasks can get repetitive, difficult due to external conditions, etc. One change I implemented was to switch from my office PC to my MacBook Pro. Despite my brother’s allusions otherwise, the Mac is infinitely superior to the PC and yet doesn’t preclude me from using the tower to do anything I need it to. Here are a few steps I took to switch over:

1. Modified some group policy settings to allow my Mac to connect to user shares on the server the same way my office machine does. I can now edit all my code directly from my Mac in Coda rather than on the PC with Dreamweaver MX without having to remove it from the server. No local/remote issues, no upload delays.* Huge advantage.
2. Dual monitors on the Mac is more useful than one for each. I disconnected the LCD from the tower and used a DVI converter to attach it to my laptop. I arranged the screens so that the top edges are just slightly out of alignment. This means I still have access to the Exposé and Desktop hot-corners regardless of which screen I am on. I then used the new Remote Desktop Connection Client to connect to the (now headless) tower. I put this screen on the second monitor along with the live windows, and the code and other Mac applications are on the native screen. This almost replicates the normal setup except I now have Exposé access to switch between Windows and Mac.
3. Although the new RDC claims multiple connection handling, it’s not solid. I use the RDC within Windows to access another other PCs I need to through Terminal Services.
4. The disparate sets of modifier keys take a little while to get used to, just as it does when migrating from a PC to Mac or vice-versa. However, because they don’t overlap, I can hit my muscle-memory-embedded [Cmd + C] to copy something from my Mac, click in a Windows application and hit [Ctrl + V] to paste it. I can also [Cmd + Tab] and [Alt + Tab] to cycle through unique sets of applications. The list goes on and on.

*Not that this isn’t possible in Dreamweaver, but Coda is noticeably faster.

Filed under: Tips, Information, Technology