doc_Babad's Macintosh Tips - A Macintosh Tip or Three… December 2007 Edition By Harry {doc} Babad    © 2007

This month I continue sharing my occasional tip related finds with you. A few of the Tips I share come from — Paul Taylor's Hints & Tips column and are used with his permission. Where I use any one else’s tips for this column, I acknowledge both their source and their contributors. Since we’ve, at macCompanion been involved or avoiding Leopard, the new Macintosh OS X 10.5, I’ve passed on some of my software compatibility findings that fell outside of the scope of my book reviews and article in this issue.

 

Oh, I almost forgot! Unless otherwise noted, all the tips and tidbits I share, where appropriate, work on my computer. If I don't own the software but if the tip sounds interesting, I'll so note at the end of that specific write-up.

 

Tips I’ve provided this month, as always in a random order, include:

 

Don’t Panic Just Restart It!

• Steve Jobs Says be a Dull Filer
• How to Print to PDF — Your Not Really Scavenged by Leopard
• Spell Catcher and Leopard – Now a Functioning Dynamic Duo
• Eudora 6.2.4 and Leopard — Eine Meanie Minie Moe
• Pasting Safari Graphics to Word
• How Big Can You Print Your Photos?
• Avoid Needing DriveSavers Data Hard Disk Recovery Services

Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. The software related tips were tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM; running under Macintosh OS X OS X 10.4.11.

 

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Don’t Panic Just Restart It!

 

When perusing technical forums such as MacFixIt and Macintouch, it’s amazing how often you can find lengthy and breathless descriptions of some problem that appeared after a new OS update was installed, only to find right at the end the statement: Finally I restarted and the problem disappeared.

 

Such “well informed” people have somehow missed the basic principle that if a problem appears and you can’t figure out what’s causing it in a pretty short time, the first “shot-gun fix” you should apply is to try restarting the Mac. The command is right there in the Apple menu, for goodness’ sake!

 

Restarting the Mac will resolve a problem that has occurred as the result of some unique combination of circumstances that will never (or rarely) be seen again. This happens more often than you might suspect. If restarting fails to fix the problem you haven’t lost anything but a couple of minutes of your time, and you can go on to investigate more complex possibilities.

 

If the Mac has frozen and you can’t use the Restart menu item, most modern Macs can be forcibly shut down by holding down the power button for about six seconds. After than you can restart the Mac normally.

Steve Cooper

AUSOM News, Melbourne, Australia

Hints & Tips September 2007 Used With Permission

 

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Steve Jobs Said Just be a Dull Filer

 

Being dull and unimaginative is a real bonus in filing!

Steve Jobs has a very sharp mind and is very, very wealthy, so it doesn’t do any harm to follow the system he has laid down for us in OS X:

• File documents in Documents

• File music in Music

• File pictures in Pictures

• File movies in Movies

 

This was the system presented to Mac users when the first version of OS X came out and I’ve found it excellent. As the revolution of the digital hub has played out, the utility of this simple system has been confirmed to me a thousand times.

 

Doc Sez, this is not to say that all your documents should be storied in a seemingly endless monolayer. As I’ve previously noted, creating a hierarchy of nested folders that meet you organizational need is critical to keeping your projects and their document accessible — semi-organized if you prefer. The point Steve Jobs makes focused on where you put most of the different general types of files you collect or your files. Actually, rather then have the 37 GBG of photos and clipart or music clutter up my hard drive, I store them in a separate volume.

In addition, if you have project associated graphics or audio files, by all means keep them within your project folders in the documents folder. But that collection of clip art, mostly recipe photos or those songs you ripped from your CDs.… those belong in their respective(Picture and Music.) folders

Dick Johnson

AUSOM News, Melbourne, Australia

Hints & Tips September 2007 Used With Permission

 

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How to Print to PDF — You’re Not Really Scavenged by Leopard

 

As by now many of you know, Adobe will not be updating Acrobat Pro 8 until January. Since this was the means that allowed the Macintosh OS, as well as MS Office application to save/print to PDF, those needing the feature will either be out of luck or need to wait before installing Leopard.

 

Some Possible Solutions — CUPS-PDF is an open-source software backend module for CUPS (Mac OS X’s printing system) by Volker C. Behr. Rather than printing to a device, it allows printing straight to PDF files.

 

http://www.codepoetry.net/projects/cups-pdf-for-mosx/

 

According the information posted on the Internet this software, updated 09 Nov 2007, may bypass the need for the Acrobat Plugin, which for the time being is unavailable to Leopard users. In addition the products developer notes: “Why use this rather than a simple “Save as PDF” in the print dialog?”

• Pressing return is faster.
• Batch-print through the writer to convert documents to PDF.
• Common save location for all generated PDFs.

Although the information provided by the developer does not specify its Leopard ready, without Leopard installed on my system, I can’t verify this.

 

Leads to this information proved by Robert Pritchett, November 2007.

 

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Spell Catcher and Leopard – Now a Functioning Dynamic Duo

 

There are, as you can read in my 3Rs column in this issue, a number of reason not to upgrade to Leopard. I type and therefore I spell horribly. Therefore, having a robust and universally available selling check is a necessity, not just a whim. Although I’m heavily invested in the spelling and grammar checking system associated with MS Word, these are of no use when I’m filling in feedback notes on the Internet, or misspell words in document titles.

 

The tool I prefer, above everything else I tried, Is Rainmaker’s Spell Catcher X 10.2.3, last updated by its developer on 23 November 2006. Therefore I was justifiably concerned what would happen to the product when installed on a Leopard operating system. I appreciate the prompt reply I received from Evan Gross. Based on what I learned I would not use lack of Spell Catcher compatibility as an excuse to avoid upgrading to Leopard. All the features I presently use will indeed work, some with a bit of tweaking.

 

“Everything you need to know (and that we currently know) is found here<

Meanwhile, we have a major upgrade coming in the next 4-8 weeks that will

take advantage of new-in-Leopard technologies (it will run on Tiger as

well).

 

“Spell Catcher X 10.2.3 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). There are some issues that you should be aware of (listed on the FAQ). If you follow the advice given for each item, you should be able to use Spell Catcher as always, without sacrificing any of the features you are accustomed to or require.”

 

Harry Babad, macCompanion.com

 

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Eudora 6.2.4 and Leopard — Eine Meanie Minie Moe

 

The more I read, the more confused I become. But first some background.

Earlier in the Year all registered Eudora users relieved the following message. “Qualcomm is no longer selling or providing technical support for Eudora. The paid mode commercial versions of Eudora are no longer available. The sponsored mode (advertising popups) versions of Eudora continue to be available for download. An open source version of Eudora® is being developed by Mozilla and will be free of charge.”

 

Open Source Eudora Version 8 — A quick search on the MacUpdate site and I was able to download the Thunderbird (a Mozilla variant) version of Eudora, as Eudora 8.0b1 dated 02 September 2007.

 

http://www.eudora.com/download/eudora/mac/8.0/%5D/

 

The release notes did not provide me with information I needed to decide whether to switch to the open source version.

 

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Releases/

 

The information I could find was strangely silent about Leopard and Eudora 8.

 

Okay, I’d play anyway. As a precaution, I after burned my complete Eudora 6 files/folder/preferences and application to a backup CD.

 

I was very disappointed in the new version. It took me three tries to figure out how to do the installation since the installer screen asked for information I did not immediately understand. Then, victory I hoped. No chance. Not only did it transfer a gazillion emails to my new email in folder, but it completely lost all of my Mail Folders – a feature that keeps me addicted to Eudora. These are a multiple level, in depth hierarchical file system that I used to store important emails by subject (e.g., projects and subprojects.] In effect creating a less detailed mail oriented organization of my email files that matched that on my hard drive. Needless to say, zap, actually CleanApp, and that beast was gone.

 

Will Eudora 6 Work? — Okay, how about a bit of googling? Search for variants of Eudora-Leopard compatibility gave me lot of seemingly replicated and redundant hits whose authors said well maybe, without providing any in depth analysis of what worked and what didn’t. Perhaps there’s more information out there this week than three weeks ago, but for now I don’t want to play.

 

Eudora MacFixIt reader Sam writes about his Eudora 6.x experiences with Leopard: "Eudora starts up, let's me get and send mail, look at mailboxes, but there are problems. Sometimes a very simple operation, like clicking on a message in a mailbox, will produce an extended session of staring at the spinning beach ball. Fairly frequent crashes occur." Stuff like this doesn’t reassure me. Alas, I’m still one of the unrepentant — I don’t like either Apple’s Mail or Microsoft’s Entourage, the later of which I was stuck with for years on a consulting clients email system.

 

A New Developer Joins the Game and a Bit of Hope — As I literally stumbled around the Internet I came across some new information, actually a new developer who write/blogged about a New Eudora. They noted that:

“Many people think that Eudora was the best e-mail program for the Mac or for Windows. The most recent version of Eudora still offers features not found in other newer e-mail programs. Odysseus is the code name for the Eudora replacement.

 

“I was unhappy that Qualcomm decided to abandon Eudora and it really doesn't seem like Thunderbird will be able to pull off the modification needed to make it mimic Eudora.]    doc_Babad agrees!

 

“Odysseus is the code name for the Eudora successor that Infinity Data Systems is working. We have always felt that Eudora was a best-of-breed email application for both platforms, Mac OS X and Windows. Easily one of the oldest email applications, it still offers features either not found in competing applications or, if found, not implemented as elegantly.

 

“There will be an initial beta of Odysseus released by the end of the year, with the final release due toward the end of Q1 2008. The plan is for the final application to offer
 full backward compatibility with Eudora, utilize existing Eudora mail boxes
 and settings, and offer the features and functionality that Eudora users
 are accustomed to, while at the same time improving on those areas where
 Eudora lagged behind, such as HTML rendering and OS integration.

Individuals who would like to keep up with the development of Odysseus can
 check back at the web site below, as these pages will be updated frequently.

 

http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/products/odysseus/index.html or http://www.ugnn.com/2007/10/new_eudora.html/

 

Additionally, individuals can sign up to receive email updates by sending an email to: odysseus_list@infinitydatasystems.com.

 

“Needless to say, we were saddened by Qualcomm's abandonment of Eudora. And while we have the utmost respect for the Thunderbird/Eudora team, like many Eudora users, we don't believe that modifying Thunderbird to mimic Eudora offers Eudora users the features, functionality, or experience they've come to love and depend on. It’s our belief that only an application written from the ground up can adequately succeed a program as great as Eudora.”

 

Harry Babad, macCompanion.com

 

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Pasting Safari Graphics to Word

 

Mac 911 Tip of the Week - 10 Sep 2007

 

Reader Keith Boone is puzzled by the relationship between Safari and Microsoft Word. He writes: "I have run into a cut-and-paste issue in Safari when using Microsoft Word. I look up an image in Google and when my image is located, I Control-click (or right click) and choose Copy Image from the contextual menu. I then go to my opened Word document and choose Paste. Instead of seeing the picture, I only get the URL to it.

 

"I can copy and paste from Safari to any other program (Pages, TextEdit, and so on) and all works fine. I can also use Firefox except the Copy Image works no matter which application I am pasting to. Sure, I could just save the image to the Desktop, and just drag it into the Word document, however that creates an extra step. Is there a setting or something I could do to make the programs play better together?"

 

Chris Responded: “Here's the way around the problem: Instead of choosing Paste, choose Edit -> Paste Special. In the resulting Paste Special window choose Picture and click OK. The image will be pasted into the document rather than the URL.

 

“This is a slight pain in the neck. In such situations I select the image I want to copy in Safari and click and drag it into an open Word document. The image appears in the Word doc as it should.”

 

By Christopher Breen <mailto:mac911@macworld.com>

 

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How Big Can You Print Your Photos?

 

The Kim Komando Site noted if there is one combination that trips up many people, it is resolution and Megapixels. Many people equate the number of Megapixels with a camera's resolution.

 

Response — Of course, manufacturers contribute to the confusion. They lead you to believe that Megapixels are the single most important aspect when it comes to judging cameras.

 

That said, there is a correlation between Megapixels and resolution. The more Megapixels a camera has, the larger you can make prints - and still get a decent resolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, you probably wouldn't know offhand how big you could go with an 8-megapixel camera. That's where today's Cool Site comes in.

 

It's contains a chart that shows you how big you should make your prints. This is handy for anyone buying a camera. If you already own a camera, it is still handy.

 

So bookmark it for future reference! Check out http://photojojo.com/content/websites/how-big-can-i-print-this-photo/ and to dig deeper also check http://www.design215.com/toolbox/megapixels.php

 

Tip Provided by Andrew Stevens

Mid-Columbia Macintosh Users Group

Shared Feb. 16, 2007

 

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Avoid Needing DriveSavers Data Hard Disk Recovery Services

 

When they visited the Diablo Valley MUG in January, DriveSavers

reps Anne Chase and John Christopher handed out brochures with some great tips to help us avoid needing their company’s services (and paying out the big bucks to rescue our data).

 

Here are the tips:

 

1. Always back up and test your backup! Keep current copies of important data offsite.

 

2. To avoid data loss and program corruption, always exit your programs before shutting down your computer.

 

3. All computer equipment should be used with high-quality surge protectors or line conditioners.

 

4. Never turn off peripheral devices while the computer is on or when the disk is active—this may cause directory damage.

 

5. Never reformat your drive without testing your backup first. If you use tapes, be sure you are familiar with the backup software before archiving important data.

 

6. Do not move or jar a drive while it is operating. When transporting a drive, prevent jostling by using a padded container.

 

7. Allow adequate space around an external drive’s cooling vents. Remove books, papers, etc. that might block airflow. Do not put the drive on carpeting.

 

8. As a general rule, if you are comfortable, the climate is appropriate for the drive. Avoid rapid temperature changes. If the drive was previously in a very cold environment, allow it to warm up to room temperature before operating.

 

9. Use extreme caution when using software utilities. In cases of severe corruption or physical damage this may make the problem worse.

 

10.  If you hear unusual noises from your drive, turn off the unit immediately and call DriveSavers (1-800-440-1904*).

 

These sounds may indicate a mechanical problem that could ultimately result in total data loss. [Dec Sez, this harkens back to the Iomega Zip drive “click of death” problem I suffered. — not fun at all.]

 

* DriveSaver’s John Christopher told us that the DriveSavers phone number was chosen because that was the Mac default date when its battery died. He said that the company was founded by and for Mac users over two decades ago. There’s more help, specific to the Mac, at:

http://www.drivesavers.com/recovery_tips/mac_users.html.

 

Brenda says take a look at the DriveSavers link BEFORE you have a problem!

 

Brenda Boswell

ApplePRESS, Diablo Valley MUG, Concord, CA

Hints & Tips September 2007 Used With Permission

 

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Harry {doc} Babad

That’s all folks…