NVMUG eNews 11/22/2001
Last updated 11/22/2001
No Meeting in November
There was no meeting in November because we did not have a program prepared; several of the people who regularly attend could not be there; and there were so many other things to do. Please have a happy thanksgiving. Be thankful for all we have. Thank your friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers, and everyone else who has made your life better. And, begin preparing for Christmas.
1. Geneology and other thoughts
A distant relative is digging up her genealogy and sharing it with others. She found my name by simply searching for Hartley Jackson. She found where my great grandfather lived in England before moving ot this country and bringing my grandfather with him. She will be sending me a map of the small town in England. She is investigating to dig up interesting things about relatives, where they came from and why, and what they did. She is using her computer (It could have been a Macintosh) for an interesting hobby that is good for her brain, and is entertaining others and making friends.
Shari, like many of our NVMUG members, is into digital photography. She is starting a business of restoring old photographs.
Yesterday at MacDonalds in Newport I saw children in their play area. Among all of the active things they could have been doing, they were playing some kind of video game.
These computers are wonderful tools. They no doubt provide healthy exercise for the brain; they entertain, and they help us create and communicate. They may also be addictive. So, we should take a break, become physically active, and talk with live people a fair share of the time. I am sure my wife would like more of that.
2. Mac OS X Mail
I am using Mac OS X v10.1.1 as my primary tool. Having to use the Classic mode for OS 9 for about half what I do is a minor announce. For example, I can manipulate images with GraphicConverter in Mac OS X, but my scanner does not have an OS X driver. To scan them I could use an OS 9 version of GraphicConverter, but I use an OS 9 version of Photoshop 5.0 LE. It will probably be a long time before Adobe puts out their less expensive photo tools in a Mac OS X version, and I have a student version of a statistical program that I may always have to use in the Classic mode.
Anyway, I am sending out this newsletter in Mac OS X Mail. MacWorld had a review of this program that was not complementary, but I do not need some of the advanced features mentioned in the article. It will help when I have a manual. The instructions for Mail in the Mail Help menu are minimal, and some of them require and Internet connection to read.
I was able to copy all of my message folders from Outlook Express. The messages and folders came over with the same structure for use in Mail. Conversion is possible for many e-mail programs. I also was able to copy addresses from Outlook Express and from Palm Desktop, and it was easy to eliminate the duplicates.
Addresses within Groups did not transfer automatically; and cannot be sorted alphabetically in Mail, or in Outlook Express. I copied names into AppleWorks and sorted them so I could edit the list.
I still do not completely understand the spell checker. It has three options: check spelling of each word as you key it, check spelling of the document, and spelling. Checking spelling of each word as you key it underlines words in red that it does not have in its dictionary. Spelling gives you a spell checker that asks you to guess, and then gives alternatives or gives alternatives for misspelled words, but there is something strange that I still do not understand about the way if finds words. And, spell checking the document underlines misspelled words in red, but does not seem to give you alternatives.
If you want to store a message until you have more ready to send, you must save it as a draft. Otherwise, Mail wants to send it as soon as you start to do something else. I suspect it was developed by people who did not have to dial up connections. There is no Send Now
button. There is also no action message to tell you what is happening when you are sending or getting mail.
To make the online connection, you can do so using an icon on the menu bar, using a connection program in the Dock, or clicking "Get Mail" in Mac OS X Mail. Get Mail
uses the program in the Dock which sometimes doesn't do anything. The icon on the menu bar flashes to let you know what it is doing and shows a solid wire to indicate that it is connected, but I liked it better when I was told that the modem was dialing, connecting, etc.
Mail did bomb once. I had not saved the message as a draft, so it was lost. But all I had to do was restart Mail and reenter the message.
There is room for improvement in future updates, but it works. I guess that about sums up Mac OS X v10.1.1 which is fast enough and works, but lacks several drivers and programs.
3. pdf
Option click to download pdf, a tip from MacFixIt
Personally, we have never seen an advantage to the Acrobat plugin even when it works. It takes forever to open, has less options and more bugs than the Reader application itself, and seems to offer no advantages for our use. Instead, we just Option-click on links to pdf files in browsers such as Explorer. This downloads them instead of opening them. We then open them in the Reader application. Alternatively, you can just remove the Acrobat plug-in from your browser's plug-ins folder.
Saving pdf files
Saving PDF files: a tip - Derrick Yamaura sent us this tip for configuring a Web browser to automatically download PDF files, which is helpful if you don't use the PDF browser plugin (see above). He writes: Open Internet Explorer's preferences, go to the File Helper section, highlight the entry for Portable Document Format, click the Change... button, then make two changes:
1) change the Download Destination option to Download Folder; and
2) change the Handling option to Save To File. Configured this way, a PDF will always download to the specified Download Folder when its link is clicked."
4. Other
The Apple MUG Store
I thought I had a problem with my iBook. I had a loose connection and the battery became partially discharged. When put the wall plug all the way in, the battery icon showed with a time next to it which went up and down with no logical pattern. I took in down to Small Dog the next day. They checked it with another cable, put my cable back in, and explained how the icon and the light on the bottom of the iBook both show the battery status. He was very nice, provided my quote for the day when he said, If you pay attention to the numbers, they will drive you crazy.
