Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks April 2002

Got my first chance to set up a 2002 iMac the other day. It's just as Apple advertised it. Set it up, turn it on, follow directions, and you're done. In fact, if it was not for having to set up OS 10.1.2 as well as 9.2.2, it would have been boring.

After it's set up, then comes the fun part of finding if the printer is supported or locating the System 10 driver on the internet. After you've found the driver (if there is one), the fun really starts. Most of the companies who sell computers and printers have no idea 80% of computer users still have dial up modems. Nothing like waiting 20 minutes while you download a six Megabyte file so you can test the printer.

Then comes the fun of configuring the printer in System 10. This little feature is a utility and is located in the Utilities folder in your System 10 Applications folder. There are just some things that make you wonder why a Mac user should put up with all this PC type stuff. Then you launch iMovie or iPhoto and things begin to make sense. Apple has indeed written some very nice programs that are easy to understand and use.

Dazzle Converter
Well after months of looking and waiting I finally purchased a Dazzle analog-to-FireWire converter. Janet and I purchased a Hi-8 video camera right before FireWire became the in thing for video buffs. Not wanting to sell our Hi-8 Sony camera and buy a FireWire replacement, I opted to buy a converter. Installation was pretty easy: plug in the power, the video RCA jack, the left and right sound RCA jacks, and plug in the FireWire to the Macintosh. Then came the software installation–really easy, none needed. Use iMovie (or Final Cut Pro) to receive analog video from your camera, TV or VCR. The cost of the converter at most stores was $300; not wanting to spend that much I searched pricewatch.com for the word Dazzle. We ended up paying $248 with shipping for the unit. So what else will it do? Convert digital video to analog so you can record the cleaned up video back to your VCR. It has NTSC/PAL support and can be used with a PC or Mac. Beats the heck out of selling my camera and then paying $800 for a FireWire one.

Move to OS X?
Okay, let's make this real up-front. The only current reason to move up to 9.2.1 or 9.2.2 is that you are going to use System 10.1 and run 9.2 as your Classic operating system. There is no other reason to do that upgrade. Several members have reported updating their machines to these versions only to have problems with their software. They don't want to run System 10.1 and were quite happy with their old system. So if you are using 9.1 and you are not interested in going to 10.1; then, at this current time leave 9.2 to the System 10.1 users.

As long as we are talking about systems, people keep asking me where they can buy System 9.0 or 8.5 and even 8.1. The answer is . They are currently offering 9.0 with the 9.1 updater for $59, 8.5 for $69 and 8.1 for $19 plus shipping.

Many computer owners are starting to upgrade their computers to the G4 733 Mhz that Apple has put on sale at several sites for $1299. At that price it's a great bargain for that kind of power. I have seen a lot of 6400 and 6500 tower owners moving up to these machines. What you need to remember is that you want to be careful what items you use on the new computer versus the old one. Most programs will run fine under System 9.2.2, however the extensions and control panels may cause you a lot of crashing. Old versions of ATM, fax software, virus software, printer drivers, and maintenance software tend to crash your computer and damage directories.

The current versions of the maintenance tools are as follows: Norton Utilities 6.0.3, Techtool Pro 3.0.6, and DiskWarrior 2.1.1. If you have just purchased a machine, you should try to start up with your Utilities CD-ROM. If it does not start up your machine, you need a newer version. You need to test this right away because if there is a problem you will not be able to work on your machine with the disk until you have the new version. When I upgraded all of my software, it took three days to get DiskWarrior, five days to get TechTool and two weeks to get Norton Utilities. That's a long time to do without your computer. Don't count on running down to the local computer store and buying a current version. Those boxes were packed and shipped months ago. Even if you open it and look at the disk you can't tell which version it is without looking at the program in a computer. My current version of Norton Utilities says 6.0 on the label and 6.0.3 when you launch the program.

Virtual PC has put out a new updater for their product taking it up to 5.0.2. Hope this one works better than the last rev (5.0.1) which crashed Janet's VPC program right after install. Additions are supported in all Windows 95 through XP Systems, improved performance under System 10, faster boot time, fixed printing with Canon printers, and many others. You can contact Connectix at www.connectix.com for the upgrade.

If you haven't gotten more RAM for your computer yet, then you're going to pay more. RAM prices are still rising a little each and every week. So if you need more RAM, do it soon or pay extra for waiting too long.

Got an inkjet printer? You need to print a little on it each and every week. We're not talking about just black, we are talking about color too. If you don't, you're running the risk that the ink will dry and cause the cartridge to fail. I run my cleaning cycle on my inkjet printer weekly just to get the ink flowing. Many times at client sites I have to throw away full ink cartridges due to the fact they have dried out over a period of several months of non use. So the motto of "use it or lose it" really does come into play.

HFS vs HFS+
HFS versus HFS+ has come back to visit again. Trying to get people straightened out about this subject tends to be a never ending issue. First of all, if you are running System 8.1 or above, your hard drives should be formatted as HFS+ if they are over 2 Gig in size. The reason for this is the file size and how it is written. If you are using a large hard drive, a 1K file copied to a 4 Gig hard drive that was HFS formatted will now be about 256K. On the other hand, a 1K file copied to a 4 Gig HFS+ drive will only be 4K. So you can see that if you have a lot of files that are small, that big hard drive you're copying them to will fill up rather quickly. If you have purchased a computer in the last two years, most likely everything came formatted HFS+ so don't worry about it. However; if you, like many Mac owners, are using a five-year old machine with a 500 Meg to 1.2 Gig hard drive, you may want to move up to a 4 or 9 Gig hard drive. If you have several machines and are sharing them over a network, don't worry about it. Over the network all the files show up and can be opened under HFS or HFS+. The only real problems come when someone tries to start up under any version of System 7.x. Here's where people panic: the hard drive appears empty with only a Simple Text document on it. This is the way it's supposed to work. Just restart with a System 8.1 or above start up disk, everything will reappear, nothing has been lost.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

Previous Article Next Article

Back to Home page