Inga

Several years ago, after several unsuccessful attempts, my union persuaded the University to implement a computer replacement policy. Most other colleges and universities, had implemented computer replacement policies years previously. Our faculty mostly had to hustle to find the resources to replace computers, either with a grant or professional development funds or just with their own money. The fund, matched by the University administration, provides sufficient money so that each faculty member can get a low-end laptop or desktop computer (or tablet) roughly every three years. On Friday, I picked up the first laptop purchased for me through this program.

I decided to get a Macbook Air. I decided to name her "inga" (which is a kind of bad Esperanto joke). The laptop was helpfully set up by OIT (although I think I would have preferred to just get it as provided by Apple new). It has McAfee installed, which appears to conflict with the trackpad driver, causing the trackpad to freeze up for 10-15 seconds every few minutes. They also seem to assume that people want to use a computer with a general account like "user" instead of having their own account -- that's really inconvenient for logging into online services, where it always defaults to having the incorrect username set. They also helpfully installed Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite but, since the computer only has a 60GB SSD, those (plus the operating system) fill up more than half the drive.

I'm temped to dump the MacOS and just install Ubuntu. I think the MacOS reached its apogee with Snow Leopard and has been declining ever since. Unfortunately, you can't buy new hardware with Snow Leopard. There are no features that Apple has introduced since then that I want to use. Installing Ubuntu looks a bit daunting, however, and I thought before going to the effort, I'd try Mountain Lion to see if it had anything I wanted. It doesn't -- it's worse than Snow Leopard in every respect, as far as I can tell.

Maybe Mountain Lion would be OK if I aspired only to be a consumer of software: to just install commercial software from the Apple Store. But I don't want to install *anything* from the Apple Store. Everytime I see the Apple Store it makes me angry. It makes me livid that Apple will only update the OS and software though the Apple Store.

Luckily, my old laptop is still functional so I can keep using that until I get the new laptop set up and functional. I had suspected that Mountain Lion was a further decline from Lion and it was good to have the chance to finally confirm that was true. Ubuntu here I come.