Fallen Into Knowledge

After classes today I hung out at PSU until 6pm so I could pick up my copy of Tiger from the campus bookstore.
Some observations on the New OS:
Dashboard is cool:  I think this is much more than mere eye candy:  some of widgets I’ll be using most:  the weather tracker, the dictionary/thesaurous the calculator, and the “wikit:” a stickynote program on steroids.
Spotlight is also cool:  I see myself using it whenever I need to find contacts or documents - it is faster to use Spotlight than to use the Finder even if I know right where the file is
Automator:  this one will take some time to learn, and I’m not sure that I’ll use it all that much, but I will be glad its there when I do want it.
Mail:  I’m not sure I’m a fan of the new look, but the smart-folders idea is great.
And the coolest - eyecandy-wise - feature is quicktime seven.  When streaming a movie trailer, I have to minimize it to make it fit on the screen!  And High Def (1080i) video is super sharp.  Very cool.
Well, Off to bed, we’ll see if spotlight is done indexing my morning…

I noticed that as of today i have been carrying around this laptop for a month.  Here are some statistics:

Number of times crashed:  0
Uptime, as of now:  ten days, seven hours, twenty-two minutes
Reason for last Reboot:  System Update to 10.3.9

Disk space:  28.16 GB free, out of 74 GB total
19 GB - music files
9 GB - Video Files
1.5 GB - Pictures
200 MB - Document Files

Emails this month, not including spam:  859.  (for an average of almost 30 per day)

It has been nice to have access to voice-mail, email, IM almost everywhere.  It has also been nice to take notes in class (I type faster than I write, and it tends to be more legible), to have eBook versions of the texts being discussed along side the Notes (I can search the text, cut and paste into the notes, and I have to take fewer books with me every day), and to write papers at the library.
I amazed at how much more useful laptops are now than they were when I got my first one in 1997 (as a graduation gift from my parents).  that one was a Pentium 150 with 16MB of RAM, and a 1.4 GB Harddrive and (!) a built-in CD-ROM drive:  this was about the best laptop money could then buy.  the current machine, 8 years later:  1.5 Ghz (G4 processor), 512 MB of RAM, 80 GB Harddrive, and a DVD/CD-RW drive.
I sometimes think how someone traveling forward in history even from the early 90’s would react to the world of today (surely not all of the reactions would be positive), let alone someone from the 50’s.  It boggles the mind.