Mac Setup: Computer Science Students Desk
Jun 2, 2012 - 12 Comments
This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Ilter C., a computer science student who uses his Apple gear for web and iOS development. Hardware shown includes:
- MacBook Pro 15″ mid-2010 Hi-Res, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD
- External 500GB hard disk connected to MacBook Pro
- LG Flatron IPS225 21.5″ LED monitor
- iPhone 4S
- iPad 2 Wi-Fi and Wacom Bamboo Stylus
- iPod Classic 160GB & iPod Shuffle 2GB
- Apple Wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse
This is about as good as it gets for a student setup (or any setup really), there’s plenty of the right gear for both work and play.
On a side note, for anyone with a MacBook Pro or Air as their base machine do yourself a favor and get an external display and at least a mouse or trackpad. I know we go on about this often, but the productivity gains from docking to a larger display can’t be overstated.
Send us your Mac and Apple setup shots with some hardware details to osxdailycom@gmail.com, we are super backlogged with awesome setups but we’ll try to post the best of them!
which Stand is this?
Can someone link me the homer and bender ipad wallpaper please?
Here.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17948706/Homer-Bender-beer-bar.jpg
Hi! How do you make the external screen the main screen while making the MacBook Pro the secondary screen? Thanks a lot!
You are looking to set the primary display to the external screen, this is very easy:
https://osxdaily.com/2010/04/27/set-the-primary-display-mac/
that student should have better taste in lamps
where’s the Wacom Bamboo?
doh! apologies…. I see it now…. I was looking for a writing surface…. seems it’s just the pen/stylus….
Having a similar setup, but using MBP 2008 OS X 10.5 and LG display IPS235, I’d like to ask about your experience of setting the display with macbook. Basic setup is just fine, but I can’t get working the LG dual screen functions and adjusting brightness neither. The dual screen functions seem to work in windows only, so well, but not being able to dim the display at night is really annoying. At LG’s menu I have brightness slider at 0 and it’s still too bright, apple function keys (F1, F2) don’t work at all. Any help?
You probably have to use the brightness controls that are directly on the monitor and not rely on software methods
I’m a student (in medicine) and my main machine is a MBA 13″. Why do you say there’s a serious gain in productivity with a bigger screen? Do I really need it?
Having more screen real estate can make a huge difference in productivity because it allows you to see more information at the same time. For example, you can have one screen showing research papers, PDF’s, web pages, and the other screen holding a word processor to type in. The same theory applies to development, photo editing, programming, etc. It can also prevent you from switching back and forth between apps as much.
There have been a fair amount of studies to show the benefits as well, but here’s an older classic article from the New York Times discussing the issue:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/technology/20basics.html
We also did a post recently on how to boost productivity with a single smaller display, aimed at laptop users:
https://osxdaily.com/2012/05/02/ways-maximize-productivity-small-screens-mac-laptops/
Ultimately it’s up to you if you’d find another screen useful, but many people do.