Making switching between Mac and PC each day easier [closed]

As I've started to use different operating systems at home and at work, I've found a few things that help.

• App Launching

  (Quicksilver and Launchy)

  Not having to mouse through folders or menus is nice, but having the same shortcut mapped (apple + space, alt + space) on both OS's is just great.

  (RocketDock)

  OS X style doc on your pc.

• Web Bookmarks

  (Delicious)

  I've installed the Delicious add-in on all my Firefox installs and added the tags to the the toolbar - so I can have tags 'tech', 'google', 'tech' at work and 'video','toread','etc' at home. Naturally, tagging an item makes it show up on all computers - nice!

• Keyboard

  The keyboard problem seems most complicated. Copy/Paste uses control on Windows and apple key on Mac. The apple key is in the Alt key's spot on Windows keyboards. Could I remap alt to be ctrl on Windows? I'd probably need to buy a mac keyboard for my work computer to make my brain work on this one. It has adapted to switching when it feels the flat mac keyboard!

  (Witch) €9.95

  Witch lets you access all of your windows by pressing a shortcut and choosing from a clearly arranged list of window titles.

Does anyone else have any tips on making the daily switch easier?

Solution 1:

I use a Macbook Pro for "work", and a Windows 7 laptop for "home". I also have an HTPC, but it's purely for Media Center and gaming, so I don't do "normal" desktop activities on it.

"Work" and "Home" in quotes because I work from home :-).

Here's the software I use between the two for each named task.

Browser

Firefox 3.5 on both. I don't store form or password data in my browser. Once I got my profile set up on one, I copied it to the other. I only use a few extensions, so this translated very well.

Email, Calendar, Contacts

Google Apps for my domain and for work. I use Mail.app (for PGP/GPG) on OSX and the WebUI for home. I use the WebUI on both for Google Calendar. I sync contacts with Google Sync on my iPhone.

Development Tools

I'm a sysadmin/operations programmer, so I need development tools. The main difficulty in translation here is that Windows lacks a true equivalent to iTerm (I don't like Terminal.app). So, while I use iTerm and regular shell tools on OS X, on Windows I use:

• PowerShell (more command aliases, like ls)
• Putty

I do quite a bit of "work" on my Windows laptop for home, because I have a number of servers/virtual machines that do my bidding.

I also use:

• Ruby (default install on OSX, one-click installer on Windows).
• Git ('third party' downloads).
• Vim/MacVim.

See my profile for what I'm doing with Ruby :-).

Instant Messaging

I use Pidgin on Windows and Adium on OS X. Adium uses libpurple.

Music Playback

This one is interesting. I listen to music shared from the HTPC in iTunes on my Macbook, and through Vista Media Center on the HTPC, so I don't actually play music directly on my Windows laptop. Since I have an iPhone that I sync with both systems, so I have iTunes on the Windows laptop.

Photos

Again with Google Koolaid; I use Picasa.

That's about it that I can think of. Feel free to edit this post to add links I forgot.

Solution 2:

Witch isn't free (unfortunately) but it can really make Windows users (in particular) feel more productive since you can tab through windows/documents, not just applications. It's worth checking out as a demo. You can also set the keyboard shortcut to match your workflow.