I would like to start a series of posts concerning my experience as a student working mostly with the laptop. In fact, I seldom write by hand and I even don't read printed books often. Actually, I think that studying in this way has some “contraindications”: for example, when I am working internet is a tool I often need to use; internet itself, however, is an omnipresent temptation!
First of all, I would like to describe my general approach to working with the laptop: hardware and software.
Concerning hardware there is not so much to say. The most important is the monitor(s): I usually work with an additional monitor connected (when I am at the uni I normally steal the monitor of the workstation I seat near to); the extended desktop is really useful, and sometimes I dream about having 3 monitors (3 monitors kick ass), but my wife and obvious technical difficulties hinder me from doing it (where would I store in my small flat a second monitor? What about the uni?). Second hardware thing about the screen is its position: it must be as low as possible, since the eyes get tired to watch to a screen which is higher than their level. I should try to explain it with a drawing, but it would be difficult... I try to make it clearer: when you work with a pc (with the laptop the problem is much less frequent) the monitor can positioned in an high position; to look at it, therefore, the eyes must stare at an object which is at their own high, or even higher, sometimes. Putting the monitor directly on the desktop and lowering it as far as possible makes the vision much less tiring for the eyes, in particular if the worker tries to keep the windows he uses in the lower part of the monitor.
The second hardware issue I would like to touch in this post is the mouse or touchpad. I must confess I hate it. I mean, that's very useful, but it makes you lose a lot of time, interrupting the writing process just to activate the bold, or to highlight something... there is of course a lot of keyboard shortcuts which can substitute most of the actions many people usually perform with the mouse. And if the standard shortcuts are not enough, there is the possibility to edit them, even without a degree in IT (I managed to do some of them, and therefore almost everyone could do it!)
Just the introduction of the topic of software: the laptop I bought has by default windows vista.... I know... I always wanted to switch to Linux, but I'm too lazy to face this kind of radical change. However, I normally use freeware software, since 1) I don't have that much money to invest and 2) I can try and test many different programs of the same kind in order to find out which one suits better my needs. There are normally good free alternatives to the most common commercial programs.
Ok, that's it for the first post of this series. By the way, this is the first of this year, and the first after a while... I should pay more attention to this blog, but there's such a lot of things I should do... and I don't actually do, even if I always think about them...
