Muskoka Mac User Group

Wow, the knives seem to be out for Office 2008. Over at OSX Hints there sure are a bunch of complaints. I’d love to hear from people who have purchased it already. Is this a buy now item or a wait a bit item? The bug list they talk about isn’t very inspiring, but I’m still using Office v.X and it’s always been ‘quirky’ even though on the whole it works darned well. If the new Office is even worse I’d be tempted to try and convert everybody to iWork and just deal with the inevitable compatibility issues…. Please – insert your comments here!

The other item of note here is that Microsoft screwed up the permissions on the installer. For most of our members who are running one user ‘
everybody here is an administrator’ machines is doesn’t really make a difference – but if you do have more than person on your machine, or you are properly running separate accounts for everybody with only one ‘administrator’ account you’ll want to run their suggested fix. The fix is on the page – but it’s hard to read so I’m reprinting it here.

1. Launch the Terminal application from the /Applications/Utilities folder
2. Type the following command as one long line then press return:
   /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown -h -R root:admin "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Automator" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft"

3. Enter administrator password when prompted

Set up an HP 5600 Officejet today. Installed it on my Mac so I could see the software included, set up fax numbers etc etc etc. At the end of the day I’m reminded why Apple is getting so popular lately.

Start with opening the box. There were three loose sheets of paper, a thin booklet and two big manuals. 3 cds, a sample pack of photo paper and the snazziest looking thing in the box is the metallic blue zip lock baggie to keep that photo paper in.

That’s about five times the cruft that came with my iMac itself.

One sheet of paper is extra instructions for installing under Vista. Another takes the whole page to say ‘this printer won’t work with Windows 98 or ME – tough luck’. The third is a ‘register now so we can send you junk mail’ page from the OCR software company.

The thin booklet says ‘Start Here’. Step 1 says don’t hook up the USB cord until Step 16. That’s right – Step 1 says ‘Don’t do this’ and doesn’t gave any ‘do this’ instructions at all. Kinda like Simon says I guess….

Step 2 says Remove Cardboard and Tape. A special green box on the right hand side says ‘Make sure to remove all tape and cardboard on the inside of the device’. So now I’m on the first thing to do, which is actually step two, and I’m trying to figure out how to open up the machine to remove the tape inside of it…. and it doesn’t open…. anywhere…. well, except for the cartridge door which doesn’t have any tape inside of it…..

Step 3 says Locate Components and shows pictures of all the parts in the box. Including a picture of a USB cable – which isn’t in the box – the little asterisk beside it refers to the footnote below which says ‘purchased separately’ Oh, and below that it says ‘The contents of your box may differ’. So, locate your components that look like these – which you might or might not have and might or might not have to buy separately…..

I could go on, but you get the idea.

The HP software installer installed 18 separate programs. 18…. One of them crashed the first time I opened it. That was the updater program….
One of the next ones I tried doesn’t work. Still doesn’t now – dunno why. I even started watching the included animated movie how to use it. But my application doesn’t do what the animation does….

The fax setup utility doesn’t actually set up all the fax settings. They have to be set on the machine itself. And, each time you change a setting the menu goes back to the very start. You can’t browse through all the settings and change them as desired without retracing your steps over and over and over again.

The manual says nothing about the OCR except consult the documentation that came with your OCR software. Of course, there isn’t any…

I could go on, but you get the idea. I feel like I’m using Windows again.

Now, to be fair, it seems to work great. I got it going in no time (of course, I do stuff like this all the time) and most things I tried worked right the first time. The Mac software even looks Mac-ish. Most of my complaints probably don’t apply if I was using Windows.

But at the end of the day, it sure makes me glad Apple is around to show that this stuff can be done right – and hopefully everybody else starts paying more attention.

Oh – and the Officejet? I’m sending it out of town – to use it on a Linux desktop

Excel has had a lot of security issues in the last year or so. It’s a program people don’t often think of updating. It looks like Office 2008 comes with a built in updater, but for everyone else you need to visit www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx and see what’s available for your software.

Well, I knew it had to happen, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be so soon!

My iPod Mini is dead. Grey screen no signs of life at all dead. A mini iBrick.

I disassembled it (yep – they come apart) and there’s no visible signs of a problem. I have a vague hope one of the readers of this blog has a dead iPod mini too, and I can make one out of parts from the two. The way it just ‘quit’ makes me think it’s battery, or maybe a circuit board, not the drive. From a bit of googling I gather most people have harddrive failure.

So, since the money for a new iPod Touch just isn’t there right now, maybe someone will come through for me with some parts….. Drop me an email at webmaster@muskokamug.org if you can help.

My boss previously had a pair of Airport Express units (the ones that look like laptop power supplies stuck to the wall) in ‘WDS’ mode in his home. It worked ok, but wasn’t 100% rock solid, especially with the old 3rd party wired router running the whole network. I finally got the chance to configure his new Airport Extreme (the new ‘N’ unit) to replace one of the Expresses and the third party router.

It turned out to be a real pain. I thought I’d throw out a couple of observations here for people running into the same issues.

• The new Airport Extreme comes with a CD. On it are new programs – ‘AirPort Utility’ and ‘AirPort Disc Utility’. So, now on a typical Tiger machine you have AirPort Utility, Airport Disc Utility, Airport Admin Utility and Airport Setup Assistant…. Boy do I wish Apple would start naming things better! I mean the Extreme/Express/new Extreme with N router naming confusion is bad enough, without making the software just as confusing!
  Here’s the skinny
  • You have to use the two new programs for the new Extreme router.
  • You can use the new AirPort Utility to configure the older Expresses etc as well.
  • The old software will still see the new routers, but won’t expose all the functionality or even update the new routers reliably.
• So, step one is move the older software out of the way somewhere and just use the two new programs!
• Some Intel Macs shipped with ‘N’ capable wireless cards, but the drivers only allowed them to use the slower ‘G’ standard. The Airport Extreme CD will update your Mac to use ‘N’ without you having to pay the $1 fee (or whatever that sum was) and muck about to upgrade your Mac to ‘N’
• The software on that CD and the firmware of many of the routers for sale are already out of date
• So – your second step should be run Software Update and make sure you are completely up to date! The AirPort Utility will check the firmware of any device you attach to and tell you if it needs to be updated.
• The ‘factory reset’ option doesn’t quite do what it says. In my case it was hanging onto old Airport ID numbers, causing problems. Double check all your settings.
• If you are trying to set up WDS (using extra wireless units to extend the range of your network) you can’t use WEP. This seems to be true from the number of posts I’ve seen on the subject, but it’s not in Apple’s documentation anywhere.
• 
  DON’T USE WEP ANYWAY!
  
  There’s no case where it’s worth using I can see – you might as well be wide open as use WEP…. WPA or WPA2 is the only way to go if you use encryption – and you should always use encryption unless you’re running a FON box. If you want your neighbours to be able to share your connection, just give them the password too!
• If you have two units on the same channel with the same SSID (network name), but they aren’t associating with each other using WDS properly – you’ll get all sorts of weird things going on. Which ever unit your Mac sees first is likely the only one it will see, unless the other one is closer, or the dog is barking, or…. Think of two people in a room with the same voice yelling – it’s pretty tough to pick out just one of them to talk to. Use the ethernet port to talk to the one you need to work on. And then go check your Airport ID numbers again – that’s likely your problem.
• The Airport Utility seems to need to be quit and restarted sometimes after you’ve reset a router. If you can’t find a router try that first.
• Don’t trust the error reporting in the AirPort Utility blindly.
  • The problems listed don’t refresh immediately, so you can fix a problem but it will take a minute or a refresh for the display to indicate that.
  • The Express can have an error state (flashing orange light) even though the AirPort Utility shows it as being green.
• There are logs available under the advanced tab. They too take a minute to catch up, so wait for them, but the often contain useful info.
• The wizards do actually work fine – but advanced users will want to do things manually.
  • Consider whether you want SNMP on or not and at least change the community string.
  • Review the option that lets you administer the unit from the WAN side. There aren’t that many cases where you want that!
  • If you ever want to move your router, look at the ‘profile management’ option. It’s really nifty to be able to store multiple set-ups in the router and change them quickly with a simple drop down menu.
• Have patience. Those routers do take a bit to reset, so you’re gonna spend some time twiddling your thumbs.
• When it works – save your configuration! Then it’s easy to set up the next time!

Hope this was helpful….

Hi All. Hope you enjoyed the January meeting. I think it was an eye opener for most of us the ‘depth’ of the Garageband software. It’s definitely one of those programs that you have to get someone to show you what it can do to really appreciate it.

There’s been the usual bunch of announcements from the Macworld show going on this week – I’m going to put my two cents in on some of those announcements as I have time.

Please note – I tend to be pretty critical of Apple – don’t expect the all out love fest you see in some forums etc. Even though I’m in an Apple User Group, I’m a computer enthusiast, not an Apple ‘fanboy’ I call ‘em as I see ‘em. Feel free to put your own comments in so it’s not all just me!

Well, I think that title says it all

Scott Pelling is coming to expand on his quick intro to Garage Band he did in December, I’m going to float the idea of podcasting all our meetings, and each and everyone coming is expected to either ask a question, state their opinion, answer a question or smile.

For newcomers – it’s at the Macs At Work store – 131 Hwy 60 Huntsville (first right after the Main Street exit) – 7.30pm

Please bring your own chair or you might end up in standing room at the back

A question that comes up fairly frequently these days is ‘how good exactly is virtualization on the Mac’?

Ok, maybe not in those terms But people do ask what it’s like running Windows on an Intel Mac. While I can certainly discuss my experiences, and Macs At Work even did a presentation at the Algonquin Theatre about it – I’ve just now seen some real figures.

If you are interested – be sure to check out this comparison. It has info on both Parallels and VMWare Fusion, along with Boot Camp using XP and Vista. Worth the read – but be sure to look at the details of each test – they are a bit misleading in some cases.

I can’t believe this baloney…. Quickbooks even after it’s latest patch might delete files from your computer if you use it in a public wi-fi spot!

It seems to me the base problem here is the ridiculous DRM system they are using to try and make sure you aren’t pirating their software, compounded by sloppy sloppy programming.