Over the last few years my desk setup has evolved, looking through old pics and videos I have noticed a trend into the complex. Having more machines, more monitors – all with the goal of making myself more productive and capable at my daily IT tasks.

While this may have given me tools to do my job, I don’t think it necessarily made me any more productive. The multiple monitors bombarded me with information all the time, making my attention to a particular issue/subject scattered at best. There was always something trying to vie for my attention.

Not only were there multiple monitors, there were multiple systems, setups, etc… I have to use a PC for work – well in theory I have to. I’ve gone through several iterations of just how to work at home using the various computers I have.

In the end, I’ve decided that a VM of Windows XP running in parallels is the perfect fit for me, using this and the combination of spaces seems like it’s the best workflow for me. The whole trial of various methods, could be, and will be another blog post, or even a podcast episode.

So where am I going with all this? Well it seems I’ve almost gone full circle. From having almost 2 desks worth of computers, monitors, printers and scanners, I’ve whittled it way down.

My current setup consists of my MBP in a book arc – yes, not actually using it for a second monitor, just a CPU really. I’m using my 24″ LED cinema display, Apple keyboard and magic mouse. Only one external hard drive, my Drobo via FW800 and I dumped my MOTU for a mixer and went back to using my Blue Icicle for an XLR to USB converter.

I’ve been running this “simplified” setup for about a week now and I love it. It truly lets me focus on one project at a time. And I’m starting to fully realize the potential of spaces and what it can do to your workflow.

I’ll let you know as time progresses if this setup really does meet all my needs, I’m constantly tweaking and playing to find just what works for me.

Jan 2010 setup

July 2010 setup

Christmas has passed, all the presents are bought and given. It’s now time to start planning and gear up for MacWorld 2010.

I’ve been thinking about how there will be thousands of laptops there, and how they all will look the same. So my first idea was to come up with something to differentiate my MacBook Pro from everyone else’s. I actually had an issue at an airport a while back where me and another traveler had MacBook Pros go thru the xray machine at the same time and when they came out there was a moment of confusion.

I did some research and found a dozen or so vendors offering various vinyl decals. I considered GelaSkins but in the end I found LapTatt.

I chose the baby Mario on Yoshi and he is trying to eat the Apple logo.

So now my MacBook Pro has a shiny new sticker on its lid.

The next thing I had to consider was addressing the heat concerns from using the MacBook Pro in my lap. While not searing hot, it can become uncomfortable at times. From reviews I heard last year from the MacWorld show I decided to give the ThermaPak HeatShift Laptop Cooler pad.

This pad has crystals in it, that when heated will turn into a conductive gel, insulating your legs as well as wicking away the heat.

Okay, while at MacWorld I’ll be attending many different training seminars, how can I keep my MacBook Pro powered for that whole time? Currently I am getting about 2 hours of charge on my internal battery that is a little over a year old. I have the first 15″ unibody model so there is an option to purchase a second battery, but I’m only going to get 5 hours out of both batteries, MacWorld seminars run 8-9 hours a day.

I did more research and came up with an external power solution called the HyperMac This device is an external battery, and they say the 100 watt hour should give me 13.3 hours of “normal” runtime on 1 charge. I will be testing this later this week but if that’s true, my entire MacWorld trip will be powered and I won’t have to think of rationing!

Lastly, as you may have heard me before – I have one computer and prefer to keep all my data with me. Recently I bought the OptiBay This is a device that allow you to mount a hard drive in the laptop’s optical bay, allowing for the use of a second Hard Disk.

Currently I am running a 7200 RPM 500GB HDD in the primary HDD bay and a 7200 RPM 300GB HDD in the optibay mount. The 300GB HDD is almost full with just my iTunes Library (yes, I know… I have a problem!)

So I decided to upgrade the optibay drive with a 5400 RPM 750 GB HDD from Other World Computing

After listening to various other podcasters talk about the speed increase from Solid State Drives I finally broke down and during the same order for the 750GB HDD I ordered a 250GB Solid State Drive.

So the plan is to place the OS on the solid state drive and map my user directory to the 750GB hard drive.

One last thing I am thinking of doing this weekend after all these toys gets here is to do some power and speed benchmarking. I’m interested to see how much power the second HDD takes up (so far I’ve been using the optibay with 2 spinning disks for about 2 weeks and I haven’t noticed any impact to my battery life.)

I would like to see how my internal battery fares with 1 SSD drive and 1 optical, 2 spinning disks and 1 SSD and 1 spinning disk. I’m also interested in the actual battery life of the HyperMac power unit. All of this will be benchmarked over the next few days and I will be doing a blog post or podcast on it.

When Apple updated their store on October 20th, they quietly released updates to their iMac and Macbook lines and released new mice and remotes. After watching the new iMac video with Johnny Ives demonstrating the new mouse I couldn’t resist clicking on the purchase button from the Apple online store.

The mouse arrived Friday October 30th and I’ve been using it ever since. So lets give you a little history first before we talk about Apple’s new mouse.

The previous mouse I had was the Apple Bluetooth mighty mouse. The mouse was white, shiny and reminded me of an elongated puck. The mouse had four touch sensitive buttons – these were left, right, center and the sides (think squeeze here) – they could be programmed for anything in the OSX System preferences pane but for me they were left and right click, center was Dashboard and squeeze was to invoke Expose. The mouse also had a ball in the top forward center that was used for scrolling. This ball was the crowning point and at the same time the downfall for this mouse. The ball allowed for 360 degree scrolling – up/down and left/right for those long spreadsheets that you may have to deal with. Or my favorite scrubbing the timeline in Final Cut.

The problem with the ball though is the same problem every other mouse that ever had a ball in it ever had. Eventually dirt and debris would collect on the motion detector rollers and cause the little scroll ball to cease functioning. A little aggressive cleaning upside down on a lint free cloth sometimes helped, but over time the ball would just become less and less responsive.

The downfall here is that there is no way to get the ball out to clean the detectors, so once it’s jammed full there is no way to get it clean unless you break the mouse apart to get at the ball and rollers to clean it. Now this isn’t too hard to do – in fact I did this to my first Mighty Mouse (Now called “Apple Mouse.”) After I put it back together though it just never worked well again – so I ended up purchasing another.

So there’s the problem – now for the solution. The new Apple “Magic Mouse” – yes, Apple changed the name due to a recent court awarding the “Mighty Mouse” trademark to another company that Apple did not have a previous agreement with so Apple had to rename it’s mouse.

The Magic Mouse is the same length as the mighty mouse was, but about half the height. And honestly reminds me of the Dove soap bars in size and shape.

The bottom is the brushed aluminum that Apple has recently grown fond with. There is a switch to turn the power on and off, and speaking of power the mouse uses two AA batteries that are included with the purchase. The tracking engine has been improved over the previous model and from what I have seen, it is much more precise at tracking movements than the previous Mighty Mouse was.

There are no buttons on the mouse – it’s surface is a smooth plastic surface. You can left and right click like a traditional mouse. to scroll just use your finger to “brush” on top of the mouse in the direction you want to scroll. It even uses the inertial technique that the iPhone has where if you flick your finger quickly it will quickly scroll down the page. The scrolling is smooth, and much better than anything the Mighty Mouse had to offer.

You can also use two fingers to swipe to go forward or backward through web pages, or photos in iPhoto or Aperture. I have some issues with this because there is no real easy way for me to hold the mouse still and flick it. I have big hands and long fingers, and if I follow what’s shown in the video on the preference pane, using my palm to hold it, my fingers extend several inches past the top of the mouse.

While I find this gesture nice to have, I think it rather fails on actual usability.

Also – when right clicking, you must do it with only one finger resting on the top of the unit. If you say use one finger to left click and another to right click while leaving the opposite finger resting on the top of the mouse, the click will not register.

Installation:

When you turn on the mouse, it appears in the bluetooth preference pane, you choose it and that’s it – the mouse works. To enable the scrolling gestures, however, you need to run system update and download the mouse drivers from apple. The drivers just automagically show up in the system updates after the mouse is detected in the bluetooth pane. The mouse driver install requires a reboot, so be prepared.

As for losing the two extra buttons – I’m not heartbroken about the dashboard button – I rarely use the dashboard. But I am saddened over the loss of a button to invoke Expose – now there is a feature I use frequently. To get around this I have created the bottom left corner as a hot corner to invoke Expose and it works quite well.

Overall the mouse is what you’d expect from Apple – yes this statement is worded this way on purpose. I have found that within Mac users there are two camps – ones that LOVE the apple mouses and the others that HATE it. Well if you HATE it – you’ll probably hate this one too and would be happier with your MX revolution or whatever alternative you’ve found. But for those who actually liked to use the Mighty Mouse you’ll find the Magic mouse really is a step up in the mouse. It feels better in the hand, scrolling and tracking are much more accurate – while the loss of the two extra buttons is a pain, there are rumors that maybe Apple will have something up their sleeve in the 10.6.2 update.

Apple Store link: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB829LL/A

Pictures of my Magic Mouse unboxing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/baldingnerd/sets/72157622572830365/

I’ve been toying with the idea of using my old 17″MBP as a media center. Plugging in my eye tv and turbo h.264 into it and letting it record and stream tv shows (via the iPhone application) as well as host all my ripped DVD’s in iTunes. Also by using the home sharing feature. This way the wife and I could backup our itunes libraries to the same place. I might even set up iPhoto to share as well so we have a central place to backup the iPhoto libraries as well.

I’m planning on getting the mac mini server after the first of the year, and I’m wondering how much of this I’d end up moving over to the server.

As you can see I’m still in the musing and planning process… any thoughts or suggestions?

About a year ago I had someone make artwork for me to replace the black and green logo I had started with. The art was wonderful but I never got around to using it. Yesterday, some events helped move me along to switching. As some of you know I’m going to Macworld 2010 – along with the trip I wanted to have some business cards with the podcast info on it to hand out, as well as a few shirts with the logo to wear. Hey, I’m proud of the podcast! Well cafe press wouldn’t accept my green and black logo since it had the apple logo in it, a very valid excuse – so I thought it was time to change into the new logos.

Links to the cafe press store to buy shirts and a coffee mug is:
http://www.cafepress.com/TheStealthMac

I have no markup, and make no money off of the sales, it’s just a way to show your support of the podcast.

Here are the new logos – what do you think?

Ah Yes, just like many other bloggers and podcasters I have been toying with the “post a day” idea. For those unfamiliar with this, basically it’s forcing myself to post once a day. I’m going to try to limit my posts to tech related, no funny stories about what my toddler son does, or what I did at work. In my typical fashion I may reference a rumor but won’t dwell much on it.

I’ll also be tweaking up the blog a bit, cleaning up the template, etc. If you have any ideas or suggestions for blog posts, or show ideas, please feel free to drop me a line – matthew.hillyer”at”mac.com.

This isn’t easy for me, I’ve never been one to write much. In fact I find it rather difficult to write at all – papers for grad school are painful to me. This is rather strange since I love to talk, and you’d think it would be easy to just type, but not for me. Anyway, I am off to research for my first daily technical post.