NVMUG eNews 8/11/2007
Last updated 8/12/2007
The Peachpit Experience and Questions and Advice
The meeting consisted mostly of discussions, questions and advice. You may find some of the advice useful. The Peachpit Experience was partially postponed until next month because there was no projector, but we did have the door prizes and many new library books from Peachpit and one from O'Reilly. Read The Meeting Report.
My copy of iWork arrived yesterday. Our authorization for a free NVMUG .mac account arrived at 9:00 last night. I made my first .mac mistake. And I already have three library books to review for next month. More on that after the meeting report
1. The Meeting Report
Warren Walker brought in new pictures including dragonflies and butterflies on flowers as well as many new pictures of wildflowers. He is having fun with the new challenges and got close enough to take a picture of just the head of a dragonfly.
We held a drawing for the prizes from the Peachpit Experience box. Gordon Alexander from Quebec won first and selected the T-shirt which was big enough for him. Russell Carlson won the CD containing the Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac
from TIDBITS. The other prizes included candy, popcorn, and a mouse pad.
Norm Johnson had a problem with his PowerBook G4 just after the warranty ran out. He probably should have invested in AppleCare. He has a problem with poor wifi reception. He took a picture showing his G4 next to an older G3 where the G3 showed that he was getting good reception while the G4 showed just a half to a third of the power. His PowerBook sometimes disconnects its wireless reception, and a moment later it comes on strong, and vice versa.
Norm said he had the problem before, took it to Small Dog, and they replaced a two or three dollar wire. He loosened some screws to take it apart to see if there was anything obviously wrong, but stopped when it did not come apart easily.Stephen said the routing of the antenna wire could be causing some strain on the connection. I suggested that he take it to Small Dog, tell them about the problem and the previous repair that helped for awhile, and ask if they would look at it to see if the fix had come loose.
Warren said he feels fairly comfortable working inside a desktop Mac, but not a laptop.
No one brought a projector, so we could not show the Peachpit Experience DVD of authors speaking at MacWorld and Photoshop World. Neil Raphel said that they recently needed a projector to make a presentation and was surprised at the fantastic projectors that are available for around a thousand dollars. It would be nice of NVMUG could afford one. For a change, there was only one computer at the meeting.
Hartley Jackson taking notes. Photo by Stephen Farber.
Stephen Farber borrowed the Peachpit DVD, and said that there was a lot of valuable information on the DVD from them last year. Midge will bring a projector to the September 15 meeting so we can show parts of the DVD then.
Neil Raphel said he really needs to learn Photoshop, so he borrowed two of the new books being added to the NVMUG library Adobe Photoshop CS3 one-on-one
from O'Reilly and Understanding Adobe Photoshop
from Peachpit Press. Neil commented that Photoshop was not very intuitive. Warren said that it was intuitive for those people who were already experts in light and color. Stephen Farber said that Photoshop is for photographers, but it is also for creative people who never use a camera. Neil said he knows someone who uses Photoshop along with Illustrator to create Web animations.
Three other books from Peachpit Press, Desktop and Portable Systems, Third Edition,
Adobe InDesign CS3 HOW-TOs,
and Designer's Guide to Mac OS Tiger
were added to the NVMUG library and are now available for members to borrow.
Russell had met with Midge and Stephen at Midge's business for help in getting Mac OS X upgraded on his eMac, but it did not install correctly and he is now back to Mac OS X 10.2 and it is not running very well. He also spent easily an hour on the phone with Stephen, and it works but not as well as when they got it.
Neil recommended that they upgrade to the new iMac 20 or 24 inch machines which are really great. Neil said they worked a week trying to save music from a hard drive that quit. Trying to use the old machine was not worth it. He said the biggest bargain is an iMac.
Stephen said that even the editor of Computer World strongly recommended the new iMac for reasons such as cost of operating and ease of operating. He said Vista is driving people to the iMac.
Two of our members said they like Firefox better than Safari. I said that there is now a version of Safari for Windows that my help to expand its share of users. Someone said that Windows users are moving to Firefox.
Neil uploads video to YouTube and imbeds an address in his site for people to retrieve it without problems. You can see the video on YouTube but not download it.
To be able to see and download more items from the Internet, Stephen recommended getting the latest version of Quicktime, getting Flip4Mac free from Version Tracker or MacUpdate to cover more mime types, getting the latest version of Adobe Flash free from Adobe, and upgrading to the latest version of Java. The Java upgrade is available using Software Update under the Apple menu.
Stephen said that most problems in upgrading software are because of third party software, some external device, or you moved a Mac file from where the Mac expects it to be. He favors going to the Apple support site and downloading the combo-updater instead of simply using the Software Update under the Apple menu.
If you forget your system password, you can reset it using your original install disk without reinstalling you system software. There is a password reset utility on your install disk. Stephen recommends that you do enable Open Firmware, and he has also had one bad experience so does not use File Vault.
If you get the spinning ball, and it does not stop, you can usually get rid of it using Open-Control-Escape to quit programs. If the spinning ball is in the Finder, you may have to shut down your machine.
Someone asked whether you should shut down your computer. If it is an older machine, Stephen turns them off. With newer machines he leaves them on, partially because a maintenance program runs in the middle of the night - mostly on Friday night at 1 a.m. There are free and inexpensive programs, like Cocktail and Onyx, that can run the maintenance software when you want it to. Stephen said it is nice to do a restart every couple of months. (Leaving your computer on does use electricity; so. if your are energy conscious, you might want to shut down when you will not be using your computer for quite awhile.)
Feelings about Spotlight are mixed. I use it a lot, and it can even find things when I do not know if they are within a document or email. Others think it finds too many things that they do not want. Leopard is supposed to have ways to give you tighter control over your searches.
To protect your computer, you should use a good surge suppressor that also protects your telephone line if one is connected to your equipment. Stephen said to look on the back of the surge suppressor for UL 1449 to know if you have a good one. You might also look for a warranty that insures your equipment. Norm has an APC battery backup surge protector that provides great protection and gives him enough time to be sure he can save his work if the power goes out.
Gordon Alexander said that, if you buy a keyboard in Quebec, be sure what you are getting. He bought one and found when he got it home that it was French and not English.
2. Too Much All At Once
I have started reviewing one of the three books that I want to review before the next meeting. They will make great additions to our NVMUG library, and I want to decide which ones, if any, that I really need to have.
Then I was surprised that iWork arrived so fast from Apple. I wanted to buy my copy from Small Dog, but Apple had not supplied them to their independent retailers yet. Mine arrived in less than two days. Gene ordered his the day after I did, and his arrived just before mine did. I can't wait to try Numbers, the new spreadsheet program that is included.
Then last night I received our NVMUG .mac authorization. I should have waited until I was thinking better, but I thought it would be nice to announce that we actually had it at today's meeting. That is when I made the mistake and named it hartleyj3@.mac.com instead of NVMUG@.mac.com. So I wrote to find out how to change it to NVMUG. Today the answer was that we cannot change it before we renew in August 2008, and then only by changing to a new account. It seems that once a name is put on file, it is linked to so many integrated functions that it can only be changed by starting a new account. Also, we will have to call it something other than NVMUG because that name is already taken by someone else even though it is not active. We may be able to have an email address such as NVMUG3@.mac.com.
Now I want to find out how to set up a group so that we can all have access to as many features as possible. I also want to find out how to set up an interactive Web page. Neil has said that he will help.
