The Road to Ubuntu (or Leopard) - screw the OS, move your apps online with Google

Adam Turner
Monday, 03 December 2007 08:52

Opinion and Analysis

I've been trying to bend Gutsy Gibbon and Leopard to my will so I can abandon Windows, but most of my problems can be solved by embracing online applications like Google Apps.

Yes, I said Leopard, aka Mac OS 10.5. I know I've been on the Road to Ubuntu, but it's really the Road from Windows. I want something more reliable than XP and I don't see any merit in going down the Vista path. If I'm looking for something that "just works", rather than making a religious statement, I should be open to Mac OS as well as Linux. As such, I've decided to recreate my XP standard operating environment on a 17 inch Mac Book Pro for a week -- running  Apple's latest cat, Leopard -- to see how it goes.

Recreating my SOE on a Mac presented the same initial challenge as Ubuntu - backups. I've got a complicated Windows backup regime that copies active text documents to an SD card every 10 minutes and the web every 30 minutes, along with my network drive. This way if I'm on deadline and my computer gets lost/stolen/dropped I can jump online anywhere and keep working.

Under XP I use Handy Backup, but recreating this backup regime under Ubuntu was a major drama because most apps either didn't offer the features I wanted or wouldn't play nicely with the FAT32 partition on my Maxtor Shared Storge network drive. Also, Ubuntu often refused to even see, let alone auto-mount, my SD card (in a PCMCIA card reader) or any attached USB stick. I also had major problems with file and folder permissions, but I finally cobbled together something basic .

Looking at the backup software available for Mac I ran into the same problem - none seemed to do everything I wanted. I'd say ChronoSync came closest. Yes, I know about Time Machine, but it's not the tool for the job in these circumstances. For starters, it doesn't run over a network.

Backing up aside, Mac has been far less hassle than Ubuntu. No permissions problems, no steep learning curve and no USB quirks, the latter the joy of using an OS that was designed for the specific hardware.

While looking for a Mac equivalent to Handy Backup, I was also looking for a text editor to replace NoteTab Pro. One of the things I really like about NoteTab Pro is that it has a proper auto-save feature, rather than the temp auto-save feature used by most office applications including Microsoft's offerings. I can't back up open documents if they're not auto-saving properly.

I couldn't find a Mac text editor that met all my needs. The main problem was that I wanted something with Tabs for multiple documents, like a browser. Having used a Tabbed text editor, I wasn't prepared to give this up but it meant crossing some otherwise great word processors off my list. That left me with text editors designed for programmers, which didn't have all the word processing features I wanted. Yes, I know I'm fussy, but if I have to use this app all day, every day, I think I'm entitled to be fussy.

It eventually occurred to me that an online word processor would let me kill a lot of birds with one stone. CONTINUED

sildenafil online sildenafil for sale buy viagra