Interdependent Thoughts

The new set-up is working, after moving manually.

As the M1 Macs don’t support more than one screen, have just 2 USB-C ports, and my regular set-up consists of two additional screens, I had to make some adaptations. I added a StarTech USB-C Dual HDMI Monitor Docking station (not visible in the image, as it is at the foot of the left lamp, hidden from sight by the laptop), that also has 3 USB-A, one USB-C, a Gb Ethernet and audio port. That connects to one of the USB-C ports on the Mac. Currently I’ve attached the two screens, my USB keyboard and the 4TB external HDD I’m using to move from my old laptop to the new one.

The docking station is DisplayLink compatible, and combined with installing the DisplayLink manager on my laptop makes the two external screens work. At first one screen went dark for a second every few seconds. DisplayLink suggested this may have something to do with cable quality. Sure enough when I switched the two screens’ cables the other one had the problem. So I tried another cable I had lying around, and then it worked.

My Wacom Intuos pen tablet needed a new driver installed, found in the download section of Wacom’s site. There should be a next version, better suited to the new Macs, available early February, but this one works too. The Wacom is connected to the other USB-C port on the Mac through an adapter that splits that USB-C port into a USB-A, HDMI and USB-C port, the latter one used for the power supply.

I also migrated my 113 Alfred snippets, so my keyboards shortcuts all work again in the way my fingers’ muscle memory knows them.

I’m now ready to fully work from the new laptop, as the most important things are done. Next comes a number of weeks of re-adding tweaks, migrating archive-stuff (old e-mail, images, books, music etc.), and things like my locally run webserver and its related databases and html files.