5 Ways To Make The Best Use Of Your Laptop’s Screen
Apple, Productivity September 8th, 2006Apple’s consumer line notebook, the MacBook features an ultra-compact 13.3” screen. You need to make the best possible use of your limited screen resolution. Here’s 5 ways to maximize your working space and productivity using your small display.

5.
Hide the dock. If you hide the dock you open up a few extra pixels for yourself to extend the height of your screen.
4.
Switch on tabbed massaging in Adium. This way you will only have one chat window open to host all of your chat’s which are currently active. Use iChat? Then install Chax to group all of your chat together nicely and keep your chat interface organized.
3.
Make your desktop icons smaller by clicking on the desktop, selecting view, show view options in the menu-bar. You can change your icons to display as small as 16×16, which saves extra space on your desktop.
2.
Expose is there on your machine, so are hot corners, use them! Switch on Expose with hot-corners, you will have no idea how much this will revolutionize your OSX experience.
1.
Virtue Desktops. Cant wait for Leopard to arrive so you can try out Spaces? Install Virtue on your Mac and start creating some “virtual” desktops.
This way you can keep all your work related windows in one desktop, your music related stuff in another, and your Mail and IMs in another.
Flick between these desktops using keyboard shortcuts or your mouse, it will save you time, and make you feel like you have a line of ten displays lining your desk, minus the sore neck from moving from side to side.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:25 pm
I use 5, 4, and 2. I like big icons, so I don’t do 3, and virtual desktops were to messy for me, so I don’t use 1.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Your link to virtue desktops is not working?
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I would like to add, using DragThing has helped me organize many things into a customizable dock that is always available.
http://www.dragthing.com
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I actually use Virtue Desktops now on my MacBook Pro which can be downloaded at http://virtuedesktops.info/ . It’s got the added functionality of motion and light sensors to switch desktops if you’ve seen the SmackBook videos. I’ve come to rely on it to keep my many-many-opened-windows organized.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Tabbed massaging Sounds good. What’s it like?
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:27 pm
It’s like tabbed browsing in Safari or Firefox; the tabs are the people you are chatting with.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I find 16×16 a bit extreme, but I did change it to 32, thanks for the tips
October 14th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Didn’t know about Chax; thanks!
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 am
i got 4 out of 5. never used Virtue. i dont think my powerbook could handle more than 1 desktop running at once.
November 15th, 2007 at 3:22 am
Spaces is great on the MacBook especially when you want to quickly clear the screen for a whole new set of note taking / research whilst still having everything open just a click away.