OK, we’ve had the Mac now for exactly a week and since my wife drives into the office I have been using it for my day to day work and I’m still impressed with how well it runs and multitasks. I’ve made myself an account on the machine so I can install the tools I need, customize the desktop, setup a virtual machine to run Domino 8.5 in, etc. and not affect her OS experience. I’m still having to fight with the keyboard (doesn’t have the 10 key keypad) and the Control, Option/alt, fn and Command keys. For those readers that may have just moved to a Mac and can’t figure out some of the keys I’ve come up with this little chart for use in Lotus Notes (running in a terminal window):

Windows Key	Mac Key
Ctrl-Shift	Control-Option-Shift
Home	fn-left arrow
End	fn-right arrow
F9	Can’t seem to get any of the F keys to function in Lotus Notes
ctrl-c	Control-c
ctrl-x	Control-x
ctrl-break	??? Someone???
shift-end	fn-shift-right arrow
shift-home	fn-shift-left arrow

I have found some pretty cool tools that I’ve installed and find useful that work the way they are advertised to work:

• Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2 – This lets you connect to a PC running terminal services
• GeekTool – Put text and images on your desktop that refreshes how-ever often you tell it to
• Open Office – The OpenOffice productivity suite
• And of course Firefox – The Firefox browser

I’m also looking for a screen capture program somewhere along the lines of SnagIt and an Image editing program. I was looking at The Gimp but it requires X11 and I’m not sure it’s installed or how to use it on the Mac, but I may delve into that at a later date. Are there any apps (preferably Open Source) that you can’t do without on your Mac?

After using the huge 24″ screen on the Mac it’s hard to go back to my 17″ dual monitor setup. My monitors are getting old and just aren’t as bright and clear as the Mac, not to mention I like all the realestate of the 24″ monitor. Working on the Mac, I really want one for myself now…