How I Use My Dell | Hacker News Reader

How I Use My Dell

nullisnotanobject.com

19 pointsdavejohnson28 comments

No cygwin or anything, but you use the terminal "a lot?" I think I'd kill myself without a proper shell…

Cygwin is only marginally better than the plain old DOS shell. Too much of an "impedance mismatch" for me to handle.

updated it - yes I use cygwin :)

If you're stuck in windows like I am at work you really need to try MS Powershell. It works great. I'm just as comfortable with it as I am with bash at home. It's object based scripting is quite cool also; you can do COM automation in a very simple manner. I do traditionally file maintenance stuff and more slick MS Office automation with Powershell. Totally recommend it if you have to use Windows.

I've heard of the product, but never anyone saying if it's good or bad, thus I never messed with it. Thanks for the heads up.

I use PowerShell for over a year. Console2 makes a pretty nice wrapper for it as well, giving you multiple tabs and cut/paste.

It's not so bad...plus, you can always do what a Real Man (tm) would do - imlement all the missing shell commands as Perl scripts.

Um, if you were happy with Windows before, why did you switch in the first place?

One of the biggest things that keeps me from using a Windows machine, is the lack of a proper shell. One that exists as a first-class citizen, and not as some bastard add-on hack. Cygwin really doesn't cut it for me, and the only other real option is to run VMWare, at which point I might as well run Ubuntu.

I mentioned in there the main factor is price. The MacBook seemed like a great deal compared to similar dells at the time. Today the prices are reversed :S

I ran VMWare on the MacBook but it was way too slow.

What do you need a terminal for in Windows?

I'm not being snarky, it's a serious question. I'm a programmer, but I use Visual Studio 2008 and I rarely have to touch a command line to do anything that I need to do...

I've never done any serious development on Windows, but I'd imagine you need/want a shell for the same reasons you'd use one on a unix system - using vim, scripting, an array of useful programs (e.g. whatever the Windows version of grep is), etc.

I've been programming on Windows for about 10 years and I can honestly say that I simply don't have to use a terminal outside of running the occasional command. For automation I use AutoHotKey or AutoIt. For searching text in files I usually use a program like Notepad++ or UltrEdit. YMMV of course, not everyone's the same.

I guess the reason is that I can usually find a GUI program to do whatever it is that I want.

I use Linux all the time too (I've built Asterisk boxes, LAMP servers, firewalls, etc. at work and at home), but I think the culture is just different, so it's natural to use the terminal for many things on *nix.

Actually I do use the Windows terminal a LOT (the Run box actually) for one-off things like "net start/stop some-service", "services.msc" or "ipconfig /all", something like that.

If you're interested in a decent shell on Win, you should check out PowerShell. I develop Python/Djanog on XP, and I live in PowerShell and iPython.

Interesting Dell Tip: Don't ever buy a computer straight off of Dell's web site. Set up a corporate account--our account rep always gets us 20-30% off of the list price on their web site.

You can search for discount codes too.

Yeah if you're not getting at least $200-400 off the list price with a coupon you're getting screwed. Even big box stores can undercut Dell prices w/coupons. I used to think Dell would always have the lowest price until I found that stores like Best Buy can undercut even direct sales from online.

What is amazing is that most Apple users even agree with me that it is completely terrible.

How is that remotely amazing? Mac users tend to be honest about what their stuff is like. Liking an operating system doesn't mean you can't be critical of parts of it.

Although, I like Finder more than I do Windows Explorer. What features does Explorer have that put it leagues above Finder, like this article would suggest?

Yah Exploring is not for everyone nor is Finder. I think that the tree view in Exploring while still showing the contents of the tree is great (compared to thee sliding panes in Finder for example) and the context menu integration of many apps is also good (eg win merge and tortoise).

I think that the tree view in Exploring while still showing the contents of the tree is great

But that's something that Finder handles, also. The CMD-2 view. Or am I missing something?

Also, what are in Merge and Tortoise? I don't get what context menu integration means.

the cmd-2 view shows files & folders in one window, while explorer shows a tree of folders only on the left and the contents on the right.

Sounds a bit excessive. But whatever works, works. Thanks for clarifying!

Context menu integration (more commonly known as shell integration) means that when you install certain programs like Tortoise, the program will add extra menu items to the context menus that show up when you right-click files of a specific type or a folder.

I love my Beyond Compare shell integration. Right-click on Folder A, choose "select left side", find Folder B, right click, choose "compare to Folder A" and then Beyond Compare pops up and diffs all the files in the two folders.

Oh, gotcha.

I don't know. I never really used that as a Windows user. It seemed to add clutter, and that always bugged me. But I guess it helps for some things.

Beyond Compare sounds nifty.

The author claims that with a 2.4ghz/2gb Mac they couldn't run Eclipse... I've been running Eclipse on a similar/lower spec (2yo MBP) for ages - and this is a Java,C/C++/Flex workspace.

No problems at all.... In fact it seems to churn the disk considerably less than my colleague's Vista Dell machine.

So not sure where that is coming from at all. The MBP is almost the ideal Eclipse workstation imho.

Maybe yor are running different version of Eclipse? I have a feeling that Ganymede is slower than Europa.

FWIW, I also find eclipse (Ganymede) to be a bit slow on my 2.4Ghz Mac Book Pro (Mac OS X). I think I'll splash out for a solid state disk as soon I find one with good ratings.

Yeah I'm running Ganymede - was running Europa - seems a bit slower, but not significantly.

I'm using Java and C/C++ at the moment - but I used a base install and then added the bits I wanted. Maybe the J2EE/whatever Eclipse releases have a whole lot of other cruft? Not sure, but it's plenty usable for me.

Although I cant say I fully agree with his use of eclipse europa and rad rails, I would tend to agree. Ive been more annoyed by macs than I have windows recently.

Although, Git support and proper shells are valid problems with windows. Powershell helps, but the git people really need to get a valid, working, non retarded git client for windows. Like Tortoise SVN which is freaking awesome.

Until then, windows will be an inferior development platform for anyone doing ROR stuff.

The only thing I'd use a dell for is to order a mac from apple.com. Then I'd wash my hands and read a book.

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