Hey Oppo I got a new laptop today! What should I put on it?

"wunderwagen wants a longer roof" (wunderwagen) 09/12/2014 at 15:46 • Filed to: None

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I replaced my Toshiba Satellite with a new MacBook Pro today. The Toshiba bit the dust last night, so I upgraded. What apps or programs should I install? I already have security and Google Chrome. What else should I get? Here is my current wallpaper.

Sportwägen, Driver Of The Red Sportwagen > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 15:49

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pr0n?

texasfordfan > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 15:51

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Ubuntu.

But if you don't want to have to find some workaround to do some simple task on your computer 8 times a day, you should ignore my advice :)

Axial > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 15:51

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I would start by installing an OS that doesn't feature the most ham-fisted UI, ever.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > Axial 09/12/2014 at 15:54

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I plan to Parallels and install Windows 7 at some point.

 V8 Rustler > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 15:55

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-Parallels

-The Unarchiver

Those are the only two programs that I have installed besides chrome on my mac. All the other stuff such as Office (Office for mac sucks) and CAD/Engineering Programs are on windows.

deekster_caddy > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 15:55

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The non OEM stuff I use on a regular basis -

Chrome, VirtualBox (free emulator to install Windows for emergencies), MS Office, Steam, VLC, Handbrake (rip DVDs). Alternative to Office, Apple's own Pages is okay and I like the free OpenOffice too. I use MS Office cuz we use it at work...

Don't forget to get an external hard drive for backups. Time Machine rocks. Carbon Copy Cloner is a good free duping utility if you are going to do something major and want a bootable backup of your hard drive.

Other cool utility tips n tricks - power up holding down the "T" key and your Mac becomes an external hard drive (although it doesn't have firewire ports anymore). Power up holding down the "Option" key and you get recovery and other boot disk options.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof >  V8 Rustler 09/12/2014 at 15:58

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Parallels will be happening soon. Unarchiver is just what I was looking for as far as a file unzipper. Thanks!

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > deekster_caddy 09/12/2014 at 16:07

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Thanks a ton! I plan to get MS Office through my school for super cheap. I have an external hard drive that I will be setting up for Time Machine soon. I'll be checking out your other suggestions after work tonight.

Axial > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 16:14

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Nice.

I just can't get over the whole OSX dock thingy. I hate it so much.

JGrabowMSt > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 16:23

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Go through the System Preferences and turn on the Firewall.

I keep my computers app free unless they're needed for some kind of work. I don't waste my space on unnecessary crap because it was free or anything.

I suggest installing Windows in a virtual machine rather than Parallels or anything else, unless you need to attach peripherals other than USB devices. If anything happens to the windows install, you can delete the VHD and start fresh without any complications.

What MacBook configuration did you get?

deekster_caddy > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 16:29

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Skip Parallels and use VirtualBox. Basically the same, but free!

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > JGrabowMSt 09/12/2014 at 17:55

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I'm messing with the security setup later tonight after work.

Any suggestions on a virtual machine to run Windows?

I got a mid to late 2013 13.3" MacBook Pro with 2.5ghz intel i5, 4gb of RAM, 500gb Sata. I like it a lot so far.

7:07 > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 18:04

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Look up Hyperdock. If you are used to window snapping a la windows 7 then you might be interested. It's not free, but it's worth it.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > 7:07 09/12/2014 at 18:09

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I did like snapping windows in 7/8.1 and will check that out. Thanks!

JGrabowMSt > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 18:17

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I use VirtualBox. Free, good enough for me, and I have 3 virtual machines I use. For a while I used VMWare Fusion, but I guess I grew tired of it, and didn't want to have to keep paying for new versions. I have Windows 7, Windows 8, and for a while I had XP, but have since stopped using it. I don't activate windows when I install it in a virtual machine, so I do get the software licensing message every time, but in the end, it doesn't matter to me, I used it for programming EAS units because the software is Windows only. I'm not going to waste a license on a virtual machine that I may have to reinstall constantly, or may outright stop using. Back in my more intense linux days I used VMWare Workstation for Linux, and loved it because it worked so well. If I go back to using Linux on my desktop, I will probably drop the money on the latest version of it, but for casual use, there's no reason to spend money on that.

I have a 2011 15" i7 with the Matte Finish Hi-Res display (1680x1050), 16gb RAM and a 750gb HDD which needs to be replaced soon. I plan to use the computer until it's totally dead, and then replace it with a System76. My desktop will always run Windows, I have 8.1 Pro with Media Center on it, and because it's my dedicated workstation, I have the Adobe CS6 Master Collection, and I bought that as a student, so big big big savings. I actually use it more than I thought I would, which is good too.

I'm on 10.8.5 on my MBP at this point, and have no intention of upgrading further, because I have a lot of audio gear that will stop working if I do. I constantly check it for malware, but I have to be careful when I do, because many of the important software tools I have for work will be detected as malware and deleted. Makes things tough, but I just uncheck automatic deletion, and check that list twice. Linux is better for me at work because I don't have to worry about much, but as much as I like the features of this MBP, I'm not a huge Apple fan. I needed a Mac for when I did tech support for Avid briefly, to have the software open on both Mac or Windows, but now I don't really have that need. It's the mobile version of my desktop, which is convenient, but if it died tomorrow, I'm hard pressed to say I'd drop the money on fixing it.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > JGrabowMSt 09/12/2014 at 18:32

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You do a hell of a lot more than I do. The most I use my machine for is school work or editing photos in Lightroom 5. I'm a business student working on a Supply Chain Management major and possibly minor in Management Information Systems. As yet I haven't needed to run anything special for school.

Tim (Fractal Footwork) > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 18:35

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Pixelmator is my favorite photoshop alternative

Tim (Fractal Footwork) > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 18:38

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be warned from experience with virtualization:

I have Win7 dual-booted on my iMac and when I tried a parallels demo, my computer was slowed to a near halt as my reserve memory am was severely depleted.

I would recommend dual-booting

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 09/12/2014 at 19:06

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Thanks for the warning about virtualization. Is Pixelmator free?

JGrabowMSt > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 19:35

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How do you like Lightroom? My biggest beef with the software is how it manages photo libraries. I have my own organizational layout, and it gets quite goofed up by programs that re-organize things on me.

For your use, I can easily say you'll be fine with the laptop. I find it most useful in that the keyboard is pretty nice. Admittedly, not the nicest laptop keyboard I've used, but not that bad. The best one I've used was actually my Powerbook G4/first gen MacBook Pro. Those keyboards were absolutely fantastic. Great for long papers and such. The newer keyboards actually don't feel as nice to me, but oh well.

Just about any laptop would work great for you, so I can't say you'll have any problems with the MacBook Pro. I needed the 2011 because of the Firewire 800 and Thunderbolt connectors. It would have been great if they had USB3, but that's okay.

They're nice machines, I have to give them that much. Very few laptops on the market as well made as a MacBook Pro these days. The only beef I have is that the parts are somewhat expensive. The screens are actually really cheap, but the logic board or other miscellaneous cables are all pretty expensive. I guess that comes with the territory though.

As long as you keep up with backups you'll be fine. I would look at other things than Time Machine though, I'd look for something that just makes a clone of the hard drive. Reason being is that I hate being tied down to anything super specific. If you use Time Machine, you can only use Time Machine to restore the backup to another Mac. Just keeping a copy of your data on an external drive formatted as ExFAT or FAT32 means you can go to any new computer with your backup, rather than being tied down to Apple. That's just my viewpoint on it though. I prefer software that's cross platform for the same reason. If I don't have multiple options, things are not kosher. Best example is a video project I was doing for school in Premiere CS5. I was almost done, and on my laptop, the project would just crash whenever opening. No idea what happened, but it was bad. I downloaded the trial on my Win7 desktop, transferred the project, and picked up where I left off. If I was using Final Cut Pro, I would have been screwed. As a repair tech, moments like that are things I consider really important to share with customers so that they realize the importance of knowing what they're working with. I design studio computers as well, and those get the same level of detail. I need to be able to get to it all the time, no exceptions. I also put backup drives into the cost of my quotes because that extra $100 is absolutely nothing compared to the cost of sending a drive out to a recovery lab if it fails.

My biggest suggestion for you would be to utilize Google Drive for ever school paper you ever write. If you get handouts, try and scan them to PDF and upload them to drive, or save emailed docs to Drive. When something goes wrong, you'll be able to get to all of your work. When I was in school, I did this, and I'm so glad I did. I never lost a paper, and never lost handouts. It was a little time consuming at first, but saved me so much time later.

Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 20:34

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Put a sledgehammer through it.

Tim (Fractal Footwork) > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 20:35

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No, its like 30 bucks, but worth it.

The best free alternatives are Seashore ...and that's about it. There is Gimp, but I don't like it personally.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 09/12/2014 at 21:22

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I'll definitely check it out, hopefully there is a demo. I hate Gimp, terrible program.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > JGrabowMSt 09/12/2014 at 21:40

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I like everything about Lightroom except how it attempts to organize your files. I've used a variety of programs like Gimp and CS3, Lightroom has the best editing bits from Photoshop, much cheaper, and doesn't bog down the entire system. I'll give Pixelmator a try and see what else is out there for Mac but will probably end up sticking with Lightroom.

I think the keyboard feels better than my Toshiba Satellite ever did. Plus the back lighting is great under the keys.

Any suggestions on what I should use for a cloning backup other than Time Machine? I usually just dump my documents, photos, and music onto my external hard drive.

I'm a big advocate of Google Drive, I've been using it since last fall and haven't been let down yet. I'll definitely start scanning in worksheets and such, that is a great idea.

Thanks for all your help, seriously some great advice and I greatly appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experiences.

JGrabowMSt > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/12/2014 at 23:54

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If you're used to just dropping folders onto an external drive, I'd say that's the absolute best way to do it. Not to get too technical, but you can use ExFAT for the drive, or FAT32. The difference is that the FAT filesystem has a file size limit of 4gb. If you tried to copy a file that was 4gb or larger, it will just give you an error. ExFAT completely circumvents that issue, and as a bonus, is cross platform with Windows 7+ and Mac computers. That said, I've had a few weird happenings with ExFAT, so alternatively, you can use an NTFS formatted drive, and use NTFS software to allow you to write data to it. I have some software that came bundled with external drives that I can send you if you'd like. Paragon makes a driver, but $30 is a lot for something that you can get for free. In theory, Mac does actually have native read/write support for NTFS drives, but the problem is that it's 1) still in it's early stages and 2) not enabled by default. There's some terminal commands to get it working, and a lot of the time updates will reset it. Tuxera makes a reliable driver that bundles with most new Toshiba external drives that I've never had a problem with. Going that route is a lot easier than getting HFS+ support to work reliably in Windows. Retaining cross platform support is a big thing, especially because as a student, you don't want to be tied down to a system, as I said before.

Time Machine is a great tool, and has it's benefits, there's no denying that. When it's fully set up, Time Machine has the ability to go back nearly hour by hour if you deleted a file or needed to revert changes to a document. However, Google Documents (while it can't go back hour by hour) is cloud based, and saves as you work, meaning that you aren't going to have nearly as much of a reason to go back two hours for a document. When I was in school, I created a sub folder for my school (because I was a transfer student, and kept all of my work from my old school as well), and within that sub folder, I made a folder for each class, which was the course name and semester I took it. Within those folders are my work for most classes. The lab based classes were I was doing music recording or other work, obviously, I didn't use Google Drive, but it was a huge help. Because I also have had a hotmail account for a really long time, I also used Skydrive (now OneDrive) when I needed access to a word/excel/powerpoint file specifically. I personally found Google Drive way better, and actually my resume was done completely in Google Drive, but Microsoft's OneDrive definitely deserves honorable mention, because it saved me from a couple .docx files that google couldn't convert properly. I also give it brownie points because I had my account so long, I have 25gb free in One Drive. The online interface also allows for Skype in the browser, even on my Chromebook. That was a big deal, though it was released silently, and they kept it under the rug. Great to be aware of it though, so if you have issues with a docx, just make yourself an outlook.com account, and you'll have access to OneDrive, and be able to handle it.

I got so used using Photoshop for all of my editing needs, that I've tried out Lightroom, Aperture, and a slew of other programs, but I guess it was just habit that I couldn't break. I thought about getting Lightroom just for the noise reduction (which to be perfectly honest makes photoshop look bad). I guess lately I've just been too busy throwing my money other things.

Toshiba keyboards have always bothered me, which is funny because other than my MacBook Pro and Chromebook, I have a Toshiba Tecra M11. Everyone in my house has a Toshiba laptop. They're all totally different, but it's a brand we've never had serious trouble with. I find the keys just had a little too much resistance, and when I had to type long things, I didn't enjoy it as much. Even now, thinking back about my old MacBook Pro, I miss that keyboard a lot because of how light the keystrokes were, and how nicely it felt to use. The newer keyboards have a bit lighter feel, which is better, but mine feels little bit stiff lately. I guess I notice the weird things the most.

I think the only other thing to be careful with is your MagSafe Power Adapter. If you take a look in the manual, there's a really specific way to wrap the cord (which is why the power brick has the two folding pieces to wrap the cord around). I've seen so many power adapters get damaged because they're wrapped the wrong way and/or too tightly. The quality of most Apple bits is really high, until you get to their cables. I have successfully repaired a Lightning cable that my coworker destroyed after running it over with a wheelie chair a few times, and he had the gonads to tell me I was wasting my time doing it (I'm really good with a soldering iron, my dad was a wireman for the phone company back in the 60's, I learned from literally the best). The white shrink wrap that Apple uses is prone to tearing and cracking wherever it gets bent at a 90* angle. I don't know why, but it does. I can show you a picture of one of my MacSafe adapters and how the shrink wrap will eventually get really messed up. How and why, I'm not sure, but it's a fact of life with Apple chargers. If you ever need a new charger though, get one off Amazon, and manage the hassle of a return if it doesn't work, because $100 from Apple is ridiculous.

Other than that though, you should be all good to go with your new Mac, hopefully it's problem free for a long long time. You shouldn't really need to worry about viruses and malware on Apples unless you frequent the darker parts of the web. The chrome browser is about as safe as you can get, as it will keep you away from bad websites, and pairing with AdBlock will prevent most other problems. I don't run a dedicated anti-virus program on my Mac. I know some colleges require it to register the device, but in my experience, once the device is registered, you can go ahead and kind of forego their requirements. For the most part, an amusing rule of thumb I use is "if you would share the website with your grandmother, you should be okay." I keep the Firewall turned on, and in more extreme cases, make sure to change the software preferences to preventing non-Apple software from being installed. I may turn that off if I go ahead and install something I need, but re-enable the security feature afterwards. Regardless, I get the sense that you've got a good handle on your computer, and you should enjoy it.

Here's a wallpaper to add to your rotation:

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > JGrabowMSt 09/13/2014 at 14:14

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I'll reformat my Seagate external hard drive for ExFAT and give it a try. I'll definitely try out any software you wanna send me. Private message me on Twitter and I can give you my email, my twitter handle is @ankhordown.

I do a similar file sorting on my laptop, and I think I will sync it to Google Drive for the added access. I'll look into the OneDrive stuff and consider it for sure.

I pretty much only need the luminance and noise reductions tools and that's why I like Lightroom, it does the basics and it is relatively cheap to get. It blows Photoshop and everything else I've used out of the water for photo editing.

This keyboard is so nice to use, ridiculously so. My family has had 3 Toshiba laptop between us; the first still works and has a destroyed screen and I may figure out a way to turn it into a media center setup for one of our TVs, the second is 4 years old and still going strong with Windows 7, and mine which is only 3 but is on it's last legs and I don't think I could successfully boot it again after the error a couple nights ago.

I'm definitely going to make sure everything about the Mac and its cord are well taken care of, I don't plan to shell out more money than needed. I'm running Avast on it which has been my go to for all my devices the last couple of years and I've been highly satisfied with it. I hardly even check out the shadier parts of the web so I've no real worries about my security between Chrome, Avast, and AdBlocker.

Thanks a ton for your help and advice! I'll post some photos tonight in thanks after work. So you can hook me up with those programs you mentioned just PM me on Twitter!

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/13/2014 at 14:17

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Here's one for your collection as well.

Once I get Lightroom going, I can remove the watermark.

JGrabowMSt > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/13/2014 at 16:40

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On Monday I'll figure out where I left the software on one of the computers at work. I work at a repair shop, so I have a lot of computers that I take care of.

Funny you mention Avast. I'd be a little wary of it right now. I've had a number of computers come in recently that have had some major issues that were specifically caused by both Avast and AVG. On my windows machines, I run Microsoft Security Essentials, on my Macs, just make sure the firewall is turned on, and periodically I check the startup items and allowed firewall programs to make sure nothing is getting past me. On linux, I don't even bother really, if something is bad enough to get me while I'm running linux, I'll just straight up reinstall.

Chrome + AdBlock Plus is literally the best thing ever really. Firefox as well. I have a plugin for Firefox that's called RIP (Remove it Permanently), and it adds a right click context menu for removing specific frames from web pages. It's not for Chrome, but it is a wonderful thing. I find Chrome just more responsive, and has better sync for my devices than anything else. Since I use a Galaxy S3, I'm pretty tied down to Google, but I haven't been disappointed by it, it always tends to work really well for me. I've heard plenty of my clients try and tell me bad things about Chrome, but I'll believe it when I see it.

If the laptop that you want to make into a media center has HDMI, then just use power and HDMI, and you can grab a wireless keyboard/mouse combo that's either bluetooth or with it's own receiver, and run it that way. If it doesn't have HDMI, you could still do VGA + audio in, but the quality will suffer a bit doing that. HDMI would be nice, you could hide the laptop by a blu-ray player or something even. I'm actually in the process of designing (and eventually building) a media center computer that will actually live in a coffee table, and use a PICO projector instead of going to a TV on a stand. Just something to keep myself busy with until I get another major build to do. Even if you were to fix the screen, depending on the screen, they are pretty cheap to do yourself. Many screens I see are between $60 and $100, which is pretty reasonable. Even the Hi-res Matte Finish I have in my MacBook is actually just $80 + shipping. I thought it was going to be a lot more (I recently had one nearly identical to mine come in after a major coffee spill, so I had an opportunity for a full teardown to get part numbers).

What error were you getting out of your Toshiba? I might be able to point you in the right direction to sorting that out if you'd like, even to just keep it as a spare.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > JGrabowMSt 09/13/2014 at 22:25

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Awesome, thanks for the hookup!

That's a bit disconcerting about Avast, anything you recommend that I install on the Windows machines in my house instead? I just have to get into a routine of checking my start up programs on my Mac then.

I'm tied to Google pretty tightly as well, it syncs my Chrome between my Macbook, Nexus 7, and iPhone 5 which is wonderful. I've heard people bitch about Chrome but have never had a single issue, especially with AdBlock and syncing.

For the older busted screen Toshiba, I'll find out the part number and see if I can replace the screen myself. Otherwise I'll just take it off, maybe install a bigger cooling fan, do the wireless keyboard/mouse, and run HDMI like you said. That project you're working on sounds pretty cool, definitely something I would want to check out.

The error code was something like SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED I think. I found out it had down the Windows 8.1 version of blue screen. The machine was restarting itself every few seconds before going to the troubleshoot menu which after trying a couple options, I was able to do a system restore it's last automatic backup/clone to about a week ago. It restarted itself and then went to the regular user log in screen which after putting in my password went to the desktop after 15 minutes of loading. I was able to copy all my files and shut it down. Since then I haven't touched it and would love to have it as a back up if I can fix it. Any help you can offer if welcomed, I love the thing even if it is a 16" monster of a laptop.

JGrabowMSt > wunderwagen wants a longer roof 09/13/2014 at 23:46

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For Windows Vista/7, use Microsoft Security Essentials. Free and good. For Windows 8, it has Windows Defender built in, so just remove any other third party software, open up the Action Center, and turn on Defender. Defender is really just a clone of Security Essentials, and it's built into the OS, so nothing extra to do there. Both Security Essentials and Defender update through Windows Update, so there's nothing you need to do. It'll pop up if you have a problem it detects. No anti-virus software is perfect, but it's the best I've used in the past 5 years.

For laptop screens, I order from www.laptopscreen.com and have never had a problem with them. Shipping can usually be another $20 on top of the screen, but it's worth it because I've never received a cracked screen from them, and it's always 2-3 days and on my doorstep. There are very few vendors I work with that have consistently had amazing results like that. Just take the bezel off the laptop, unscrew the screen from the hinges, and on the back there will be a model number, usually starting with B or LP. There's usually a revision number as well. Laptopscreen.com has a search feature, and will get you either an exact replacement, or a compatible screen that will work. I've used other venders that have shipped "compatible" screens that didn't work at all.

Your old Toshiba that's giving you a blue screen is running 8.1? That can complicate things a bit. If you can get into the recovery partition, I would specifically choose "refresh windows." It will remove some applications, but keep all of your data in place, while resetting most core components of windows. That specific blue screen is a bit nondescript without having more of the crash data. Windows 8 is no walk in the park to get running in safe mode, but if you can get it on long enough to see the login page, click on the power option button, hold the shift key, and click on restart. Then you let it restart, and hit F6 at the prompt, which is for Safe Mode with Command Prompt. You can set the machine into a safe boot mode using "msconfig" at the command prompt, and selecting safe boot. That would prevent any non-essential software from starting with Windows. First thing I would do is remove Avast, and then switch back to Normal startup and see if that fixes it. I've seen a lot of updates cause some serious problems in the past, and now again. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's pretty widespread. Often a system file gets confused for a false-positive, and when the AV program tries to remove it (successfully or not) you get a blue screen induced crash. The biggest blunder like this that I've seen was by McAfee a couple years ago actually. A system file was marked positive, and it ended up crippling hospital networks all over the country. It was a pretty bad situation. I would never use Norton, Kaspersky, McAfee or Trend Micro at all, ever. Nod32 is okay, but in my experience, all of these tend to slow the computer down by a huge amount. Norton 360 has a built in disk check that I've seen kill countless drives over the years. The sad part is that Norton, McAfee and Kaspersky all make some really good malware removal tools that I do use often, it's just their full featured AV software that for some reason just always sucks really bad.

wunderwagen wants a longer roof > JGrabowMSt 09/13/2014 at 23:59

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I'll get on switching those over when I have a little free time and nuking Avast from my systems. I'll check out the laptop screen stuff soon.

I think a system refresh is actually what I did because the system restore option wanted the installation disc which had 8 on it and wouldn't work when I tried. I'll do what you say on Monday and let you know how it goes.

My email is njhoward94 at gmail dot com Shoot me an email, that way we you can send me those files and we can communicate on my Toshiba troubles easier than Kinja.