Anti-Virus Protection

        "Does your Mac need virus protection?"  Jim Hamm gets our attention here.  "Lots of opinions on that question. An article from the MakeUseOf.Com newsletter (11/16/10) describes a new anti-virus program from Sophos, a company based in the United Kingdom. There was a short video in the newsletter that didn’t come through with this email. If interested, perhaps you could watch it on their website. I’ve also included a link where MakeUseOf.com describes two other anti-virus programs for the Mac: PC Tools and ClamXav.
        "So far I haven’t used an anti-virus program on my Mac, but I’m keeping an open mind on the issue. I don’t really want another program running all the time, and something else to keep updated. But, I don’t want a virus either, or be directed to a website that puts malware on my Mac. As I understand the protection native to the Mac’s OS X, nothing can be installed without you specifically allowing it to be installed. However, if one is misdirected to a malicious website—one different than the one you thought you were going to—perhaps that could be a problem.
        "I’ll keep an open mind and be cautious on what I install."

MacBook Air Report

        Art Gorski reports: I recently visited an Apple Store and got some hands-on time with the new MacBook Air. I thought that the smaller 11" model might be too small, but was pleasantly surprised by how usable it was. It has the same full-size keyboard of any Mac laptop, and the screen is high resolution and doesn't seem too small to read.
        "The real shocker was how good the performance is. The 11" model uses only a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, while my 4.5 year old MacBook uses a 1.83 GHz Core Duo processor, so I wasn't expecting much. However, the use of a Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of a conventional hard drive makes all the difference in the world. Launching iPhoto on my old MacBook takes about 7 Dock 'bounces' and about 15 seconds until the library of photos is finally loaded. Of course, the MacBook Air in the store did not have a large library of photos on it, but iPhoto launched with a single bounce and was ready to go in only a second or so!
        "I wouldn't recommend a MacBook Air as your only computer, unless your computing needs are light and you purchase the optional external DVD drive to load software. But in my case, where I have a Mac desktop computer and use a MacBook for travel and meetings away from the house, the MacBook Air is perfect and will be my first choice when it's time to replace my old MacBook."

Goodbye to De Previous Prez

At today's PMUG meeting we officially sent De Previous Prez Allen Laudenslager off to Denver, to his new home.  Elaine read the following:

Email sent to Allen Laudenslager,
           11-11-10:
Do not be alarmed,
But someone purporting to be “Allen L”
Has aroused our suspicion!
He threatens to move to someplace called D - 
Now, how is that for wishin’
But we have reason to believe
That the email in question
is baloney. 
Why would anyone who lives currently
In Prescott, Arizon-ee

Pull up stakes, stuff suitcases
And pack up his Mac;
Wave goodbye, completely?  
The very idea makes me
Question someone’s sanity!  
Should said email be true
We would feel sad,
And pout and frown;
How could such a good guy
Leave and let us down! 
Part Two of this Ballad, 
         11-13-10: 
OK, stop the sniveling,
‘Tis time to brave up and 
Try to somehow smile;
We value our memories of him,
That makes this rhyme worthwhile.
We’ve had it verified by
Allen Laudenslager!
The previous prez
Has written to substantiate 
‘Twas true what the email sez.
He moves north to brave the snow!
Off he goes, now it’s up to us
To toughen up and go
To display our better manners
which we will try to show. 
Onward PMUG, there’s work to do:
Gather when we can
To learn, and then to share;
We appreciate each other . . . 
How much we really care!
* These strongly held opinions
verbalized by Elaine Hardt
with full permission from
the “powers that be”!  
,

Warning. . . Just in Time

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We have De Previous Prez Allen Laudenslager to thank for this timely warning about the latest updates.  "If you attend the monthly meetings regularly, you should remember Rich Charpentier who presented on how he uses his Mac in his work as a photographer and photo printer."Rich has been blogging for several days on problems he has had with updates to his Mac. If you aren't following Rich's blog, your really should give it a look since he regularly includes not only Mac tips, but some spectacular photos of the local area. "In his current post, Rich talks about his latest round of problems caused by the software update from Apple that updates his HP print drivers and because of the tweaks he needs to print his high quality, large format prints for his customer the updates hose his system. "If any of you have had any problems with your system after incorporating updates, change your process to accept only one update at a time and if you experience any trouble, put that on your 'don't accept this update list' to cut any future problems." Here's a link to Rich's latest post and his blog. Apple Discussions has some give and take on this issue.  (Personally, I think I'll postpone upgrading to the HP 2.5.2 printer software update for my printer-- E. )

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New to the Mac? Already Experienced?

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        Here's a helpful resource suggested by Art Gorski,  "Macworld has started a new email newsletter for folks switching to the Mac."  
        If you're already a regular Mac user check out Macworld's website and their new Insider newsletter which advertises, "ad-free + content rich" at only $19.55 if you're a current magazine subscriber or $39.95 for new members.

Webcam Work-around

David Passell passes along this news: "Radio Shack has a sale on the Gigaware Webcam with Mike for $19.99 (+ tax). The instructions and disk specified Windows (XP or Vista; no wonder it is on sale). However; I bought one and plugged it into my Mac Mini USB input. I got image and sound (with some setting up) using Quick Time 10, VLC, and Skype. You may have to tweak a bit, but it can be used."  We can envision David's smile as he adds,  "One of my pet annoyances is the total ignorance (and sales loss) of people who only can read what is on the side of the box. (My other one is forgetting what I did two years ago : (.)"

WOW! We're Listed with Woz

Our PMUG makes it to the top of the list. Not any list, mind you, but the Woz List. Feast your eyes on this,   a live link to our PMUG site. How did we get here? De Prez Howard LaPittus, take a bow!Howard emailed Janet Wozniak (Steve’s wife) who’s listed as a contact on Steve Wozniak’s website. Steve (as we know!) is the co-founder of Apple. Howard noticed that site's list of World Wide User Groups, and he inquired about having our PMUG listed. Janet emailed back to Howard, commenting “Woz and I are both big Mac fans. I have worked for Apple in the Education division for 15 ears. I used to go to the user group in Kansas when I lived there, and it was always a great experience.” Take a look at the Woz site; “you could spend hours on this page. It can really make you feel good you own a Mac. Enjoy!”

Mac Mentoring

        "This is just in from Jim Hamm, "Are any of you interested in being a Mac Mentor at the Prescott Library? John Carter and I are presently mentors, but I’ll be spending a good bit of the winter at our condo in Scottsdale and won’t be available to do much mentoring in Prescott. John will continue mentoring at the Prescott Library, but his preference is to do more mentoring at the Prescott Valley Library since it is closer to his home.
        "If any of you would like to devote some volunteer time helping people with their Macs, let me know. There’s a big need for this in our community. I’ll explain what’s involved and how to become a volunteer at the Prescott Library. I’ll continue doing Mac mentoring when we’re in Prescott, and we’re not moving to Scottsdale. Prescott is still our home. I just won’t be here as much this winter.
        "Thanks, and let me know if you’d like to give this a try."  Email Jim here.

How to Speed Up Your Mac

        John Carter writes, "The easiest way to speed up your Mac is to replace your existing hard drive with a solid state hard drive, but it’s not the least expensive way by far. Check out the video on the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro here."The best way to speed up the boot up time and the time to launch an application on the Mac is to install a solid state drive. The new MacBook Air is an example of this. "Another way to speed up your Mac is to attach an external hard drive and reconfigure your swap space (aka Virtual Memory) to use that external hard drive instead of the internal hard drive. There are two ways to do this: 1) the easy, costly way, and 2) the complicated, free way. "(For a quick review of the advantages of moving the swap space to another drive or partition, look here. NOTICE: SwapSwapVM is now available for Yosemite.) "The free way is NOT recommended as it involves using Terminal commands. Mistakes in entering the commands could prove fatal to the Mac. Take a look at two such procedures here and here. These articles are provided to give you some background on why you would want to move your swap space away from the primary boot disk on your Mac. "The costly way is only $34.99, and it comes packaged as part of MacTuneUp from MacWare (for Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.4 or higher). See John Carter’s review on this software here. This is also the safest way. You can use MacTuneUp to move the swap space to another physical hard drive or to a separate partition on the existing hard drive. (MacTuneUp cannot repartition a hard drive.) "Re-partioning the primary hard drive to put the swap space in a separate partition is not as effective as moving the swap space to a separate physical drive, but is still a viable way to improve the performance of your system. There are few software applications that will safely repartition the primary hard drive without erasing all the data on it. One such application is VolumeWorks. Instructions for manually re-partitioning the primary drive that also destroys all data on it can be found here. Don’t worry. If you follow the instructions carefully, your system will be restored to what it was before you re-partitioned the drive, especially if you use Time Machine to restore from. If the primary hard drive is to be repartitioned for the purpose of moving the swap space to a different partition, that swap space partition should be the first partition on the drive. "For a more efficient usage of swap space, the partition that the swap space is on should not be used for any other purpose. The recommended size for swap space is at least 3 times the size of your internal memory (RAM). This means that the swap space partition can be very small, but probably should not be smaller than, say, 20GB for a system with 4GB RAM. "Finally, you can use a flash drive for your swap space, but that flash drive, if used like this, can NEVER be removed from your system. For a system with 4GB RAM, you would need a 16GB flash drive. That flash drive can be any kind, but the best kind would be a Class 10 SDHC. "All that said, there is one, simple way to improve the access time to any file on your Mac, and that is to change the preferences setting to NOT put the hard drives to sleep when possible. If the hard drives are spinned down, it takes time to get them up to speed before you can access any file on that drive. Even if you move your swap space to an external drive, if your hard drives are spinned down when they need to be accessed, your Mac will be slow. You change the settings for this in System Preferences —> Energy Saver. The figure below shows the preferred settings when the system is on Power.

"The Wake for network access is only needed if your Mac is serving a website or if you are sharing files on your Mac with other computers in your home. "If you’re using a laptop in battery mode (or an iMac in UPS mode), you really should be putting the hard disk to sleep when possible. The figure below shows the settings for this.

"It would be nice if Apple provided a way to spin down selected drives, such as the one used for Time Machine, and leave the others running."  John concludes with, "(The images above are for Snow Leopard settings on an iMac.)"

Creating Music CDs

A user had the following experience after inserting a blank CD in preparation to create a music CD:

Disk Utility started, but no disk icon appeared on desktop.

Well, that makes it rather difficult to copy files to the CD.
The disk icon won’t appear on the desktop, or in Places in Finder, if you have "Open Disk Utility" as the default action when inserting a blank DVD/CD.

In this case, it appears that the user had "Open Disk Utility" as the default when a blank DVD/CD is installed. That’s a mistake, in my opinion. If you want total control over what happens when you insert a blank DVD/CD, the default action is unchecked so that you get the following prompt when a blank DVD/CD is inserted:

Notice that the box for "Make this the default action" is not checked, and the above prompt shows up when I insert a blank DVD/CD.
The pop-up menu is exposed here to show what actions are possible.
When I select “Open Finder,” the DVD icon should appear in Finder as a folder under Places:
Now you can simply drag and drop files into that folder. When you have them all there, just click on the burn icon and in a few minutes you have your CD ready to use.
If the CD icon doesn’t automatically get removed after burning the CD, right click on it and select “Remove from Sidebar”:
So how do you unset the default action when you insert a blank DVD/CD? Go to System Preferences and open “CDs & DVDs”…
Change your preferences to “Ask what to do”.
Take back control over what you want to do when you insert a blank CD or DVD. Maybe you would prefer to set the default action to “Open Finder” so that you can then start copying files to it.
When you copy files into a blank DVD/CD this way, the files aren’t actually copied right away. The filenames you see there are just placeholders. The files actually get copied when you start the burn process.
However, if you are like me and you use Path Finder as your default browser, you get the following in Places:
And when you copy files into that folder, you actually do copy the files to the DVD/CD at that time. Notice that there is no burn icon there. So, in order to burn the DVD/CD, you should have the burn icon in the tool bar of the browser:
This simplifies having to search around for how to do a burn after copying files to a blank DVD/CD.
And by the way, don’t forget to rename the folder before you do the burn.