I spent yesterday evening organising and arranging my files. So far they have been on my external hard drive which was meant for backups, but I outgrew my notebook's hard drive and have been using that as main storage.
It's been scary because I have a nice little archive of the research materials I've gathered over the years and sizeable music collection. I'd be devastated if I'd lose either of them. Sure, I could rip the 300+ CD's again, but it would take forever. Again. And I'd never be able to replace the whole research archive.
I thought that it would be as simple as just copy the folders over to the Mac, but I've apparently stored things in duplicate or even triplicate. I need to weed out the extras or copy them to appropriate places more than once.
Having file formats that only Windows can read and not being able delete anything on the external HDD complicates things further. But never mind, I made the mess and I'll clean it up. When I'm done I'll have a kick-ass research archive, well organised music collection and the ability to actually take regular backups!
The Mac OS has features that are absolutely fabulous: Dashboard, Finder and Dock to start with. What I love most is that, as picky I am about how things work, I haven't needed to tweak the user interface much. Just a little. Installing software is a snap, in fact, it's brilliant!
Much love to Apple for designing such a beautiful OS.
Once I'm done organising I'll wipe the notebook and install Ubuntu. The Windows installation is about three years old and it's in dire need of re-install. Except that I never got any install disks from the store so I can't do that legally. It pisses me off that I've paid for it and can't re-install unless I buy another copy. MS won't be getting any more of my money if I can help it.
Besides, it's silly to spend money on a laptop that could have a meltdown at any moment. Maybe it'll last through the winter as the weather cools, maybe not. It's a perfect opportunity to mess around with Linux. I've been curious to try different versions of it for a while now.