FrameMaker on Windows - Issues Discussed Today

[Paul Findon]

Hi Dov,

Bit late getting back with this, but how do you like the glossy  
screen for reading, writing, etc? And can the 8710w drive your 30- 
inch Dell display?

When I've used laptops in an office for any length of time, I've  
always plugged in a USB keyboard, so the keyboard is not a real deal  
breaker for me. I plug in a mouse as well.

I also find laptop screens too low when used on a desk, leading to  
neck, shoulder aches. In one office where I work sometimes, I put my  
laptop on top of its original box, which brings the screen up to eye  
level, and use a USB keyboard and mouse on the desk. Obviously, it's  
not practical to carry a box around, but if you're planning on using  
your laptop on a desk for more than a day, it's worth thinking about  
raising the screen height, or connecting an external display.

Paul


> (3)     Last Autumn, I had a nearly four year old IBM ThinkPad R50p  
> (yup, it was
> still IBM at that point) blow out that could no longer be repaired.  
> Lenovo no longer
> carried a 15" 1600x1200 dpi notebook so I had to look elsewhere. I  
> did consider using
> a MacBook Pro configured with both MacOS and Windows, but there  
> were two major
> problems - (a) I was used to IBM style keyboards and as much as I  
> tried, I could not
> get comfortable with the MacBook Pro's keyboard and (b) I would  
> have needed a much
> larger internal drive (7200 rpm of course) than was available at  
> the time or even now
> to support two distinct operating systems. I ended up evaluating  
> and then buying an
> HP Compaq 8710w notebook system. It is similarly configured to the  
> high-end MacBook
> Pro (17" screen, high speed / high capacity 7200 rpm drive) and 3  
> GB of memory as
> well as sporting a BlueRay/DVD/CD player/burner (an exceptionally  
> useful feature if
> you have a 1920 x 1200 17" wide screen and want to watch hi-def  
> movies on the road).
> It also has a full numeric keypad which I always missed  
> tremendously on my notebooks.
> The system came with choice of XP or Vista. I took Vista (decided  
> to live dangerously
> as see what type of problems Adobe's users might encounter). Once I  
> configured the
> system to my liking (especially fixing the menus and Explorer to  
> work more like
> Windows 2000 than Vista although keeping the "Aero" theme as well  
> as turning off the
> UAC feature - the thing that keeps prompting you to approve certain  
> allegedly dangerous
> operations), I've been quite happy with that system. Very stable  
> and high productivity
> and those of you who may know something about me, I am  
> exceptionally fussy about such
> stuff. (Sarah, sorry to hear of your Vista problems. My experience  
> in helping others
> with Vista problems has been that their systems were  
> underconfigured in terms of
> hardware for proper Vista operation, software/OS misconfigured by  
> the computer
> vendor, and/or plagued by shovelware. Except for underconfigured  
> hardware, I've
> always been able to clean up such systems so that they run at least  
> as well as
> they would run under XP!)