Using a mac was for a long time a privilege of designers and artists only. Nowadays, entering a university you will find macs all over the campus, in almost every department. But still it is not really said, how much a mac can help you, organizing your scientific studies and work.
I wouldn't call me a fanboy, I just like the machine, since it's fits best with my working habits. And it isn't just the computer or the operating system itself, it's also a whole bunch of software I like to use and I found very usefull.
My background is as a sociologist, working mostly in the filed of sociology of media, sociology of science and sociology of work and employment, while my main-field is sociology of new media. I work primarily using qualitative methods and an ethnographic approach in particular. Because of this, my setup might not work for many people, doing something else. But my experience is, that for other fields you will find a lot of texts on the internet about how to use your computer and what software you need. In my field, there are very little and I will try to solve this problem a bit. In a series of posts I won't to show you my setup. I won't say this setup is the best possible and I would like to discuss this with you. If you're interested or have any question, don't hesistate to contact me.
The most important and primary piece of software is the wordprocessor. While most people use MS Word, I switched some months ago to Mellel. Why so? Well, there are a lot of things. First of all I want to say, Word isn't bad at all, but certain things don't work like I want them to. I had a lot of problems using style sheets, since I found it really disturbing. Also I had a lot of problems with the layout of texts and working with large files. OpenOffice.org could be an option, but it was just too slow on my older computer. So I looked after a lot of alternatives. On Mac OS 8, we had Nisus Writer , but since I didn't really work back then, I didn't really use it. Nisus Writer Pro is not bad, but it also needs a lot of memory and if you're short of, this is a no go. When I opened first Mellel, it was bit disturbing. I needed to look a lot in the manual, since it works a bit different from other wordprocessors. After about a week, I had problems to change back. Everything seemed so logical. Also the application is rock-solid, I crashed it just two or three times, while Word crashed me twice a day... What are the benefits of Mellel? The text-engine is just beautiful. It uses a own-developed with a large support of Opentype, so the typography looks really pretty. The outline-function (they call it “auto-titles”) is so easy to use and so nice working, that I don't want to miss this anymore. It's actually the main thing, why I have now problems to use Word & Co. Most of my text look just better, than before and in science this can be a good and important thing.
One word on Word. Of course there are times, when you need to use Word. If you need to exchange documents as .doc (I primarily use .pdf, but sometimes this is not possible) e.g, Mellel does not do that much of a good job. Also the “track changes” option works only with word and some other specific stuff. This might be a reason to stick with Word, but if you don't have such needs, I would really reccommend to give Mellel a try. A long try ;) I use it now for about two years and I'm absolutely happy with it. I wouldn't change back. And a hint: if you don't like the brushed metal look, there is an app for that... oh, whait a second, I ment an option for that. Pardon me.
In the next post, I'll go on with the writing process and will write about bibliography software. Later there will be something about research software and little helpers for special problems (like transcription and so on).
