Living With Apple's MacBook: Circumventing Various Shortcomings

Not 24 hours after posting my previous two-part writeup detailing my hands-on impressions with running Windows on an Apple MacBook, Google has come through with a fix for several of the more egregious shortcomings I noted:

• The clumsy two-finger workaround for the lack of a right trackpad button, and
• The lack of a dedicated forward-delete button

Careful crafting of Google search criteria uncovered this informative web page from Alan J. Hogan’s site, which alerted me to a useful open-source utility called AutoHotkey. Hogan’s AutoHotkey script, downloadable from that same informative web page, provides three useful functions which you’ll understand better if you first peruse this graphic of the keyboard layout:

• The Command (also known as Open-Apple) key to the right of the space bar is re-mapped to operate as mostly-functional right mouse button (i.e. the missing right trackpad button)
• The Enter key also to the right of the space bar (and to the right of the above-mentioned Command key) is remapped to operate as the missing forward-delete key, and
• Press both of the above keys at the same time, and they operate as a mostly-functional middle mouse button

One other omission with the MacBook-under-Windows, as compared to its Inspiron 700m predecessor, is the Dell Wireless WLAN Utility, a Dell-labeled version of Broadcom’s Wireless Utility. Although I didn’t use it to manage my laptop’s Wi-Fi connections, it was still a convenient means of finding (and assessing the signal strength, encryption and other characteristics of) nearby broadcasting access points, and it seemed to find more active signals than did the Windows XP Wireless Zero Configuration service.

I was happily surprised yesterday afternoon to discover that NetStumbler runs fine on the MacBook, even with its upgraded draft 802.11n wireless subsystem. However, since that wireless subsystem is Broadcom silicon-based, I think I’m still going to see if the company will supply me with a copy of its utility. Speaking of wireless, my earlier writeup mentioned that I missed the Inspiron 700m’s ‘active Wi-Fi’ LED. I’ve gotten around that issue by disabling auto-hide of the taskbar, which enables me to conveniently see Windows’ network connection notification icon. And speaking of the taskbar, I’ve also discovered a Microsoft-blessed non-LED means of monitoring HDD activity; the DiskMon utility.