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Andy's Un-Official Unsolicited Mac Advice Thread

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    PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited January 17, 2009
    I use Mozy Pro with a company whose data I'm responsible for - it has worked very well. It doesn't sync like SugarSync, but if all you need is backup it's an excellent solution. thumb.gif
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited January 17, 2009
    cmason wrote:
    I also highly recommend Mozy Home. Its $4.95 a month for unlimited backup, and the Mac version is very mature, not in beta like the above. They offer a free version with 2GB limit, so its simple to try. I have an account for my Mac, and free accounts for all the other computers in the house (2GB free).

    Basically it runs in the background. You can choose files, file types, directories etc to be backed up. It does not appear as a virtual disk, however you can open the client (or web client) for easy access and download of any file that has been uploaded.


    Thanks! I'm going to try it. :D
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    BradfordBennBradfordBenn Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited January 18, 2009
    You might also want to check with your bank :) My bank is offering a Virtual Safe Deposit box that is pennies a month. Offsite backup etc. it is not a true realtime connection you have to upload files but also something to consider.

    I also think about what happened to JournalSpace last month, their backup was a RAID system. So a disgruntled employee just erased the data. No way to get it back. No drive failure etc.
    -=Bradford

    Pictures | Website | Blog | Twitter | Contact
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited January 19, 2009
    For $200 you can have your MBP screen converted to matte.
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    CatOneCatOne Registered Users Posts: 957 Major grins
    edited January 19, 2009
    DavidTO wrote:
    OK, this is serious. I'm in love. :D

    ...

    CAUTION: At present Dropbox does NOT copy the resource fork. Maybe my love isn't so strong, after all. It borked the Quicken files I had uploaded to it. The solution here is to put these files into a DMG. That works fine. Good thing I had a backup of my Quicken, cause the files I had put in the Dropbox were unusable!

    Resource fork. Laughing.gif.

    Oh, that's right, we _ARE_ talking about Quicken here. You know they actually CAN'T make that thing a universal binary without a complete rewrite, the code is so old? They actually have some parts of Quicken for which THERE IS NO SOURCE CODE anymore... they lost it! So they have the object files and they can link with those, but there's no source. L O L.

    Anyway, yeah, it's a problem for super old code that has its roots in the OS 9 and earlier days. Disk images will work tho'
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    bike21bike21 Registered Users Posts: 836 Major grins
    edited February 8, 2009
    Boot camp/Windows on a mac
    How many of you mac users use boot camp or parallels on your macs? I just got a new Macbook Pro and don't want to 'infect' it with Windows :D

    That said, I need IE for my company's website to fully function and currently use Microsoft Money for my finances and don't really want to switch. I might load up boot camp w/ XP but I have heard even with the partition it can slow down the overall performance of Leopard. Any truth to this or is it unfounded anti-windows mongering?

    I love the new mac, but still need some windows functionality. I appreciate any help/success/horror stories of using windows on a mac.
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    PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited February 8, 2009
    bike21 wrote:
    I might load up boot camp w/ XP but I have heard even with the partition it can slow down the overall performance of Leopard. Any truth to this or is it unfounded anti-windows mongering?

    Unfounded anti-windows mongering. It slows down nothing. If you're only doing it to run IE you should probably consider VMWare Fusion or Parallels instead of boot camp. Seems like a waste of time, energy, and hard drive space to use Boot Camp. (I on the other hand spend more time in Windows than OSX, so Boot Camp is the way to go.)
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    W.W. WebsterW.W. Webster Registered Users Posts: 3,204 Major grins
    edited February 8, 2009
    bike21 wrote:
    I appreciate any help/success/horror stories of using windows on a mac.
    Perhaps your question is better directed to Andy's Un-Official Unsolicited Mac Advice Thread.
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    kd2kd2 Registered Users Posts: 179 Major grins
    edited February 8, 2009
    I just loaded VMare Fusion on my desktop Mac two days ago. I want to run a customer database program and it's Windows-based. So far, absolutely no problems at all.
    ~Kathy
    Success Coach, Motivational Speaker, Professional Photographer
    "Enriching Lives through Images and Inspiration"
    www.kathleendavenport.com


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    bike21bike21 Registered Users Posts: 836 Major grins
    edited February 9, 2009
    Cool, thanks for the notes & ideas. I think I might do Boot Camp for now since it pre-installed and I have a copy of XP ready to go.

    Not to get too far off topic, but has anyone tried Moneydance for personal finances? I just found it, and it looks like a great alternative to using MS Money.
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited February 10, 2009
    DoctorIt wrote:
    Really? those apps will keep my calendar and address book synced between iphone, home Mac, and anywhere I can login to me.com?

    I'll happily take back my me.com account if you show me something that does it as seamlessly (that's not baiting or sarcasm, it's serious).


    Here you go, Doc. Calendar and contact syncing without mobile me. thumb.gif
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited February 14, 2009
    If you're using DropBox, I just figured out how to make it better and easier! thumb.gif

    Well, this will seem complicated, and it takes some set-up, but here's the thing: once you've done this the file/folder you're syncing can be where you want it to be--it doesn't have to be in the DropBox folder.

    First, download this Automator Action.

    2) Install it by double clicking it. Do this on both computers you're syncing.

    3) When it's open in Automator, you can edit it so that it will create the symbolic link wherever you determine. I put it in DropBox>Symbolic Sync. It doesn't matter what you call it, just make sure that you have this folder in your DropBox and that you choose it in the action.

    4) Save this action as a plug-in. Name it something like DropBox Symbolic Link

    5) Now, any file you want synced to DropBox, you just need to right click, More>Automator>Whatever you named the action.

    Now, on the second computer, go to your DropBox. After making sure that the file is fully up-to-date, quit DropBox, drag the file from DropBox to wherever it is that you want to keep it, and run the same action to create a symbolic link, then re-launch DropBox.

    Now when you make a change in either folder it will show up in the other. You can maintain the folder structure you want (don't have to keep things in DropBox) and also keep things in sync. This is also great if you're syncing things that have to be in a certain place, like in Library>Application Support.

    Try it, let me know if it works! lol3.gif
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    PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited February 17, 2009
    DavidTO wrote:
    Now when you make a change in either folder it will show up in the other. You can maintain the folder structure you want (don't have to keep things in DropBox) and also keep things in sync. This is also great if you're syncing things that have to be in a certain place, like in Library>Application Support.

    Try it, let me know if it works! lol3.gif

    I'll mention here that this is the way SugarSync works. You choose which folders (including the folder structure) you want sync'd and it does it. For example - I have the "Documents" folder under my user account selected. That folder is duplicated 1) on the cloud (access from any browser) 2) on my windows laptop in /user/Documents and on the mac side of the laptop under /documents. Everything is right where it should be.

    (SugarSync also has a folder called the magic briefcase that works the same was as dropbox - as best I can tell from your description.)
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    thebigskythebigsky Registered Users Posts: 1,052 Major grins
    edited March 5, 2009
    I don't know if anyone else has suffered iPhone battery issues after the latest update, there seems to be quite a lot of people including me who have.

    Basically the phone went from going 4 or 5 days without needing a charge to needing one every day.

    Anyway I fixed the issue on mine by running the battery right down and then doing a full recharge and then doing a restore via iTunes.

    Battery life is now back to normal.

    Charlie
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    MilanMilan Registered Users Posts: 166 Major grins
    edited March 7, 2009
    thebigsky wrote:
    I don't know if anyone else has suffered iPhone battery issues after the latest update, there seems to be quite a lot of people including me who have.

    Basically the phone went from going 4 or 5 days without needing a charge to needing one every day.

    Anyway I fixed the issue on mine by running the battery right down and then doing a full recharge and then doing a restore via iTunes.

    Battery life is now back to normal.

    Charlie

    I did install the update and initially thought that I have some battery issue, but as it turned out it was just me leaving the wifi on.:D So no issues at all.
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    thebigskythebigsky Registered Users Posts: 1,052 Major grins
    edited March 16, 2009
    Milan wrote:
    I did install the update and initially thought that I have some battery issue, but as it turned out it was just me leaving the wifi on.:D So no issues at all.

    At first I turned off lots of services, WiFi, Location, Bluetooth etc but since resolving the battery issues I've been able to leave them all on and still get about 4-5 days of standby.

    Charlie
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    MilanMilan Registered Users Posts: 166 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    thebigsky wrote:
    At first I turned off lots of services, WiFi, Location, Bluetooth etc but since resolving the battery issues I've been able to leave them all on and still get about 4-5 days of standby.

    Charlie

    I have to test that. Usually I turn Wifi and bluetooth off.
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    wholenewlightwholenewlight Registered Users Posts: 1,529 Major grins
    edited March 30, 2009
    Mac help
    I did do a search (search is my friend) and looked through recent threads but didn't find the help I was looking for.

    I've been a PC user for years (but owned a mac in the early 1990's - ancient history). I just bought a new Dell screamin' i7 processor, 6gb ram, Vista 64, desktop machine. It is fast but I'm still having pc/windows/vista problems:
    • only boots up correctlyabout half the time, other times it stalls and freezes
    • when it freezes, I have to go through the whole windows restore process, ugh
    • it "forgets" USB devices including the internal memory card reader
    • I do have a new premium brand powered usb hub. Sometimes it forgets devices attached to it (my iphone). Must reboot when that happens.
    I have not gone through any Dell support troubleshooting.

    Anyway, the computer came from Costco and I'm within the 90 day return policy. I also separately bought a new Dell 24" inch Ultrasharp monitor - I probably can't return it.

    When I bought the new PC, I considered the iMac but tried to go cheaper. . . ne_nau.gif

    So, now I'm considering changing to the new Mac Mini - config something like this:

    Apple Mac mini Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz,4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, SuperDrive with VMware Fusion and Microsoft Windows XP Home pre-installed

    With this I could still use my new monitor (realizing that the iMac would have a sweeter monitor).

    My photoshop cs2 would still need to be windows for the current time (I hear Adobe will let me switch to Mac version but how do I upgrade and switch OS at the same time? The upgrade will require the old version already installed I believe) and maybe temporarily use ms office as windows versions.

    Sorry for the long message - any advice appreciated. Am I on the right track? Will the Mac Mini (new version) with 4gb Ram give me enough horsepower to do photoshop tasks with relative ease? Even under VM Fusion (at least for awhile)?

    I'm on a budget and my wife would already think I'm crazy to do this.
    john w

    I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.
    Edward Steichen


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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited March 30, 2009
    I did do a search (search is my friend) and looked through recent threads but didn't find the help I was looking for.

    I've been a PC user for years (but owned a mac in the early 1990's - ancient history). I just bought a new Dell screamin' i7 processor, 6gb ram, Vista 64, desktop machine. It is fast but I'm still having pc/windows/vista problems:
    • only boots up correctlyabout half the time, other times it stalls and freezes
    • when it freezes, I have to go through the whole windows restore process, ugh
    • it "forgets" USB devices including the internal memory card reader
    • I do have a new premium brand powered usb hub. Sometimes it forgets devices attached to it (my iphone). Must reboot when that happens.
    I have not gone through any Dell support troubleshooting.

    Anyway, the computer came from Costco and I'm within the 90 day return policy. I also separately bought a new Dell 24" inch Ultrasharp monitor - I probably can't return it.

    When I bought the new PC, I considered the iMac but tried to go cheaper. . . ne_nau.gif

    So, now I'm considering changing to the new Mac Mini - config something like this:

    Apple Mac mini Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz,4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, SuperDrive with VMware Fusion and Microsoft Windows XP Home pre-installed

    With this I could still use my new monitor (realizing that the iMac would have a sweeter monitor).

    My photoshop cs2 would still need to be windows for the current time (I hear Adobe will let me switch to Mac version but how do I upgrade and switch OS at the same time? The upgrade will require the old version already installed I believe) and maybe temporarily use ms office as windows versions.

    Sorry for the long message - any advice appreciated. Am I on the right track? Will the Mac Mini (new version) with 4gb Ram give me enough horsepower to do photoshop tasks with relative ease? Even under VM Fusion (at least for awhile)?

    I'm on a budget and my wife would already think I'm crazy to do this.


    I don't know about the Mini and its horsepower for PS, but you would not need to have PS installed to upgrade, I don't think. If you call them, give them your PC serial for PS they should sell you the upgrade to CS4 and it will install no problem, I would think.

    You can avoid using office in windows if Open Office works for you.
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    colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited March 31, 2009
    Will the Mac Mini (new version) with 4gb Ram give me enough horsepower to do photoshop tasks with relative ease? Even under VM Fusion (at least for awhile)?

    It will be OK for a while. 4GB RAM is not that high an amount if you work with high megapixel images. It would be better if you didn't have to do it through Fusion, since then you burden your computer with the RAM and CPU overhead of one OS running through another. For using Windows Photoshop, it would be better if you gave the drive a Boot Camp partition so you could run Windows natively on the mini.

    Actually what would be most efficient, and by far the biggest boost to speed after RAM, regardless of platform, would be to plan to use the mini with one or more fast external FireWire hard drives. Especially since the mini can't hold enough RAM to allow Mac OS X or Windows RAM buffering for the Photoshop scratch files (that doesn't really start working until around 6GB+), if you used a fast external FireWire hard drive for the Photoshop scratch disk, it would take a huge load off the mini's internal hard drive which is only 2.5" - yes, the mini is basically a laptop in a desktop box. You might also be able to use a second spare hard drive to boot Windows from although I'm not sure if that really works, but if it did you wouldn't have to partition the internal drive if you wanted to run Windows natively.

    As for Adobe, everything I have read is that you cannot switch and upgrade Photoshop at the same time. You must do them separately, but I'm not sure if they want you to do it in a specific order, you would have to talk to them. But the platform switch is said to cost almost nothing.

    I am not sure the iMac monitor would have been better than the Dell monitor. You might be OK with that one.
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    In other news, I hereby give up on Quicksilver. It's gotten to be useless. I'm back to Launchbar, and much happier. Hey, it works!!! clap.gif
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    Moogle PepperMoogle Pepper Registered Users Posts: 2,950 Major grins
    edited April 26, 2009
    my Mac runs hot when I am running lightroom, itunes, and Firefox. My smcFanControl says that I am at avg. 150 degrees F even with a high fan RPM.

    My friend... recently melted her mac, so I am spooked.
    Food & Culture.
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    CatOneCatOne Registered Users Posts: 957 Major grins
    edited April 26, 2009
    DavidTO wrote:
    In other news, I hereby give up on Quicksilver. It's gotten to be useless. I'm back to Launchbar, and much happier. Hey, it works!!! clap.gif

    Launchbar is hella powerful. Too bad I only have learned to use like 3% of the functionality, in 5 years of use. ne_nau.gif
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    zweiblumenzweiblumen Registered Users Posts: 369 Major grins
    edited April 29, 2009
    DavidTO wrote:
    In other news, I hereby give up on Quicksilver. It's gotten to be useless. I'm back to Launchbar, and much happier. Hey, it works!!! clap.gif


    Interesting... I've been in love with QS since I got my first mac, and still find it to be incredibly useful. How has it lost functionality for you?
    Travis
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited April 30, 2009
    zweiblumen wrote:
    Interesting... I've been in love with QS since I got my first mac, and still find it to be incredibly useful. How has it lost functionality for you?


    It just stopped working. Stopped finding things, icons were generic. I updated to the latest version, helped a for a bit, then stopped. It also slowed down. I assumed it was the lack of development. Anyway, I had been using LB a while back, and just returned. It's just better, IMO.
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    WolfOnDigitalWolfOnDigital Registered Users Posts: 146 Major grins
    edited May 8, 2009
    Sound question on my Powerbook
    Anyone using a 17" Mac Powerbook?

    I have had it for three years now and all of a sudden there is zero sound to my laptop speakers?
    However, when I plug in a headphone the sound is fine.
    No sound only when I use the Macs internal speaker.


    Any thought other then a logic board problem?


    Thanks.

    Jeff
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited May 8, 2009
    Anyone using a 17" Mac Powerbook?

    I have had it for three years now and all of a sudden there is zero sound to my laptop speakers?
    However, when I plug in a headphone the sound is fine.
    No sound only when I use the Macs internal speaker.


    Any thought other then a logic board problem?


    Thanks.

    Jeff


    You did check the sound preferences, right? Sometimes just changing something in there will fix that kind of problem.

    You could also try resetting the PRAM (hold down cmd-opt-p-r all at once after the startup chime, and hold it down for 3 more chimes before letting go and allowing the system to start up).
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    WolfOnDigitalWolfOnDigital Registered Users Posts: 146 Major grins
    edited May 8, 2009
    Thanks...
    DavidTO wrote:
    You did check the sound preferences, right? Sometimes just changing something in there will fix that kind of problem.

    You could also try resetting the PRAM (hold down cmd-opt-p-r all at once after the startup chime, and hold it down for 3 more chimes before letting go and allowing the system to start up).


    I will try that
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    WolfOnDigitalWolfOnDigital Registered Users Posts: 146 Major grins
    edited May 8, 2009
    I did...
    DavidTO wrote:
    You did check the sound preferences, right? Sometimes just changing something in there will fix that kind of problem.

    You could also try resetting the PRAM (hold down cmd-opt-p-r all at once after the startup chime, and hold it down for 3 more chimes before letting go and allowing the system to start up).


    First time I noticed this.
    When you go sound prefs and click on output it does not show internal speakers or headphones but only DIGITAL OUT
    "This device has no output sources????"

    Never seen tha before.


    Any thoughts?

    Thanks
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited May 8, 2009
    First time I noticed this.
    When you go sound prefs and click on output it does not show internal speakers or headphones but only DIGITAL OUT
    "This device has no output sources????"

    Never seen tha before.


    Any thoughts?

    Thanks


    Yah, sounds like hardware failure, but I would first try deleting your prefs.

    User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.soundpref.plist

    Delete that and restart the machine. Probably won't help, but might! :D

    I think it needs service.
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