Microsoft Arc = Returned
So a couple weeks ago I picked up the Microsoft Arc Keyboard. I liked the overall design, but I had a difficult time typing with it. Something about the pressure of the keys and the space bar was causing everything I type to be in a big block of text. I took it back to Best Buy today and picked up the Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000, which is a standard keyboard with a slight curve and a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000. I had the Wireless Mouse 5000, but I broke the receiver while cleaning my computer, so it was a nice bonus to get that mouse again. I am pretty happy having a new fancy keyboard that I can type on again. Also the performance of the Arc with games wasn’t that great. Just too small for a crazy FPS.
So Apple released the long awaited update Leopard, and was it worth it. The updates are so far amazing and the speed increase is a great bonus. One of the first thing is Stacks, which are two icons that are on your dock. Clicking them fans out a number of files associated to that stack. It can be your documents, or recent downloads. It just makes it a great deal easier managing files. Stack animate when clicking on them in a curved icons, or you can change it to a grid by a simple click. I never really used Spaces in previous versions of OSX, but I started with Leopard and I don’t know how I can not use it anymore. Various Linux distros have desktop spaces like this, but being able to apply specific programs to specific desktop spaces is just really easy to setup and very intuitive. Some of the other nice features is the new search which will highlight and expand the text you are looking for. I am running on a Mini Mac with a Core Duo, not to be confused with a Core 2 Duo, with 2 GB of RAM, and it screams. Applications open up extremely fast, switching programs is extremely responsive. I have stopped using Camino because Apple made some major improvements with Safari 3.0.So if you have a Mac, I’d suggest going and picking up Leopard as soon as possible!
