cosmolinguist | [311/365] new laptop!

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I am typing this on a new laptop! New to me, it's refurbished. As an early birthday present it's a pretty brilliant one. It's tiny and versatile while my old one was heavy and cumbersome.

I'm trying out KDE for some accessibility features I wanted to try but a) I'm not sure it does any more and b) I am really struggling with the interface being different to what I'm used to. I should probably stick with it longer than a few hours before losing all hope.

Ive got new hardware to get used to too, and why are all keyboards different? why is touchpad input so consistently inconsistent? will I ever get used to the fact that this is my first laptop with a touchscreen (I also kinda hate touchscreens but it will help with my constantly-losing-the-cursor problem I think??)?

Maybe it is just too many new things at once.

I'm still delighted with the laptop though; the old one was chosen for me by uni so I didn't get any say in it and I always hated it. This could not be more different.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

angelofthenorth

Yay, that sounds happy making

From:

cosmolinguist

It is, it was such a surprise, and a lovely gift of precisely the "I'd never be able to buy this myself and I don't exactly need it" kind that I think makes the best gifts.

From:

otter

may the adjustment period be brief and with fewest frustrations

From:

cosmolinguist

Thanks. My sensible project manager has just suggested making a list, and even said it might make a good blog post: just Everything I Have to Do as a Partially Sighted Person to make a new software install useful to me. We do start way back at "I can't read this, it's all tiny!" and handing the laptop back to my boyfriend as I demand he fix it with only-somewhat-joking petulance. :) I've come a long way since that, just today!

From:

barakta

Have a poke in the accessibility settings, there may be a "mouse/cursor finder" often set so that if you press and hold CTRL it does moving circles round the cursor wherever it is.

And I presume you know you can usually change the size, colour and movingness of the cursor. I make my cursors more visible, especially the I shaped thing that is over text, I have mine more boldified so I can see the fucking thing.

I have got better with trackpads in recent years as long as fucking tap-click is turned off with extreme prejudice...

Yay for new laptop, refurb or not, being YOURs and not some fuckwitted DSA machine is definitely a good start. And if you don't like stuff, you can get it changed! Hurrah!

Happy to talk Linux things if useful, my main desktop is Linux Mate with Gnomeish stuff but custom desktop environment so it's not too faffy. I use Win 10 for work x2 so speak Doze too.

In obDSA news, I'm increasingly seeing students getting a smaller laptop + an external screen and dock thinger so it's a single connection to have external keyboard, mouse, screen but the laptop itself is not hugeo-massive-monster.

From:

cosmolinguist

Have a poke in the accessibility settings, there may be a "mouse/cursor finder"

Oh yeah there are mouse/cursor finding settings and I have some of them on (mostly I'm helped just by making the mouse pointer really big), but also there's something nice about thinking "I need to click on this thing over here" and not having to go "so where is my mouse now, where am I starting from" but just going "boop!" with my fingertip to touch the thing, it seems to be saving me spoons.#

In obDSA news, I'm increasingly seeing students getting a smaller laptop + an external screen and dock thinger so it's a single connection to have external keyboard, mouse, screen but the laptop itself is not hugeo-massive-monster.

I'm so glad to hear this! I had a hugeo-massive-monster and it was such a pain (sometimes literally!) to lug it around, I was so envious of all the other students pulling teeny macbooks out of their stylish satchels when I ended up having to lug two bags around with everything I needed for uni. And I spent all my weekends in my covid bubble last year (which is where I live now), many of them dragging my laptop with me because I had uni work to do until September... I remember swearing on some of those walks that I'd get a lighter laptop after uni and of course now I have and I'm not taking it anywhere, because I can't go anywhere! :) Still it's good to have, and the dock to plug everything else into is a genius idea. I did have the big monitor from DSA too so why I needed the hugeo laptop itself I do not know.

From:

barakta

I really don't know why we get into the 17" laptops without considering smaller ones + a screen as we do screens anyway... I think SFE finally got over the "OMG no" to external screens and have lightened up...

Sadly we can't go smaller than 15" for DSA laptops without an impairment that affects lifting (and a clear justification) even though 15" is still too heavy. Many students without physical issues complained that 15" was HUGE. Cos if you're walking any distance, traipsing round campus, on public transport or going hither and yon as well as uni, 15" gets bastard fucking heavy pretty fast. People who make policy don't think about laptop weight cos they use cars and taxis more and walk/buses a lot less than students.

We actually KNOW (officially in funding body terms) blind people get all sorts of ergo problems if we don't set folk up with good ergo stuff from the start. Especially those of you who still use your visual capacities. But we don't think about asking you to haul kilos of extra kit.

I didn't get a DSA computer in 2015 much to my assessor's confusion. I just couldn't be arsed with it, much easier for Kim and I to source and build our own desktop from parts that fit the house system for passing spares round etc. It's still going strong altho on SSD hard disks rather than old spinning rust ones. It may have had a RAM upgrade when we realised the memory was becoming £££ and unobtanium. I installed my own DSA software and I have access to other stuff in my assessor role for testing etc.

I would probably be eligible for a lightweight or ultra light weight laptop but dunno if the spec would annoy me or not. I figure I'll deal with that at the next DSA round as my desktop at 6 yrs old is too old for DSA :D. I will max out DSA costs whatever I do cos they've merged all the allowances now for UG and PG (so better for PG) but worse for deafies who max stuff out. T'is always the way with changes, give with one hand, take with the other...

From:

silveradept

Here's hoping that the laptop turns out delightfully and you find a DE/WM that works accessibly to you.

From:

cosmolinguist

I think I'll be fine once I'm done installing things; there's so much more to do at the beginning of a new setup than there is (for me) day-to-day; once I have my dozen or so programs and I know where to find them, I don't mind so much about everything else. This beginning bit is just exhausting me (it doesn't help that I'd also forgotten I was using Ubuntu before and I'm using Debian now, so no wonder I remember it being easier to install everything than I am now finding it! I'm all out of practice with it being work to install programs. :) )

From:

silveradept

At least they have the same package managers. One of the things I have found that no operating system does really well is moving yourself from one to another. Linux distributions are especially not good at it, even though it should be more scriptable to do it. (Pack up all your config settings and a snapshot of what you have installed into a tarball, then the transference script looks at those files, installs the correct packages, and dumps the config files in the right places. That should, in theory, work just fine, but I don't see a lot of distributions offering that kind of thing.)

Edited Date: 2021-11-08 03:14 pm (UTC)

From:

steorra

Yay new laptop!

From:

cosmolinguist

It's so little! And because all of us have very similar-looking laptops now, I'm more than usually compelled to look at stickers to identify mine with. :)