A few small nuggets unearthed while working in my Mac lab: If you fiddle with Darwin or run beta versions of OS X, you'll run into the problem of not knowing whether your PowerBook is responding to the power button. Hold down Caps Lock when you power up or force a power down. That's as close to a power light as the Mac has. When I use my PowerBook in dark spaces like conference sessions, I find that even the dim A few small nuggets unearthed while working in my Mac lab:If you fiddle with Darwin or run beta versions of OS X, you’ll run into the problem of not knowing whether your PowerBook is responding to the power button. Hold down Caps Lock when you power up or force a power down. That’s as close to a power light as the Mac has.When I use my PowerBook in dark spaces like conference sessions, I find that even the dimmest backlight setting is too bright. Control-Option-Command-8 switches the display to greyscale, then inverts it (in other words, black text on white becomes white text on black). The light output falls by half or more. It looks strange–the Dock icons are a really a trip in negative grayscale–but the entire GUI is perfectly usable. Repeating the hotkey sequence flips back to positive and restores the color. If you’re looking for a notebook cooler that actually protects your lap, skip the fancy desk stands. A pack of soft silicone (not black rubber–it dries out) stick-on “feet” turns a cutting board or a sheet of Plexiglas into a lap cooler. Don’t stick the feet to the bottom of the PowerBook because they’ll either peel off or harm the surface. This works better than laptop coolers that press anything against the bottom of the PowerBook. Try it.I’m naturally inclined toward using the Unix command line to manage files, but I recommend that all Mac users acquire basic command line and shell scripting skills. Among the benefits: The ls command doesn’t filter hidden files (ls -a will show files that begin with a dot); rm deletes files without putting them in the Trash (a blessing and a curse); shell globbing (like image???.jpg) selects files faster and more precisely than Finder can; the locate command finds files by name in an instant and the find command takes longer, but finds everything (like a command line version of Tiger’s Spotlight); shell scripts (bash in particular) are simpler in syntax, portable to other Unixes and you can embed calls to AppleScript if needed. It goes on and on. OS X’s BSD environment is a good bit of the Mac’s advantage over Windows.——– Technology Industry