I completely agree with Harry's observation about the glare screen "feature." I find it is quite literally an almost instant headache. There is an option with the macbook pro to pay a ransom to get a usable screen, so my wife did. On my macbook air, I found putting a dull dark grey background for a desktop helps considerably to cut down on the reflection, perhaps in part because it reflects my personality. Instead of buying iMacs, we now get mac minis and pair them with Samsung LED matte screen monitors. The improvement is considerable, and they are a lot less expensive too.
Bill On Aug 9, 2012, at 11:25 PM, Harry <ha...@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> wrote: > Hi > > My two ha'porth. > > For a laptop, this is the clincher for me - if you want to use your laptop > anywhere that has reasonable light levels (e.g. demonstrating to anyone in an > exhibition hall), you may well find that the beautiful shiny mirror that > Apple put on the front of their screens on most of their laptops makes your > investment almost useless in reasonable levels of ambient light. Unless I > could buy a Macbook with a matt screen I doubt I'd want to buy another one. > > Sometimes I wonder if my Macbook was "designed in California in a cave" to > paraphrase what it says on the sticker on the back... > > It runs all the software I want it to without problems, though, including > WIndows stuff via wine or VMWare. And I do *really* like OSX as an interface. > > On 9 Aug 2012, at 16:18, Andreas Förster wrote: >> >> Mind that if you buy a MacBook, there's only one (hefty 15") model without a >> mirror-coated screen. >> >> >> Andreas >> >> >> >> On 09/08/2012 3:58, Nat Echols wrote: >>> On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Jacob Keller >>> <j-kell...@fsm.northwestern.edu> wrote: >>>> one. Are there any really reasonable arguments for preferring Mac over >>>> windows (or linux) with regard to crystallography? What can Mac/Linux do >>>> that windows cannot (especially considering that there is Cygwin)? What >>>> wonderful features am I missing? >>> >>> Mac vs. Linux: mostly a matter of personal preference, but I agree >>> with Graeme. Most programs run equally well on either - with Coot a >>> partial exception, apparently due to problems with the X11 >>> implementation (but once you get used to these, it's not a big deal). >>> >>> Windows, on the other hand, simply doesn't support the full range of >>> modern crystallography software. And in my experience, it has >>> crippling flaws that mean some programs will always work better on >>> Mac/Linux. I wouldn't ever endorse trying to use Windows for serious >>> scientific computing unless you need to run an application that won't >>> work on any other OS, and as far as I know there isn't a single >>> (macromolecular) crystallography program that falls into this >>> category. >>> >>> -Nat >>> > > Harry > -- > Dr Harry Powell, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, MRC Centre, Hills Road, > Cambridge, CB2 0QH
