NVMUG eNews 6/10/2006
Last updated 6/12/2006
Questions and Answers
We formed a circle for a lively session of questions and answers with new members and seasoned users all sharing information.
1. The Meeting Report
We drew up a circle of chairs as two new members with interests in iMovie and GarageBand joined us. They both have experience with PCs and are new to Macintosh computers.
Ellen Dorn Levitt teaches digital design and book arts at Lyndon Institute and Lyndon State College. She works with InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator and is currently working on color management on a Macintosh. She is interested in GarageBand because her son is involved in a recently started band with a web site.
Meryl Lebowitz is a painter who uses digital photography and Photoshop editing when she paints from photographs. You can see some of her pictures in Bagel Depot in Lyndonville.
A panorama of the discussion circle
The picture shows, from left ot right, Neil Raphel, Geof Gonter, Midge Lubot, Bruce Shields, Stephen Farber, Ellen Dorn Levitt, Meryl Lebowitz, Warren Walker, with my red jacket at the bottom in the discussion circle. It was created from two snapshots using in a Photoshop.
The first question was from Veer-Tess who recently received two e-mails with her return address and a few numbers. Then she received a third on a second day with a gigantic number, She was told by someone who usually works with PCs that she probably had a virus which was causing the problem.
Geof Gonter works for Wildbranch Solutions and provides support for school computers, both PCs and Macs said he has never heard of a Mac virus that effects emails. Someone on a PC probably has a virus with her e-mail address in it that is causing the problem, which is a very common one. Geof gets about six a week. He recommended that she just send them to the trash, but if they come with an enclosure, not to open the enclosure.
Geof recommends setting up two accounts: an administrative account which you use only to manage your computer, and a regular account that you use for ordinary business, e-mail, and working with the Internet. If you ever do get a virus, it will only get to the ordinary account which is not authorized to change any other account and cannot modify your computer system.
Veer-Tess got an external hard drive with SilverKeeper, but she has not used it yet because of an error message needing to change her hard drive format and FAT 32. Greof explained that FAT 32 is an is old windows 98 format which limits file lengths to 32 characters file including the extensions. It would work, but would limit you to using the shorter file names. He recommends changing to HFS plus format. Stephen Farber explained that there is a utility program that came with SilverKeeper on the CD that she can use to change the format. Geof also recommended that, if asked, choose Journals for better data recovery if necessary.
Warren Walker who mostly uses his Mac for Photoshop and digital photography brought some of his this year flower pictures including a picture of Lady Slippers which he took at Long Pond in Greensboro.
Stephen Farber holding up Warren Walker's Lady Slipper picture.
Stephan Farber, admiring Warren's picture, brought a tuition about Aperture from Apple to see if anyone was interested in studying it. It requires the latest and most powerful Macs. Stephen, who works in another industry in another part of the state, does preventative maintenance, repairs Macs and does house calls, but he was out of communication for some time while waiting for a part for his older Mac.
Neil Raphel uses Dreamweaver for Web site upkeep for his business which includes direct mail marketing with special post cards, business books, and a new speaker's bureau which currently has 12 business speakers. He suggested that, if people were interested, we could meet at his place to do something in Dreamweaver.
Someone asked if anyone had experience with Boot Camp vs Parallels. Boot Camp, from Apple, supports booting either Mac OS X or Windows on Intel Macintosh computers, but you can only boot one at a time. Parallels is a commercial program that allows you to run both Windows and Mac OS X on your computer at the same time.
Geof Gonter, who supports schools in the Northeast Kingdom, said he has Boot Camp, but he has not had a chance to work with either program yet. Geof said they will run Boot Camp in Jay primarily because it is free. They have a grant to replace some seven year old PCs with Macs and will use Boot Camp for those already used to working with Windows. Kindergarten through thirds grade hardly used computers at all, but now they will be starting in kindergarten and using Word in second and third grade.
Geof said the new Microsoft Vista program will not have any Unix in it at all, so Unix experts are going to Macs. Mac Minis make it possible for schools that already have displays and keyboards to get a pretty nice set up at a very low cost.
Ellen said they had a Font icon on their monitor that she could not get rid of. The error message said it was locked. Geof said to click on the icon to highlight it, use command-i to bring up Get Info, find the box before "Locked," and click on the check mark to unlock it.
Most of the font management programs disappeared when Mac OS X built in some font managing tools. Stephen Farber said that if you have a great number of fonts to manage, Linotype has a new free font management program. It is Font Explorer X, and version 1.0 is not available for downloading at http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX.
Stephen told Ellen what a font manager does. I did not get it all, but the above Web site has a good description of what their program does.
Geof has an RSS feed from Version Tracker which he uses to check updates every day - he uses it to see if OS X updates versions that are not on his machines.
Neil asked if anyone had experience in using PowerPoint. He wanted to know if it was easy to use movies in PowerPoint. Geof recommended Macintosh Keynote's ease of using movies. It is easy to export QuickTime movies which works as well with PC's and Macs. Geof generally burns QuickTime Player versions for the Mac and for the PC on the same CD as the QuickTime movie. The user can then see the movie at no cost and almost no effort.
I said that Al Gore wrote a book, An Inconvenient Truth,
about global warming. He gave slide shows about global warming which he made into a Keynote presentation. The movie that is currently in 9th place in earnings, An Inconvenient Truth,
was made based upon the Keynote presentation and Keynote was used in the making of the movie.
Someone said they were getting the beach ball in Adobe Reader when they tried to do a second keyword search. Stephen explained that the program could still be building thumbnails of the pages and reading the file. He suggested giving it plenty of time to open them before doing the keyword search.
Geof said that many people do not understand this advantage of PDF documents over Word documents. He said a year book required 178 megabytes when saved in Word, When it was saved as a pdf it was down to 30 megabytes.
Mary wanted to get a DVD into iMovie. Someone said you need a video converter box. Cables go from the VCR to the video converter box, and the box transfers it to digital format. The converter box is available at Mac Connection, and Elgato is a goood brand name.
Bruce Shields uses AppleWorks and uses ClickBook which assembles pages into a pamphlet.
Ellen says you should take information from other programs like Photoshop into InDesign or Illustrator to do your printing. (I use Pages for my printing, but my projects are probably less demanding.)
Geof uses Apple Remote Desktop to check on student use of school computers. He told an amusing story about students communicating among themselves via computer in the classroom using MSN Messenger which they were not allowed to use and paying no attention to the teacher. He sent one of them a message telling them to stop and shut down the program on that computer. The he watched as the word got out in the classroom and the others stopped using the program. Then he searched and removed the program from the computers all by remote control.
Geof said the kids are digitally aware and just understand it - the sad part is that they are not allowed to use this knowledge in the school. (Probably mature brains cannot become digitally aware the same way rapidly developing brains can - but this is getting too deep for me.)
2. Information from MUGS
I thought this information from the Macintosh User Group of Stowe newsletter was so interesting that I just had to include it for you. I hope that Donald Webb will forgive me.
This is from the MUGS newsletter, Macintosh User Group of Stowe,
Donald R. Webb, editor
donwebb218@verison.net
Creating HTML documents with iWeb,
I am now using iWeb to create HTML documents where I formerly used Netscape Composer. I find iWeb considerably more flexible and much simpler and more intuitive then Composer.
In the past I have created the monthly MUGS enewsletters as email documents.. Later I have pasted the text into an HTML document which I created using Netscape composer and published these both in our Group's .Mac and on our website.
As a learning exercise I decided to try composing the eNewsletters first as HTMl documents using iWeb and then paste the text into the email. So this web page has been created and published on our web site and on our .Mac prior to pasting the text into the monthly email.
My first hurdle was to get rid of the notion that I had to start with one of the templates with its place holder pictures and text boxes. For me it has been much easier to start with a blank page and then to insert text boxes and pictures wherever I want them. As I proceeded I found it incredibly easy to generate text boxes, place them wherever desired on the page and intersperse them with pictures, shapes or whatever in any desired arrangerment.
I am sure that many of us will be using iWeb for much more than blobs and podcasts.
Pages vs. AppleWorks
I recently completed a six page newsletter using Pages. I had composed former issues using AppleWorks so I now have a good comparison of the two.
After discounting the learning curve I find Pages a little easier and more convenient than AppleWorks for newsletter creation.
One big advantage of Pages is the convenience with which pictures can be dragged in either as objects that flow with the text or as objects fixed to the page with the text wrapping around. Resizing the pictures is more natural without having to use the shift key to maintain proportions. A big advantage is that pictures can be quickly and easily cropped while in place in Pages. In AppleWorks I had to crop the picture either in iPhoto or in AppleWorks Paint and then reinsert the cropped picture in the Word Processing document.
Another big plus for Pages is its ability to change line spacing in small increments of tenths of the normal space. AppleWorks was limited to halves. This can make a big difference in balancing columns or in adjusting the content to fit the end of a page.
All in all now that I have learned to use Pages I will do future Newsletters in Pages rather than AppleWorks. With its spreadsheets, database, and outline features, however, AppleWorks remains as the best single integrated workhorse that it has always been.
3. Additions to the Library and Whatever
This month I forgot to bring the two new books to the meeting, but Midge and Richard Lubot will have them in the NVMUG library early this next week. The are:
iWork '06 with iLife '06
by Richard Harrington and RHED Pixel from Peachpit Press, and
The Macintosh iLife '06
by Jim Heid from Peachpit Press.
One reason for adding these books to the NVMUG library is so that you can see them and read them before you decide whether or not you want to own them for your own library. However, our NVMUG library does not have a limited two week borrowing time so you can keep a book out longer to study it as long as no one else is has asked for it.
Read about the books that we have reviewed in the Reviews on our NVMUG Web site, then ask Midge if the one you are interested in is available.
