I got a Mac!
I, uuh… successfully broke my ThinkPad T61 the other day. Still not quite sure how I managed that! But the hinge just completely snapped, and I broke the LCD further whilst attempting to take the LCD bezel off.
So I was computerless! Well, not quite computerless, but working on the ThinkPad became a bit iffy. Two “fixes” were investigated: purchasing a temporary laptop whilst getting the T61 fixed; buying a new laptop to replace the T61 completely.
The first option – to buy a new laptop to use whilst getting the T61 repaired was thrown out of the window quite quickly. To the get the entire LCD assembly replaced on my T61 would have been prohibitively expensive, excaberated by two factors. a) I’d have to purchase a temporary laptop as well; b) I originally purchased the T61 with a high-resolution (1400×1050) LCD, which I had grown rather fond of. In addition to those two factors, I had also been planning on upgrading to a Mac in the relatively near future.
So we decided to go for the upgrade route! I put in order for a 13″ MacBook Pro, which arrived yesterday morning. After fiddling around with things for most of the day (or possibly more accurately: working out what various buttons did), I finally had it set up how I liked it. I can definitely say that the move to Apple/OS X was a good one, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
As can be expected from moving to a different operating system (and possibly even a different way of thinking), my “working environment” has had to be adjusted. I didn’t really like OS X’s Spaces (even though I was a huge fan of multiple desktops in Linux), and this has led me to only keeping open the applications which I’m actively using open. In the past, I’d have web/email on one desktop, IM on another desktop and code on my third desktop. However, I’d keep switching to IM/web/email whilst coding – not very productive! Using OS X has encouraged me to only open what I need to complete a particular task – so if I’m programming, I’ll have Eclipse or TextMate open, and only open Safari if I need to quickly look something up. That’s it. It has resulted in huge productivity gains – I’m not quite sure why I didn’t work this out before!
On another note, I’ve become a huge fan of TextMate and Tweetie. Now, when I was using Linux, I would never have even considered forking out some of my *ahem* hard-earned money for a program. Ever. If I was using Microsoft Windows I would either use an Open Source application which had been ported to Windows, or (I’m sorry to say) I would pirate it. Now I’m perfectly willing to pay for software, and plan to do so for TextMate and Tweetie as soon as I can. They are both amazing pieces of software, and I’d strongly recommend them to any OS X users. I’m also using MarsEdit to write this blog post, but I currently blog so infrequently that I’m not sure I’d be willing to purchase it. Perhaps if it encourages me to blog more, I’ll look into paying for a full version.
The same thing happend to my t61p ( the right hinge ), but using the guide from ibm/lenovo i was able to disassemble it without any major hickups ( a 1×1 mm pice of the plastic that covers the rear of the screen broke ). I orderd a replacement hinge from lenovos website and assembled the lappy and it’s now working just fine 
It’s actually quite compatible.
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