

The Setup: John MacFarlane - keithpeter
http://john.macfarlane.usesthis.com/

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keithpeter
This Professor/Programmer uses a 6 year old laptop at work and a consumer
laptop at home. Just what do you actually _need_ to get work done these days
if you are not compiling 100k lines of source code?

I'm thinking of dumping the desktops and going for a single laptop.

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dfc
Why pay the extra cost for a laptop if you are always going to use it in one
place?

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keithpeter
I suspect 'at work' might include schlepping down to the lecture hall and
plugging into the projector now and again. Or popping over to the Library to
make notes. Or sitting in a faculty meeting to take the minutes.

To directly answer your point: portability within the building/location.

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dfc
Most schools have dedicated setups for classroom presentations. I think jgm is
at stanford, I imagine stanford has the cash and competency for a decent
classroom setup.

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keithpeter
Running Linux? Excellent. The PCs in my classrooms all run Windows and are
fairly heavily locked down so I just swap the VGA leads.

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dfc
In my opinion it has been a long time since external displays and wireless
networks were a problem in linux (at least in debian).

More importantly I <3 pandoc!!!

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michael_fine
12.04 fixed my multiple monitors issue, but for a while it took around 2-3
hours of setup to get dual monitors working with my AMD/ATI card.

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keithpeter
NVIDIa on Ubuntu 12.04 took about 10 minutes to work out twinview. You should
put your method on Ubuntuforums or askubuntu. There are always threads running
about AMD cards on those forums.

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bostonvaulter2
While external monitors with twinview work pretty well, it is a huge pain to
configure. You have to open up the nvidia configuration application and set it
up, not autodetection or panel applet.

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keithpeter
Yes, I should have said that, nvidia settings just bypasses the display
applet. Didn't take ages though although not friendly.

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Xyzodiac
This pretty much mirrors my setup on the software side (in the Linux camp). I
really love The Setup, mostly because it's just awesome knowing how other
people get things done.

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lumberjack
This is the about the third time that I encounter a distinguished hacker
working on such tiny screens. How the heck do they manage to be comfortable on
such a small display? I don't know whether this has anything to do with it but
all the other known hackers using small screens are well past youth. Perhaps
it's a habit from using the screens of the old days?

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keithpeter
Yes, good catch, I had not thought of age as a variable. I go back to when
1024 by 768 was large, and I do use applications full screen and have one or
two per workspace and switch between them with Shift-Tab/Alt-Tab. I'm no
hacker though.

Zed Shaw's setup: "I honestly could probably code with nearly anything, so
having the same setup as the end user is more important than having the most
awesome piece of tech ever."

Mary Cook's "When I’m at work, I sometimes plug the Air into a 24” Dell
monitor and use an external Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse. However,
often, I find it much easier to get into the zone when I’m just using the
laptop unadorned. It’s something about hunching over the small screen, I
think."

I remember reading somewhere else that someone found the position and feel of
typing into a laptop was reminiscent of using a portable typewriter.

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wilder
Took a course of his at Berkeley. A fantastic and generous man.

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srik
Why do you say _generous_?

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wilder
With his time. Always interpreted student questions charitably and took them
seriously. Not something all professors do.

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keithpeter
Asking questions takes a bit of courage at what ever level the student is at,
simply because the questioner is revealing something about their understanding
of the topic to the other class members. Good teaching skills suggest taking
all questions seriously; the ones who ask questions help you to gauge the
level of understanding in the room.

