SIBO - Why it works

In which delusional gets cosy with an old friend. Well a friend that’s old, anyway.

SIBO? Isn’t that a robot dog?

As many of you will know SIBO is the operating system used by the Series3x. I’ve been using it for about a month now, and it’s amazing how quickly you get used to not using a pointer of some sort. I’m not sure what will happen when I get a Revo…

Oh, and the dog’s AIBO. Probably.

What no mouse?

Anyway, back to SIBO. A large part of the reason that you get used to having no mouse so quickly is because the OS is so easy to use with just the keyboard. You can see throughout SIBO and the built in apps that a lot of thought has been put into making them as easy to use without a mouse as Windows is to use with one. The only app that I feel could really benefit from a mouse is Sheet (for selecting cells mainly). I also find myself wanting one on occasion in Word and OPL (again for selecting). Agenda is perfect, mainly because you are only editing small portions of text.

Original can be best

In fact, having used the Series5 Agenda, I have to say in some ways I actually prefer the 3 Agenda. The main reason for this is that in the 3, you can type directly into the time spaces, but in the 5 a box pops up when you start typing, which, although useful in many ways, gets on my nerves a little.

Organisation Extrodinaire

On to the way the OS handles files and folders. I’ll use the inbuilt apps as the examples. The whole basic core of apps is built around the idea of each app having a folder where each app stores it’s data files, eg /WRD for Word files.

The System screen uses this to display the list of files below each program. This was a little disorientating to start with, coming from the Windows filing system, but soon became second nature to me. This is another great example of how the OS is designed around the keyboard. It’s much easer to select files from the file lists below each icon than to trawl around folders and files as you would in Windows.

Even more bonuses?

As an aside, I’ll mention how using the Series3 can improve your general PC usage. It drums into you the idea of keyboard shortcuts, which we tend to forget in Windows. These can immesuraby speed up your working, especially in applications such as word processing and spreadsheet work, where you spend most of you time at the keyboard. After all, is it easier to just hit another key, or move your hand to the mouse?

Before I fall asleep…

To finish, as I see I am starting to ramble, I’d just like to give a summary of SIBO. Basicaly it is focused on what it needs to do, and is therefore very good at it, unlike some OS’s I’m sure we could mention! Although you occasionally come across an app that deviates in some way, most follow the standard to ensure that the OS stays the way it should - an unobtrusive thing that you use to get your work done.

delusional