The 'book is back! They said it would take a week at least and maybe two, but after less than two days my iBook (complete with a new and free logic board) is sitting on its desk again. Which is funny, since the VersaPro was displaying some really weird display problems today, too, which made me reboot in panic. So to finish my report about this week, here is my opinion about the best feature of Mac OS X (the fonts look so much better, especially the Asian ones) and the list of programs I had installed so far:

• Thunderbird (email client)
• Firefox (web browser)
• SharpReader (a newsfeed aggregator, I cannot live without those anymore)
• JEdit (my favorite text editor, Notepad is just useless. Had to install Java first which does not come with Windows.)
• Cygwin (bash, vi, perl, ssh, tar, gzip). Cygwin is a really wonderful project. It is a compatibility library that brings large parts of the Linux API to Windows and a huge collection of Unix applications building on top of that. And installing it has become very easy.
• StuffIt Expander (uncompresses files, but did not work, maybe because I refused to reboot after installing it)
• WinSCP (secure file copy program, but I had problems with it, so I used Cygwin instead)
• PuTTY (ssh client, to connect to Unix servers, but I switched to Cygwin after I had installed that anyway)
• Gaim (a multi-protocol chatting client, quite impressive feature set and the most popular project on Sourceforge)

I was lucky that Itoh-san, our tech support guy, could fix me up with his spare NEC VersaPro (Pentium III/700, Windows XP), which is quite decent. So here are some good points about it:

• There are more applications available for Windows. While this situation has improved a lot in recent years and you can get good Mac applications for almost everything you need to do, there are still a few gaps. This week I can use Oracle Enterprise Manager and Symantec PC Anywhere.
• Some applications are better in their Windows versions. OpenOffice sucks on the Mac, but runs fine on Windows. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection can open only one simultaneous connection on the Mac. Firefox can go fullscreen on Windows.
• I can make new folders and documents with a single mouse click.
• The login/logout fadein/fadeout effects are cool.

I admit that this list ended up a little short and unconvincing (maybe I should add mention to this helpful little doggie that pops up now and then to explain things) ...

I was not in office when they took my iBook away. It seems pretty certain that it is suffering from the well-known logic board issue (I hope that is the case, in fact, because if it is, Apple has to repair it for free). In any case, it will take about two weeks to get things fixed, so during this time I will be using a Windows XP notebook in office. And since the T-Files are a friendly and open-minded Mac blog (unlike certain others, who slam everything without the Apple logo and even make fun of people who are not happy with their failing iPod batteries or the fact that Apple applications always tend to require the latest OS version) I will start with some things I like about it --- tomorrow.