Hi Cat, Congrats!
I'm a big fan of Endnote, there's a bit of a learning curve, but it's a powerful program. Info on both the hard-drive and at least on external HD as well. If you're doing any GIS work, have an external dedicated specifically to GIS data as that can take up space rapidly. if it's a computer for bot work and play, I'd suggest keeping much of the play software, movies, etc on a separate HD as well. Lots and lots of flash drives, including some cheap small memory ones. Sometimes you'll be passing work on to your professors via flashdrive and you need to have ones that are not a big deal if they disappear. I found that for a lot of the classes I was in and the classes I TA'd people with Macs were at a slight disadvantage. A noticeable portion of the software either didn't run or didn't run well on Macs, even when using the Windows emulator software. A lot of that will depend on what your professors and university use as the standard computing platform. This was particularly the case with statistical software. If you stick with the Mac, make sure that you turn in any electronic documents in PDF form unless specifically requested otherwise. For the prof or for you as a TA it's much, much easier to keep everything in a single format, and if they're using Windows it's a pain to get into the Pages file to extract the embedded PDF since Windows won't open Pages files. If you will be a TA establish file protocol with your students early and make them stick to it otherwise you'll be getting a huge variety of file formats and Blackboard (if your school and professors make you use it) can and will mangle some file types. PDFs usually are unaffected. Partway through I got a HP TM2T that was fantastic, it's still my work computer. It's a normal laptop with a pressure and touch sensitive screen that rotates flat and becomes a tablet. The stylus is stored in the side of the computer. Microsoft OneNote is excellent note-taking software and works well both in laptop form and tablet form. The tablet form is good for reading articles as most you'll get are still formatted as if they are in a printed magazine and the multiple columns format is incredible annoying to read on a standard screen. Good luck Cat and have fun! Neahga Leonard On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Cat Adams <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi Eco-lovers, > > I have the intense pleasure of starting grad school this fall, and was > wondering if this list-serv could generate any kind of consensus regarding > what a "best" personal computer might be for me. I converted to the Mac > religion a few years ago, and while I don't feel intractable in my new > computer world-view, I am pretty comfortable with it. > > I don't intend to do heavy climate modeling or the like on my personal > computer - I mostly want a computer for web browsing, running R, writing > papers, citation programs (Zotero? Endnote?), blogging (perhaps shifting to > host my own server), some video editing, and using not-too-complicated > graphics programs. Until I make new friends, I might also want to run > Netflix =P Regardless, I doubt I'll do all these things simultaneously, so > my needs aren't extravagant. In addition to adequate processing speed and > storage space, I want something that will be the least finicky with other > types of equipment, for doing presentations and networking and such. It > needs to be something sturdy that can do some globe-trotting with me; ie > not too fragile for airport security in Bolivia. A built-in webcam would be > quite handy for Skype, too. > > I plan to bring ~30 gb of files from my old lab to my new school, so I have > all the protocols I worked on and easy access to all the old data. Do you > highly recommend an external hard-drive for that? Or should I just throw it > on the new computer? Or both?! I'm thinking both, but I'm very curious > about your insight, and would be grateful for advice that can help me avoid > lost data and other tech-disasters. > > Ideally, I'd get a new computer before ESA, but if I'm still shopping come > the conference feel free to give me advice early Thursday morning when my > lab mate presents on our awesome research! > http://eco.confex.com/eco/2012/webprogram/Paper37476.html > > Or, just come talk to me about fungus :) I'm super stoked to dive into grad > school. Hope to see many of you at the conference! > > Cheers, > Cat >
