In my Valleyschwag post, I complained that I just needed a MacBook to affix all of my stickery goodness to. Thanks to a good price on some employee stock options and the permission of my wife, I’m writing this on a brand spanking new MacBook.

I like to think of myself as a very knowledgable computer guy - I’ve been doing it for a living for quite some time now. I have to admit that I’m going to have to learn the ins and outs of the Macintosh operating system. Are there any good tutorials available for folks like me who are used to the Windows (and even KDE/Gnome) way of doing things? I mean, I’m figuring out that closing a window in not the same as actually exiting a program, but things like being able to maximize a window are still eluding me. Is this even something I want to do? Perhaps there are window management tricks I need to learn instead of making my windows take up the whole screen.

And the mouse! The built-in trackpad has a single button, but I can plug in a three button USB scroll mouse and have something happen when I use each button. How do I emulate these actions with a single button? I’ve noticed that for some things, holding the mouse button down longer brings up a context menu, but some context menus I can’t seem to access. Do I also need to press a keyboard key?

Lastly - I can’t get the function keys to perform function commands. Even if I hold down the "fn" key while I hit a function key, I still get the "alternate" action. I’m sure it’s just another setting that I haven’t stumbled across yet.

technorati tags:laptop, macbook, macosx, macintosh, learning curve, gear, gadgets, geek toys

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