"If you enjoy reading 'geeky' computer stuff, you'll enjoy this article, as I did. But, I must admit, I'm not sure I understood it.," admits Jim Hamm.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/high-bandwith-memory-really-need/
Unclutter -- Get Organized -- Backup
“I’m going to get organized!” Have you said this lately? Well, Mac will help you. It takes just a few simple steps to save and place things where you want them on your computer. It might be handy to have several titles for that one same writing. Do Command + D for duplicate and put it both places.
Have you noticed that when you go to Finder (Smiley man face on the dock) that under the heading of File in that top menu bar you can choose New Finder Window. Click there to bring up an identical Finder Window. Now you can have both copies open and go from one item or one column to another without losing view of the one you’re going to rearrange.
I’ve been writing stories, short articles, and poems for a long time. And Mac has made it easier to compose, print, and save these writings. Now I had the bright idea to copy the writings to a thumb drive as a backup copy for our son Robert to keep at his house.
The price was right for a Kingston USB 2.0, so we bought both a 16 GB and a 32 GB. These are the plain, metal things that are narrow enough to fit into the slot on the side of the MacBook Pro, not those cutsey things at the office supply store that appeal to kids.
But how much space do we need? Go to the Finder and click to bring up what you’ve filed there. Click on the folder in question, but don’t open it. (Click on the screen shot to enlarge, then click to go back to this page.)
Now, go to Command + i and up comes an information box with space for Spotlight Comments — those will be key words or phrases that you choose to help you find this later.
Under General you see the size of all that’s inside the folder in question. Here it’s 202,586 bytes which is 209 KB on disk. You see when you created that folder of stuff and when it was last modified. At the bottom you see where to click to bring up the info on Sharing & Permissions that you’ve allowed for it.
Of course you remember how to convert bytes to useful measurement of some kind? Me, neither. I did find an interesting article on how to compare this to that, but where did I file it?
To unclutter the desk top I started a file called Today News. Unfortunately for me, it has odds and ends from the last week. Now, what did I name the article I’d saved? Relax. I open Today News and click on the second View where I can make it show the items in the order of Date Modified.
Here it is: http://www.convertunits.com/from/MB/to/GB It can convert other units, gives definitions, metric conversions and more. On the left side at the top are 6 light green boxes with impossible-to-read lettering. I expanded the page view to finally bring up the words Computer Data Storage, Metric System, Date Calculator, Salary Calculator, Molecular Weight, and Discussion Forum. You do remember you can enlarge the page view by doing Command and + (plus) a few times on the page. To shrink it back do Command and - (minus) until you like the looks of the page.
Seagate Surprises
It seemed like a logical choice for an external backup. Seagate Backup Plus with 1 T. memory was at CostCo for a good price. Bought it, and planned to get at it much sooner than I did. Little did I know that some Seagate Surprises were waiting for me.
Time Machine seems to be happy with the FreeAgent Drive with 500 GB doing its automatic backups. And those little Thumb Drives are so easy to use for copying documents and folders from my computer to the iMac. But, what about saving a lot of stuff for our boys, so they’d have access to it on their PCs?
The Seagate Backup Plus came with a tiny 8-page folder giving minimum instructions. How difficult could that be?
Now, the challenge was to convert a series of writings I’d started out in Word for Mac 2011, then I’d changed into Pages ’09 for my own convenience.
Doing Command + I (i) brought up a little column that showed kind, size, where it was, keywords. I could click on Open With and make changes. So, at that time I did Open With Pages and clicked Change All where it says, “Use this application to open all documents like this one.”
However, our sons still are each using a PC computer!
Now, with the new, skinny Seagate Plus here on my desk I could easily — I thought — save both the Word and the Pages versions of the articles, stories, and poems I’d written.
Several hours later after dragging folders to the little Seagate icon I realized I should try this out with someone with a PC. That would be a friendly neighbor gal. I watched. My folders did come up on her screen. Only problem was her PC did not want to let her eject the Seagate. She phoned a PC tech she knew who advised her to just turn off her computer and then unplug Seagate. Seemed like that was the solution.
But, here came the biggest surprise.
I clicked to see what it was, and saw info from a company named Paragon Software Group that now had set up territory on my computer.
There was NO mention in the Seagate tiny pictorial Quick Start Guide that I would want or need a program or connection with Paragon Software Group. Clicking on Manual brought up a 24-page illustrated manual.
Later, looking for something else on System Preferences it brought up an unexpected icon in the list under the category Other. Their website is www.paragon-software.com Email is sales@paragon-software.com
Not knowing what I had done or what needed doing, I emailed our PMUG officers for suggestions. John Carter was the only person who had time to make some comments. We may work further on this later. This IS a busy week.
Let’s take a quick look back at settings that allow others to use your computer camera, microphone, storage, cookies, etc. Look at Adobe’s page settings, starting at the column Flash Player Help on the right side of this page http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help02.html and clicking to look at each category. Privacy, storage, security, notifications, website privacy, website storage, protected content playback, peer-assisted networking panel. Then go to Table of Contents to get other pertinent information, including how to update Adobe Flash Player.
So, it’s an on-going process . . . Doing . . . Learning . . . Doing . . . Learning. Just when you know it all they upgrade this program or that device! More Doing. . . Learning. . . Doing!
This was today's handout at the April 19 PMUG meeting at the Prescott Public Library, by Elaine Hardt.
Look at the Apple Menu
You’re comfortable with your Mac by now; you’ve learned some terminology and you’ve found some shortcuts. But every time there’s an upgrade to your system there are changes to explore. (Remember to click on the illustrations to enlarge. Then do Esc. to go back.)
Let’s look at your Apple Menu. Go to the top menu bar, clear to the left side. Click on the tiny apple.
Click on About This Mac. Now click on More Info . . .
Up comes a box with headings: Overview, Displays, Storage, Memory and on the far right side is Support and Service.
Displays brings up the name, size and graphics info, and you can click to bring up User Manual. You can also do Displays Preferences where you can adjust brightness, resolution, rotation, and AirPlay Mirroring. Under Color you have profile info that you can open and also calibrate.
Storage brings up colorful graphs showing how much memory is used on your HD: audio, movies, photos, apps, backups, and other. It shows how much free memory you have out of the total available.
If you have a separate device for your Time Machine here is where you see how much memory is being used for those same categories, and it also posts how much free memory is available.
The SuperDrive is shown and lists Disc formats that can be written, such as CD-R, CD-RW.
Go back to Overview. Click On Memory and it tells you how many memory slots you have, each of which accepts which memory modules, and will say if all memory slots are currently in use. In small type under that you can click where it says Memory Upgrade instructions.
On the right hand side of About this Mac is Support. Click to bring up OS X Resources, Help center, OS X Support. Under Macintosh Resources you can click to go to User Manual, Specifications, and Hardware Support.
On the far right hand side of About This Mac click Service. It tells about the limited warranty, & the complimentary telephone technical support. It tells about the AppleCare Protection Plan. It says that even if your coverage has expired you may still be able to pay for any repairs you need through an Apple-authorized technician. Here you can click to check your service and support coverage status, and your service and repair options.
Depending on your Mac and the system you’re using this will vary. I’ve got 10.8.5.
Back to the little apple on the main menu. You can rearrange Dock. Do you use Recent Items as a handy way to find where you recently were? October issue of Macworld magazine tells that you can hold down the Command key to get some other choices. Also, here’s Force Quit.
Under File you can choose Quick Look.
Under Edit you can choose Start Dictation, or use fn fn (the function key).
Under View you can do Clean Up, Sort by, and Show View Options.
Under Go, there’s a list of your recently created folders.
Under Help, is where we’ve probably all gone, at sometime or other. Helpful links there.
Look at the other items along that very top menu bar. There’s DropBox, the icon for the Time Machine backup, day and time, and the very last is Notifications.
On the top, far right hand side click on the magnifying glass icon. That brings up Spotlight which does your search. Type in a word or phrase and your smart little computer brings up a list of possibilities for you to check for the one thing you want. As you bring your cursor down the list a tiny image of the page will show up. But where is that document? Click on Command and the R to bring it up in its folder.
Just for fun I typed in cow. One of the documents listed brought up a picture of a cow with our son Peter. Doing Command R opened it, showing me where it was found.
Spotlight’s list that appears has Top Hit, Documents, PDF Documents, Images, Messages that mention “cow,” Presentations, Look Up brings your word up in the Dictionary, and finally Web Searches and Spotlight Preferences.
Here’s a shortcut that’s really handy: In Pages: Command + Z puts back in what you accidentally deleted when you did Command X, instead of doing Command C to copy!
Last, but not least, do you use “hot corners” also known as Active Screen Corners? Go to System Preferences on the Dock, click on Desktop & Screen Saver. In Screen Saver you can choose hot corners and slideshows. You also choose how soon the slides should start. When you drag your cursor to one of the corners of the screen the slideshow will begin to entertain you. Moving the cursor away from the corner brings back your normal view of your desktop.
You’ll discover shortcuts that you’ll be happy to use. You’ll also discover methods that you might not need or use now, but it’s good to keep learning.
That’s the fun of Mac. : )
This is today's PMUG handout for 10-19-13. Hope to see you at our next meeting.
from ELAINE HARDT
14 Mac Tips
" Here's an article with some helpful tips (they refer to them as 'hacks') for your Mac," Jim Hamm introduces his latest email to us. "You may already be knowledgeable of these tips, but a new one (to me) I just tried was the terminal command 'purge' to free up memory. I'm not sure what it exactly did, but the command definitely freed up memory on my MacBook Air and my apps and music kept right on running.
"My 'Air' only has 4GB of memory, and free memory tends to disappear after using my Air for awhile, so this tip is helpful and quick to use. The article refers to a video wherein the author mentions a free App from the App Store titled 'FreeMemory,' which purportedly does the same thing. The app gets good ratings in the App Store."
(And if you come to PMUG on Saturday you can chat with Jim. He's the speaker this month.)
About That Thumb Drive
Maybe you won a thumb drive at a PMUG meeting. Maybe you copied some files to it. Now, how much memory is left? Maybe you know how, but I had to search for the answer. Looking at the SanDisk site http://kb.sandisk.com and searching through a lengthy list of topics brought no quick answer. I emailed to SanDisk and got a reply this morning. It was written for PC people, but here's the Mac way.
Insert the thumb drive into the computer slot, right click with your mouse and hold it down on the icon of the thumb drive that comes up. Click on Get Info from the choices in the list. (Or left click if that’s how you’ve set up your mouse.) Up comes the little info box with the Kind, Date created, Date modified, Format, Capacity, Available space, Amount of space used. It shows date last opened, the name, preview, and sharing and permissions.
Here Prez Art Gorski jumps in with info: "Regarding how much free space is available, this has worked in exactly the same way on Macs from the beginning of time. Select ANY volume (internal hard drive, external hard drive, flash drive, floppy, whatever) in the Finder and do a Get Info from the menu."
It's Coming! It's Coming!
You can tell John Carter is excited. See all the exclamation points! (Thanks, John.)
"The ReRAM is coming!" (Yep! The British have announced it.)
"As early as 2013 you should be seeing a new type of non-volatile (retains data without power) random access memory called ReRAM (Resistance Random Access Memory). Initially developed by HP in 2008 as a Memristor (Memory Resistor), it has now been perfected by the Japanese as the ReRAM (with speeds comparable to DRAM). This device is going to replace every hard drive, flash drive, and solid state drive. The beauty of the ReRAM is that it will serve as both the memory of a computer and the hard drive of the computer — and this means only one device instead of two and no more transferring bits from a hard drive to memory. That boils down to a much faster computer, even faster than having an SSD installed in your computer!"