At least there are lots of copies of iLife and iWork for people to buy (only $79 each—or get iLife with a new computer). iLife '05 contains: iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iTunes and GarageBand. iWork is Keynote and the new Pages bundled together. One of the things I need people to check out is the processor requirements. Some of the new iLife programs require much higher speeds, and some will not load all the features unless you have a Mac that meets those requirements. Such as: iPhoto will not show all of the new advanced editing tools on our 900Mhz G3 iBook, because it requires a G4 or G5. However it does support the new Calendar sorting feature, and improved controls to use when creating slide shows.

Apple's stock split (2 for 1) on February 11th: the company is going from 900 million to 1.8 billion in shares of common stock. It's my hope they don't sell so much stock that they lose control of the company. After all, they are still a small fish compared to many large corporations out there.

Many PC makers want Apple to license the operating system again. They really want to move away from Windows, but they want something without the nasty virus and web bugs that are rampant in the Windows world. I'm not sure how I stand on this, however Apple currently controls the hardware and the software for the product. Allowing the PC world to license the product would remove the hardware from Apple's control. That is when you start getting the cheap PC power supplies, etc. Remember, control is everything to Steve Jobs and I can't believe he would give it up at this point.

The updater to take System 10.3x to 10.3.8 has just come out and I updated my G5 tower with it. After restarting, the fan speed started to ramp up even though it was not under any kind of load. Upon checking the www.xlr8yourmac.com website, I found other people had the same problem. I submitted my machine report to the database and Mike from the website got back to me with a suggestion to check the energy saver (in System Preferences) and see if my Mac had set itself to “Automatic” under the options. It had, and the fix was to move the setting to “Highest,” which I did. Problem solved, at least for me. So if you have a G5 tower and you just upgraded, or are about to upgrade, and the fans start getting noisy, I would check your energy saver options first as a solution. As usual, please run “repair permissions” before and after all System updates. Please note I always download the combo updater and I never allow Software Updater to run live updates.

I find myself telling more and more people that they need to upgrade their machines to a computer that will run OS 10.3. The reason for this has nothing to do with needing more speed. It has to do with the fact that they are having problems getting onto certain websites. Many websites are being updated with the latest versions of Flash or Java; this means that old versions in Netscape 4.7 will not work correctly. Also many sites are coming back with the message that “your browser security certificate is expired” and won't let you in. Because Apple has told users that OS 9 is dead, most companies are no longer updating their web browsers for that operating system.

Want to know if the tech person you are talking to has no idea what's wrong with your computer? If they ask you what operating system you have and if you're not running the very latest, they will always say, “Oh, that's it, you need to upgrade to the latest version.” Every time I have ever heard this, it's to get you off the phone and out of their hair. They have no idea if this is going to mess up other programs on your computer. In fact, if it does, they can rest assured that you will have many more problems on your hands than the fact that their software won't run. Your best bet is to ask someone else who uses the program if they are having problems. 90% of the time, updating your system will not solve your software problems. Read the package; if it says it will run on your current system, then it should.

The PMUG office had a problem with our router a couple weeks back. We suddenly could not connect to the internet from certain machines, and then no one could connect at all. We called SpiritOne and asked if they could ping the modem to make sure we still had service. SpiritOne reported things looked OK to them. I checked the router and the diagnostic light for WAN (wide area network) was bright red and would not reset. Off to the store to buy a new one because the network class was Wednesday and it was Monday. Picked up a D-Link branded one and headed back to the office for Steering Committee and the install. Normally it takes about 30 minutes to install and configure a new router. Two hours later, with three people working on the thing, it's finally up and running. Do I recommend this router to other people with DSL? Not likely. The main problem turned out to be we were missing DNS numbers for SpiritOne. Seems to me when you have the static IP address and the gateway information, it should be able to find the DNS numbers for the provider. I would like to thank Marty Crouch, and Allen Watson for their help in getting this thing up and running.

As you may have noticed, this is the 40th MacCamp. Yes, that's 20 years of having a really good time in the Oregon rainforest at Silver Falls State Park. PMUG would love to see some of the early MacCampers at Silver Falls to help celebrate the 40th event.

When you read this, it will be after the first meeting in the Ecotrust building meeting site. PMUG would like to thank the nice folks we have worked with at the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center building over the last 17 plus years. They are not the reason we moved. There are several reasons that the new place should serve the General Meeting space better. The main reason is the ability to use their wireless network to access the outside world. Their projector is already there, the chairs are set up for us, they have a PA system with two microphones, and a modern elevator for wheelchair access. The heating and cooling (mostly cooling) we had so much trouble with at the NNCC should be a thing of the past. So if you missed the last meeting due to Valentine's Day, come on in for the March 14th iLife meeting. Please note the meetings are on the second floor and that there is a coffee shop and a pizza place on the first floor.

Yes, we have not had a swap meet this spring. This is due to the fact that the General Meeting was moving and we have a limited time frame for the meeting. We are looking for a new location and a new time for a swap meet that would not involve setting it up and tearing it down in three hours. What we are looking for is a location where we could have the swap meet on a Saturday or Sunday between 11:00am and 5:00pm. Anyone with a location that would work for this, please let me know.

About a week ago I decided the new G5's hard drive was getting filled up so I bought a 200 gig to replace the 80 gig that came with it. I figured that cloning the information with something like Super Duper would be no problem, however the "no problem" turned into a "big problem." For some reason, the G5s do not seem to clone as well as the G4s do. The first clone I made was with Super Duper; several of my programs disappeared from my dock and every application acted like I was launching it for the first time. Luckily it was only a clone and I could start up under my old drive and erase the new drive so I could start over. The next clone was made using Carbon Copy Cloner. After this clone, the only thing that was wrong was my email program, Eudora, reported that the mailboxes were corrupt and that my preferences were damaged. This I can live with due to the fact I get my email on two different computers. After trying to copy my mail folder over from my Al-Book and finding that Eudora thought they were corrupt also, I decided to reinstall Eudora and set up all my accounts fresh. You may think that you have a good backup just because you have a cloned copy of your drive. But you should start up from that drive, if possible, and run your most needed software to make sure your data and your software is indeed safe and sound.

In fact I was reminded by this of something I used to point out to all my clients who were doing Retrospect backups. Have you tried restoring your data to see if what you think you backed up is really there? The vast majority of users were backing up parts of their data, but not all that they would have needed if their machines died. The other part of this is: where are you backing up to? If it's not to a separate hard drive or DVD/CD, you may be at risk of losing all your data. Many users have partitioned their drive and don't realize they are backing up their information to the same hard drive. When that drive dies, they lose it all; one hard drive broken into two or more volumes is still one hard drive.

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