Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks January 2001

Playing with a new Apple optical mouse the other day made me really happy that I have a Wacom Graphire tablet and mouse. With the Apple mouse the cursor seemed to go, then stop when and where it wanted and the cord kept getting in the way. The $59.00 price is too much for a mouse with one button and a cord. The Wacom optical mouse is cordless although it does need to be on the tablet to work. However it also has an extra button and a scroll wheel for its $99.00 price tag. The extra button can be set to act as a contextual menu drop button and if you push down on the scroll wheel it acts as a double click. If this sounds like a TV ad, it's close because there's even more! It also comes with a pen tool for graphics and drawing So as far as I'm concerned there is no choice on which to buy.

Apple has reported it will lose money this quarter. About $250 million - give or take a couple hundred thousand. The reason is unsold inventory. I'll bet there are lots of G4 Cubes and lots more of the slime green iBooks sitting in their inventory. The Cube is way over-priced and should sell like hotcakes if they bring the price down by $500.00. I'm not sure what will make a lime green iBook fly off the shelf other than a earthquake. I did get some humor out of a Steve Jobs announcement that it was on his shoulders. The two people he fired over it I'm sure took great pleasure in knowing he said that.

One of the biggest requests I hear from PMUG members is that they want to use some of their old equipment on their new iMac or iBook and which adapter should they buy. Sometimes you need to sell the old stuff and replace it with one that was made to connect with your new computer. Many of the adapters are close to the price of a new printer or scanner. You may want to keep that in mind as you look for ways to update your computer. Orange Micro is one of the companies I refer people to. Just don't expect to get blazing speed out a USB to SCSI adapter. It's not going to speed things up. Many of these adapters will not allow you to use more than one device so check and see what the manufacturer says before buying.

After having some problems with my router losing the connection with my cable modem I decided to swap out routers and send the MacSense router back to the factory. Having spotted a good deal on the Linksys 10/100 4 port switching router I spent my money and got it three days later.

It's one of those things that bugs consultants to no end: give good advice to clients then forget it when you're working on your own system. Always restart your computer after you set-up a router. Otherwise you could be swapping out cables for the next three hours. I've decided that the surefire fix for this is sitting Janet down with the book while I go create a crossover cable in case that is what I was missing. While I was gone Janet dutifully read the fine print, noticed you're supposed to restart and did so. This after I jokingly told her I was going the garage to make a cable and expected that when I got back she would have it up and running. Just another reason to slow down and do it right.

Many of the folks at eBay are being told that their software auctions have been cancelled because the vendor that created the product said they had to have proof of ownership before they would allow it to happen. This is due to the fact that many of the auctions on eBay have involved selling copied products. The only way around this is to auction off a piece of paper (or some other worthless object) and throw in the software as a free gift. Sure put a crimp on the folks who have software that they can't use and would like to sell to someone who wants it.

Imation, the makers of the SuperDrive, are in trouble. Seems very few people want to use their SuperDisks. The fact that they are slow and spendy for 120 Meg of data seems to have put a crimp in sales. I have not used my SuperDrive for anything but 1.4 Meg floppies in the year and a half I have owned it. Most of my clients have Zip drives they can back up to so all of my machines have Zip drives of the 100 or 250 Meg versions. This plus the fact that many competitors are on the verge of producing drives that will be 250 Meg and higher using standard floppy type disks brings up the question of how long Imation will continue the sale of these drives.

Although memory prices have really dropped for the G3 and G4 machines, the cost of memory for the 7200/7600/8500/8600 has stayed much higher. Many people asking about RAM upgrades are put off when quoted on that RAM. We don't make the prices up, we just quote them with installation costs, shipping and handling. The cost of a 8600 compatible 64 Meg DIMM is two and a half times what a G4's 64 Meg PC100 costs. The reason for this is as most factories move to the newer chips they stop the production lines on the old chips. This means that there are fewer chips available for these old machines. However the new software requires more and more RAM so you have to pay for the RAM or move to the new machines.

For those of you who don't read the notices in Mouse Tracks the Swap Meet has been moved to February due to a lack of people to run it in January. Macworld Expo starts on Tuesday January 9th and most of the officers and members who help are headed to SF on the 8th. So this means things will be moved out but still happen. Tell all your Mac friends the swap meet lives and should be a good one.

I've had a lot of calls from people who are scared that Apple is going to die. The only thing I can tell them is after working for a electronics company for close to 16 years that there are cycles. You climb up to the top and you start back down. I lived through 15 to 20 layoffs before my turn came. All high end products have these ups and downs. Having to work for myself I have seen the same type of cycles in peoples buying habits. It's just the way life is.

Got lots of friends who ask you to fix their computer's problems, and how to do stuff? Time to get them to join PMUG and take our classes. We really need the members' help in keeping PMUG going. This gives us members who hopefully volunteer and that allows us to offer more events and training classes. We have lots of ideas of what would be a nice event or service but we need active members to help out. It would be nice to have the PMUG office open during the business day. More classes covering topics like word processing, using spread sheets, and databases. So please get those friends to join and be part of the group. Many people, I'm sure, don't believe me when I tell them PMUG members have taught me quite a bit about computers. That, my friends, is what User Groups are all about.

Those of us who went to the You Don't Know Mac event had a really good time in Newport. The Woz was and is the kind of guy who didn't let fame and fortune change who he was and wanted to be. In hearing him speak about education and schools you know he understands the problems students and teachers have today. This is the kind of hero we need our kids looking up to, rather than the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs of the world. People tend to look for the heroes that stand out and take the bows. I like the ones who feel like they did a little bit to help as a part of the team.

I'd like to thank Steve Welsh of the Corvallis User Group for working so hard to get Steve Wosniak for the YDKM event. He went after the best MC he could think of for the event and didn't stop till the Woz said yes. Steve Welsh is also the one that dreamed up the YDKM event and made it happen for us to enjoy. The event was staged at the Marine Science Center in Newport. They had User Group volunteers from all the attending user groups working together to get goody bags stuffed, equipment and chairs moved. Everything flowed, bodies were supplied as needed and everyone had a good time even as they were volunteering.

Some of the articles you read about in Mouse Tracks are written by people who thought they were just MT readers. Then one day something happened. They called another PMUG member to ask a question about a project and were asked about possibly writing about their work. Until we hear what other folks are doing, or how they are doing something, many of us assume everyone knows about that. We have many new members who want to know how to do certain projects. So if you've had something interesting happen that you needed help resolving or that you figured out on your own think about writing an article about it. MT has really good editors who will help you get it to ready to go. We want and need articles for beginners as well as advanced.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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