Lucky I have a lot of time on my hands. Because lately it seems that one of the tasks I’m spending the most time on is configuring computers. And I’m just pleasantly amazed at how much easier it is to get things done today than it was just a couple of years ago. (Forgive me for not including links in the following. But everything can be easily found easily enough via Google.)

Only three weeks ago, I returned my company laptop, a Dell that I never particularly cared for. And then spent time more properly configuring my MacBook in advance of my US trip.

On the return from said trip, I dumped Boot Camp and installed Parallels. After ten days of relatively heavy usage, I was sick of rebooting between Snow Leopard and Windows 7. (Using Win7 primarily because I haven’t found a Mac equivalent to the Usenet client (Newsbin Pro) that I rely on heavily.) The setup of Parallels is pretty straight forward and so far Win7 seems to be running smoothly. Parallels offers full support for Win7, something that BootCamp doesn’t do yet.

Aside from saving disk space, it saves me time too. Not just time not spent rebooting. As one example, I was running iTunes under both OS’s, each reading the same physical library. And anytime I loaded new files into iTunes on Snow Leopard, I had to remember to load them again when in Win7 or those new albums wouldn’t be available to me. Now I only need one installation of iTunes, one installation of Dropbox, Evernote, Firefox, etc.

In short, I’m finding Parallels to be well worth the money so far.

Anyway, still somewhat jetlagged, tonight I slept from around 9 PM to 3:30 AM. Earlier in the day, my troubles with PCCW behind me, I went to their shop at the Wanchai Computer Centre to claim my free bonus for signing up for their Pocket WiFi – a Lenovo S10-2 netbook.

Why do I need both a MacBook and a netbook? Short answer: I don’t. Except that the netbook is so much smaller and lighter than my 15″ MacBook that it’s something I can actually carry around with me every day without feeling the extra weight.

(So my daypack now includes: iPhone and headphones, Kindle, Pocket WiFi, Nikon D300, Lenovo netbook. The netbook is way under-powered for Adobe Lightroom but should be able to manage Picasa.)

Some of you may find the following useful:

Setting up the netbook tonight … Ninite.com allows you to download almost everything you need at one time and installs it all for you (standard settings) unattended. It’s brill.

Of course the first thing is Firefox to replace IE. And then Xmarks, which keeps your bookmarks synchronized across multiple computers, so in a matter of seconds the netbook has all of my bookmarks.

And then Evernote – which keeps all of my numerous notes synchronized across my PC, my MacBook, my iPhone and now my netbook as well.

DropBox – file synchronization – after a couple of minutes all of the data files I need on a regular basis have been wirelessly copied to the netbook.

And then all the other stuff that I use on a regular basis – iTunes, WinAmp, VLC, 7Zip, Skype, so on and so forth.

The point is … a few years ago, setting up a new PC and getting all the software one needs and all the files one needs was an all day, back-breaking task. Tonight it was just a few mouse clicks, entering some account info into some of the programs, and then moving the netbook off to the side, letting everything get done for me.

And so I can focus on other things. Like the new 40th anniversary edition of King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King. And the latest episode of Californication. And how freaking cold it is tonight!!!!

Hongkie Town
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