ClamShell Mode for Macbook

Following on from my KVM post here is another little trick. Sometimes I just want a bigger screen for my macbook, I don't want two screens especially when I am working with a large number of paper documents simultaneously. MacBooks have a great feature called clamshell that allows you to just use the external monitor. 

1. Set your MacBook up with a USB keyboard and mouse

2. Plug in an external monitor. 

3. Close the lid and jiggle the mouse. 

If you are lucky you will see your desktop and you will be back to a single monitor, occasionally your mac will decide to sleep but if you are insistent it will wake up again.

Virtual KVM

KMremoteControl

I have and old G4 quicksilver which belongs to the group which I use to backup my work and access old files that require classic mode. So for a long time I have been struggling with an extra keyboard and mouse on my desk. A KVM is pretty much useless as I prefer using my macbook keyboard and VNC and remote desktop are a little slow. 

Yesterday I came across a great little program called KMremoteControl which allows you to use the keyboard and mouse of one computer on another essentially creating a virtual KVM. KMremoteControl is free to use and installation and setup are really straight forward. All you need to know is the ip address or domain name of the computer you wish to control.

With KMremoteControl you can either allow the controlled computer to advertise its availabili

ty or not and there are built in features to require the user to log on before use and encrypt the traffic between the two computers.

KMremoteControl works on both mac OS X and Windows and is a great solution for anyone who has two computers and for which a KVM is not suitable. 

iWork 09

After much wrangling with Office 2008 particularly Excel I decided to try out iWork 09.Priced at $40 from my local campus bookstore it really can't get much better!

1. Keynote
The biggest pain with powerpoint 2008 for mac is that large ppt files take an age to load. This is where keynote comes in. Keynote opens those old powerpoint files like lightening, the only problem I have encountered so far is that some bulleted lists are not formatted well but this is easy to fix. The interface is intuitively laid out and the smart guides are great.


2. Numbers
Excel for mac 2008 is a nice improvement and a great middle ground between the office ribbon interface from windows and the old style layout. However it really is unreliable when working with old file formats. Again iWork steps in with Numbers, while numbers is grossly underpowered for scientific data analysis it again comes with a very intuitive interface and the ability to quickly produce professional looking results.


Conclusions I have not had much use for Pages however it also seems to have the intuitive interface and great compatibility with other office products. I cant help but wonder if it would be possible to write a paper in iWork and if anyone would tell the difference. All in all I have found iWork to offer value for money great and excellent compatibility with office. The interface is more polished than Office Mac and it is much more geared to producing professional results.