10.07.07
Portrait of a writer
My main computer has shifted to a Dell latitude D420. This is an ultra portable and light computer which fits snuggly but easily in my laptop. It can easily do four hours on the battery while writing.
I’ve been doing a lot of freelance technical writing recently including some book chapters. It’s all very time consuming but also fun. I’m sure there is a lot of vanity on my part, but I like being able to show my mum some tangible output related to what I’ve been doing for the last decade or so.
The laptop is great, and aside from being pre-installed with Vista, the only real problem I have is that the screen’s just not big enough for serious copy editing. It’s fine for knocking up thoughts and writing ideas. But when you want to get a few hours of concentrating reviewing and re-arranging for page layout – at only 1280×800, It’s impossible to get a good idea of how things flow: Or so I though.
One evening I must have accidentally hit the short cut key which rotates the screen. I had word open at the time and was impressed to see the A4 page rendered more or less actual size and still readable.
At 800×1280, it’s still no Mac publishing engine. But it really helped get through a lot of work faster. The only problem with this method is that you need a mouse and an external keyboard.
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