I’ve been doing a lot of OS installations recently (Solaris, various kinds of Linux, even WinXP), and I’m gradually coming to realize that the shift from “preparing a system” to “using a system” comes after I’ve populated the Bookmarks toolbar of the browser (Safari or Firefox) with my favourite links. While there are usually a couple of system-specific things, the basic pattern is constant:
– Basics: My Yahoo, Gmail, my ISP webmail, Amazon, Sun’s internal portal
– News: BBC, Salon, National Weather Service, and the Register and Inquirer
– Blogging: my blog, its admin page, and Planet Sun
– Fun: User Friendly, Doonesbury, Dilbert
– Academic: the Tufts Blackboard portal
Obviously that lot won’t fit without some data compression; each link is just a favicon plus a couple of characters: “Y!”, “UF”, and so forth.