NVMUG eNews 8/12/2006
Last updated 8/14/2006
Questions and Answers
Open Discussion with New Experienced Members, and Members with new Intel iMacs moving from OS 9
We formed a circle for a lively discussion with questions and answers; sharing information among new and seasoned members.
Real World Suite 2 was added to the library from Peachpit Press.
1. The Meeting Report
Homer May found a reference to Midge and NVMUG at Apple's site. He has lived and worked in the area for many years, but not know there was a Macintosh User Group here.
Homer is the editor and publisher of three regional business magazines, Outlook, Views, and Insight. He learned Quark for his publishing and began doing some QuarkXPress typesetting for customers. He became a Mac Specialist, and now owns and operates a Macintosh computer repair service in The Stone House on Route 10 Haverhill, N.H. 03765. Homer maintains computers and web sites for some organizations, and also does some design work. A lot of his work is assisting and training for small business, schools, and individuals. He does a lot of traveling in the area from Lunenberg and to Hanover.
Homer enjoys Macs, and says MacWorld, which is owned by PC magazine is too negative. Someone said there is always MacAddict which is pro-Mac and more fun than the business oriented MacWorld.
For more information about his services and his computer assistance rates, you can telephone Homer May at (603) 989-5585
Warren Walker brought in his new 2007 calendar of Vermont wildflowers and some larger prints. I think they are better than ever, magnificent.
Here is Homer May admiring the 2007 calendar as Warren Looks on.
Gene Levine also joined us for the first time. He belonged to the original Mac User Group in Boston and owned the original Mac 128. Gene is retired, and just likes the Macintosh computer.
Brendan Hadash, a long time NVMUG member, bought a new Intel iMac from Small Dog with OS X, and is switching from a very old machine with OS 9. He said he wanted lots of help.
Brendan said he did not have a password, and was told he could set one up by inserting the Mac OS X CD, restarting while holding down the C key to boot from the CD. On the first installer screen, choose Installer > Reset Password. The click on the icon for your hard drive, choose the name of your account, make up your password and enter it - be sure to write it down had keep it forever safe!
Brendan's immediate problem was that he had an old Palm Pilot with lots of important addresses which would not sync on his new Mac. He did not know how he could ever recover those addresses. He also had a newer Palm Pilot. Someone suggested that he beam the addresses from the old Palm to the new one.
Brendan showing Midge the two Palm Pilots.
Brendan said this one suggestion saved him many hours of work.
Dee Red Trees also bought a new Intel iMac from Small Dog. She was unhappy with their service. She called with a question and called Small Dog for service. She was put on hold for 20 minutes and never did get help. Dee said she wrote them a letter, thinking it might get more attention than e-mail, and Small Dog never did answer. More than one person said that Small Dog spends so much time telling themselves how good their service is that they do not have enough time to provide the service. They said the problem is that Small Dog thinks they are providing better service than they do.
I have had only good service, but when I have a problem I grab my computer and drive down there. I have not tried the telephone.
Dee wondered why her new iMac seemed slow. Geof Gonter asked her what software she was running on it. She mentioned Symantic which Geof said could be her problem. He called it a bloated security program that may not work to catch viruses that, practically, no not exist.
Dee had some problems with AppleWorks. Gene Levine suggested she connect to the Apple.com support area for the forums like AppleWorks where often people have talked about the same problem.
Gene suggested that she switch to Microsoft Office which he believes is easier to wort with than AppleWorks. It certainly is newer and accepted by business including publishers. (As I have written before, Apple introduced the first Macintosh and AppleWorks for the Apple at about the same time. Gene chose the Macintosh while I was excited about AppleWorks, which may explain why our opinions on this subject differ.)
Several people helped Dee at some time during the meeting including Geof, and Homer. Homer showed her how to put headings on columns and rows in a spreadsheet. Dee wanted to get rid of the Starting Points window, and was told to change it in Preferences. I showed her how to change it in Preferences, and changed it to Show Dialog, and then how to click on the spreadsheet icon to quickly get what she wanted.
Neil Raphel asked if he should buy a MacBook for use in their business sales. He could use it as a laptop, and would connect it to a larger monitor for graphics work. I believe it was Gene who suggested that he invest in a MacBook Pro instead because the MacBook chip is not good enough for 3-D graphics, and the MacBook Pro can take a bigger screen. Geof said that the MacBook with more RAM will fun faster because some of the RAM is for the screen. The MacBook will be faster than the iBook. Richard Lubot recommended that he spend $1200 for more memory and to burn DVD's. Someone also suggested he might want to opt for the 80 gig drive.
Later Barry Hayes showed Gene and Steven Farber some of the work he does in Photoshop on his black MacBook. He calls it his little black book! He said,
At 2ghz & with 2 gig of ram it is much faster than my old snowbook, but since photoshop is running under roseate, it is not as fast as I would like. Although every other software company seems to have universalized their programs, Adobe has said it will wait until CS3 comes out sometime next year to d so. Talk about an attitude problem with the 800 lb guerilla!.
I do like the machine, although I wish i could have gotten the macbook pro. However the extra $1000 was an obstacle I could not overcome and I had reached the point where I needed a new machine now.
The MacBook will be much faster when Adobe comes out with the next version designed for the Intel Macs, but no one knows when that will be.
Brendan Hadash wants to put his religious services online, and asked how you do that. He was thinking of video. He was told that video takes a lot of bandwidth. Someone recommended that a .Mac account might be good for his purposes, though there are some limits on the amount of traffic. Someone suggested that he use GarageBand to put his sermon in voice form.
Geof said that streaming, where you listen to a file online, takes a lot more bandwidth than podcasts where you download the audio file then play it in iTunes or some other program. Brendan was considering borrowing iLife '06
by Jim Heid from our library which would provide information he needs.
Dee has a CD of accordion and flute music that she would like to have play in the background when people watch her photographs. Gene said that the technical questions for what she wants to do might be difficult, and that there is a downside to compressed music in the background. People might not like listening to repeated music while looking at pictures, specially if it is low quality compressed music.
Dee said she would want to have her own domain name for her web site, and she already has a name. Gene suggested that she create a web site in her domain name and automatically refer them to a .Mac account for larger storage for her photographs and better bandwidth.
Geof has a .Mac account for his own music, and said there are other advantages to a .Mac account. There are special iCards for members beyond what the public gets, and there are special packages like for GarageBand.for free. You can try .Mac for free.
Brendan Hadash does a lot of out of state weddings by people he does not know, and gets a lot of junk mail. If there is not subject, he does not read them, and some keywords go directly into trash. Geof said that, if you want to put your e-mail address in your web site, put it in as a .pdf document so that automatic pickers that search for e-mail addresses will not find it and add it to the lists they sell.
To learn more about a program, click on Preferences under the program's name in the menu bar. See what options are there, and try them out. If you do not like what it does, go back into Preferences and undo it. In general, of the best ways to learn is it to try things to see what they do. If in doubt, and if working with a file or document, start a new file or new document to experiment with so you can delete it with no loss.
Homer May suggested putting an error code into Google to learn what it means. If there are words you do not know, put them in quotes in Google and then search to learn what they mean and not get a million other things back.
Brendan Hadash and Barry Hayes are in the musical Honk, the story of the ugly duckling. I went to see it Saturday night at the St. Johnsbury middle school. It was well done and a good time, an upper to watch. It will be on again next Friday and Saturday.
2. New Library Book
We added Real World Adobe Suite 2
to our library.
The library is for free for all members, and if you received this you are a member. Just arrange to get any book from Midge Lubot. There is no time limit on returning books to the library, but we ask that, when anyone else asks to read the book, you return it so they else can read it.
Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2
Authors: Sandee Cohen and Steve Werner
Publisher: Adobe Press / Peachpit Press
694 pages ... $49.99
ISBN 0-321-33412-4
Industrial Strength Production Techniques
How to manage, integrate, and synchronize all of the applications in the Suite
In Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2
you'll learn how to:
- Choose the right program for any creative project
- Use Adobe Bridge to browse and manage files
- Master the intricacies of transparency effects and flattener settings
- Use Smart Objects, Symbols, and Styles to work more efficiently
- Automate your work through powerful actions, batch sequences, scripts and plug-ins
- And much more!
This is an attempt to tell you a little about this book without a review, and the best way I can think of is to present an example.
Chapter 10 is about colors and color management in the Adobe Creative Suite 2. So it includes calibration in Macintosh and Windows, and color modes in Photoshop, in Illustrator, in InDesign, in Acrobat, and in GoLive. It goes on to show you how to get professional results using color in all parts of the creative suite. When more than one program in the suite can do the same thing, it tells you which is better for what you want to do, and why.
If you want or need to know how Levels are used within and between the programs in the Suite, or whether duotones are better in Photoshop or InDesign, you will find it in Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2.
Get more information or use your user group coupon to buy a copy of Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2
at:
3. And Whatever
It is an exiting time for Macintosh fans. When you consider the specifications and software included, the Macintosh costs no more than other computers, and more and more people are accepting Macintosh OS X as better than Windows.
David Pogue, in a recent article, has said that realistically the Macintosh will not replace Windows machines in the large corporate world where purchases are ruled by the IT heads. But, there is plenty of room to grow in the home and small business markets.
And, the new Macintosh OS X 10.5 will be coming out next Spring. Many writers are excited about the new features that have been announced. And, Steve Jobs said he was not revealing some secrets so that it will take longer for Microsoft to copy them.
