Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks July 2000

Microsoft gets told to break it up. Responds by saying it can't maintain its innovative ways. Hmm, strange that they should say the only thing MS is really good at is propoganda. Tell the mindless public anything long enough and they believe you. Please somebody, write in and tell us where MS has been the leader in the computer R&D world. Everything MS has ever produced has been bought or borrowed from other companies. I cannot think of one thing they have done before someone else produced a product. The sad part is that the more money they spend, the better their chances are of keeping their monopoly up and running.

Apple has released another update to Final Cut Pro making the current revision 1.2.5. This revision supports 16.9 widescreen format, native YUV processing and a "make reference movie" (to save time and space by using pointers).

World Without Borders offers Apple User Group members a chance to chat about events that are happening in their User Groups every Tuesday night at 6:00pm. These chats last about an hour and usually have some posters or prizes given away at the end. On the 6th of June PMUG and MacCamp was the topic of discussion, as I was asked to be the guest. The session before featured Adam Engst of Tidbits and we were followed by Chuck Joiner from the Hershey Apple Core. Chuck is also on the User Group advisory committee.

The User Group Store has to change the password for their site to keep out the non-User Group folks who want your pricing. Contact your user group for current information,

Apple's latest Firmware updates are a mixed bag. Some people report devices that didn't work correctly now work great while others are saying what used to work now causes their machine to crash. At this point I'm not sure I want to tell you to do the Firmware update unless you have to. This Firmware is for the following machines: 350 Mhz and up iMac, FireWire PowerBooks, and the G4 desktop machines.

Another problem with the new iMac computers is that the power button sticks in the "on" position. This occurs with the slot loading machines. The repair for this even has its own part number (011-0206). Seems the plastic housing was cast a touch small, allowing the button to stick when pushed in. Apple's instructions to its dealers is to take an X-acto knife and increase the opening size. To top things off Apple thinks it only takes 15 minutes to disassemble the housing of the iMac to fix the problem. Right yeah maybe not.

Cheap is a way of life for some Mac'ers. Never pay a penny more than you have to for anything! All is fine and well as long as you buy quality products. However as in most things, being cheap with things like your backup media may not be in your best interests. Many people have contacted me after seeing a report on the web about users who say their old backup CD-ROMs won't read anymore. The following is my response to that story.
1. Did the user bother to check the CD to see if it verified before ejecting it?
2. Were they using branded media (TDK, Imation, or Kodak)?
3. Is the media clean or have they tried to clean it with a CD-ROM cleaner?
4. How are their CD-ROMs stored?
After these questions are answered, then I think we would be able to decide if there is reason to panic. You need to pick brand names that you trust. You need to store the CDs in their sleeves or jewel cases. You need to keep them out of sunlight and humid temperatures. Do not leave them laying around to get scratched or have dust build up on them. Never, ever wipe them on your shirt or with a paper towel. Use canned air to dust them and a brand name CD-ROM cleaner to clean the CD if it gets dirty.

AppleWorks is up to 6.04; yes - another month, another updater. At least you know Apple understands it's not right and is trying its best to get it fixed. Many users are reporting it to be much more stable with the new updates. Now all Apple needs to do is put back the import/export filters and many of the complaints would go away.

Microsoft has introduced Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Mac. It looks nice and so far has not crashed my Mac. Yes, I'm trying it out. I still don't like the way it works as far as bookmarks are kept and folders created but other than that seems very stable. If you would like a copy of this software, please stop by the PMUG office on Tuesday evening and we'll give you a copy of IE 5.0 and Outlook Express to try out. Microsoft sent out a box of install CDs for us to give away. Remember the folks that produced this product like Macintoshes; Microsoft exiled them to their own campus.

PowerComputing computers seem to have several problems as they grow older. The CD-ROM tends to stop working; this seems to be the weakest link. However not the only one. Power supplies die very often also. So be aware that these things are fairly common with the PowerComputing machines.

What the heck is this SPAM everyone talks about? To tell you the truth it's a little of every kind of advertising there is. I have been signed up for many new e-mails that I don't want and some are darned hard to get rid of. All this done by SPAMmers. The Sheep gets hit once in a great while and we want to keep it that way. The biggest secret to stopping spam is to not reply to it. That's right, don't inform them that they have a good address, or they'll just sell it to 50 more spammers. There are lots of different kinds of SPAM–religious SPAM: send this prayer to 50 more people and we can save their souls; advertising spam: you can make $50,000 a month by replying to this e-mail; chain letter SPAM: if you don't send ten copies of this to your friends you'll die in three days; porno SPAM: hot young girls; so PLEASE think about it before you reply to that SPAM. You are telling them where you have internet service (such as pmug.org), you are giving them your screen name (they can use this to e-mail other victims), and you're letting them know they got to you. So just throw it away or report them to one of the abuse areas on the web. http://www.abuse.net/ http://spam.abuse.net/howtocomplain.html

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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