Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks September 2003

Apple is trying the high volume stores again. After falling out with Best Buy several years ago and ending the relationship, Apple and Best Buy have decided to try it again. Apple seems to think that recreating the CompUSA version of the Apple product sales area at Best Buy is the way to go. Please note: only select stores will have the Apple product so don't count on the one nearest you to have Apple products right away.

Rumor has an official Apple store coming this fall to Washington Square. That should be interesting-- put a store in one of the highest traffic jam areas in Washington County. Guess they want to make sure you really have to put effort into getting there. Apple is stating that it will be able to ship all of the preordered G5 Macs by the end of August. I'm not so sure about that, but seems like Panther should be out shortly thereafter.

MicroMat is taking so long to produce the new TechTool Pro 4 product that most of us are assuming they are waiting for Panther to be shipped. These delays are beginning to get old with some of us consultant types. I, like many other people, have advance orders placed dating from January. The product was supposed to ship in April; now it's out to the end of summer. Let us hope the product is a good one and was worth the wait. TechTool does a great job of checking hardware; it's really hard to do without it as a finishing product after you have run DiskWarrior 3.0 and Norton 8.0.

PROTECT YOUR POWER
Your computer and the power that drives it need to be protected. Many of you (at least I know I did) unplugged your computers when we had our latest electrical storm. Some of you did not and may be paying for that with repair bills. Many people have really old surge protectors that most likely are not protecting their computers. Most of the cheaper ones should be treated as extension cords rather than surge protectors. The one thing I have noticed most is that a 15 cent fuse will allow a $1,500 computer to be damaged rather than do its job and blow. So, if an electrical storm hits the area, you may be wise to unplug your computer from the outlet and your phone line from the modem and let mother nature do her thing. In our house we have four, yes four, Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) that protect items from surges and brownouts. And while all that is good, disconnecting your modems and power cords is still the best protection from lightning strikes. In fact, I go as far as unplugging the TV and stereo if the weather is bad enough. Most household insurance will not cover their replacement and I have invested way too much money in their purchase to risk them.

PROTECT YOURSELF
More and more realistic looking email notices are appearing in my email box. They are sent to you to try and get your credit card numbers or your paypal information. These things look real; they have the right logos and unless you know that your internet provider should not be asking you for your passwords, or for your credit card numbers, you will most likely give it to the pretender and not even know you just gave away the thing you want to protect the most. Most of the time you will go to a website like the eBay website and go through the steps of setting up a credit card or paypal account. So never believe they have lost it. The pretenders want you to go to their fake website and put in your information. So if you get one of these emails, go directly to the website that you know is real. Do so by looking it up on Google or in the paperwork you set up the account with. Never reply to a link that the pretender has sent you.

WAYS TO BACKUP DATA
The cost of being a DVD-R owner has really dropped in the last year, thus making it affordable if you have a G4 tower machine. With the cost dropping to around $200 for a Pioneer 105 burner that replaces your current CD or CDRW/DVD, now may be the time to jump onto that video producing bandwagon. An advantage of the 105 is that the Apple software knows about it, and when it is installed in your computer it will allow you to burn DVDs using iDVD. The current version of Toast and Apple iBurn will allow you to burn data so that you can burn 4 gig of data on a disk. Now that's what I call a backup disk. Please take note that not every DVD blank disk is equal. Like blank CD-Rs, the quality of the blank can mean success or failure. I suggest every user do some web research on what the best product is to use with your burner.

Apple has sold a bunch of servers since they introduced the Xserve. However I'm not sure they knew that many of them would be running Linux rather than the Macintosh operating system. Well, Apple is a hardware company as well as a software company so any sale is a good sale. Also anytime you can get your product though the door to a new customer, all the better. The US government is one big customer. TerraSoft Solutions, Inc., an Apple VAR (value added reseller), will be providing Xserves running Yellow Dog Linux to the US Navy for use in sonar imaging systems. The contract is through defense contractor Lockheed Martin and the 260 unit sale is the largest Apple VAR Xserve sale to date according to the company. Sounds great to me, Apple can always use the sales.

SHARE THE LOVE
Remember that MacCamp is coming up October 17, 18, and 19. We invite you to sign up and join us for a great weekend of Mac information sharing and learning.

Great lines come from strange places. As quoted from macminute.com, Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice-president of Sun's software group, recently told eWeek that practically every Sun employee owns an Apple desktop at home. "We would love to partner with Apple," he said. "They're everyone's favorite company, and iTunes is really cool." From me, I ask you is this any way to sell Sun workstations?

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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