Posts Tagged ‘imac’

Nov

Getting Things Done, software-style

Posted by: sgw in general, gtd

I mentioned earlier that I use the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology for organizing parts of my life. A lot of this is managed on my iMac. I have been using iGTD for a lot of it, but I’ve recently started looking at other GTD software. One tool in particular, is Things. It looks interesting, and a lot more straightforward than iGTD. I haven’t converted to it completely yet, but if you’re considering trying out GTD on the mac, you might want to give Things a look. I’ll report back more when I have a bit more substance (and perhaps screenshots) to add.

Another interesting tool that I looked at was Goal Enforcer , which approaches GTD mind-map style. When all was said and done, that approach didn’t work for me, though I can easily see it working for many people. The walkthrough and tutorial was a great introduction to GTD though, and presented it in a fairly straightforward way. The product is well worth considering, but the tutorial is definitely worth it.

There are a few other packages that I’ve looked at, and I’ll through some more information up here. GTD is big in the geek community, so there are lots of people taking a geek approach to implementing it. I find that for the moment, the tools that I like the best are the ones that I install on my mac, and can sync to my smartphone. There are a large number of web-based tools that I’ve peeked at, but none of them have grabbed me yet, so I haven’t gotten excited about them. If I could have a desktop tool that could publish to the web and sync to my smartphone, I’d get excited.

I’d be delighted to take a look at other GTD packages out there if people have suggestions.

Tags: Getting things done, gtd, GTD tools, imac, tools

3 Comments

Oct

Why I love my new iMac

Posted by: sgw in apple

I recently bought a brand new 24″ 3.06Ghz iMac. In almost 20 years of working with technology, this is the first new computer that I have ever owned for myself. I’ve owned more than my share of other computers, from a variety of Apple laptops to a stack of Sun workstations and servers. They all serve their purpose, and they’ve all been worth the time put into them. They were, however, all previously owned. Spending money on a new iMac was a big deal, and more money than I’ve ever spent on a computer, new or used. A variety of circumstances led to it though, and I decided to take the plunge.

That said, I bought one. So far, I love it. Why? Glad you asked! Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

4GB of memory. Sure, I could get this on other boxes, but this is my first computer with this much memory. It totally makes the difference.
Nice, crisp screen. It’s very bright and nice to look at.
Speed is just not an issue. Between 4GB of ram and lots of CPU, this box has yet to be slow.
Nicely made. It all just fits together in ways that I like.
Rates nicely on power usage. I’ll give it a reading on my kill-a-watt the next time I reboot.

As for things I don’t like:

Leopard. Most of it is very nice. Spaces often does the wrong thing, enough so that I’ve considered loading Tiger onto it.
Only 4GB of memory! Clearly this goes both ways.
The keyboard. I gave up on it. I’m using a white keyboard from an old G4 tower. Much nicer, and more what I prefer.

After several months of using it, the iMac has yet to disappoint in any major way. It’s been rock solid, and can do everything I like. So far, I’m impressed, and I’ve evangelized to friends about it.