Mac Systems

Energy Saving Tips
1. Reduce heater's room temperature For each extra degree (Celsius) of temperature, your heater will consume 7 to 11% more energy. Adjust it to 18degrees which is also better for your health. 2. Install a programmable thermostat You will be able to control the heater's temperature during specific hours every day... 4 Jul 2010 05:47

phone dialing with a Mac Mini and iData
I have used iData, a free form digital Rolodex, i.e. digital address book, since the old Classic days when its predecessor was QuickDEX. A convenient feature of iData/QuickDEX was using it as phone dialer via an external "MiniDIN-8 serial connector" phone modem. I used the various modem models by USRobotics and... 4 Jul 2010 03:38

Windows Obfuscation
VENT - ***** Windows and everything associated with it is an exercise in futility, in my opinion. Have any Mac users here actually managed to understand how to use "Windows-7" efficiently? What is the secret? Is it possible for a not-too-bright old guy like me to master in a reasonable length of tim... 6 Jul 2010 01:25

Bootable SATA PCI controller?
I urgently need to put a bootable SATA controller in a G4 MDD's PCI slot. Thus far, I find Syba SD-PCXSA2-2E2R SoNNeT TSATA PCI SATA Controller Card that talk about being bootable. None of the SIIG ones say so. I'd love to find a 4-port controller but find zilch. Can anyone speak from experience o... 3 Jul 2010 14:34

I think my printer has a problem.
My printer seems lonely, not sure what to do? It keeps wanting to interact with me, it thinks of things to say and requires my attention constantly? Do I know it is low in ink? Press OK if so. Do I want a printout of the status of the ink, press yes if so, no otherwise. It seems happy if I say no and shuts up, ... 4 Jul 2010 08:59

VLC causing system crash. Am I the only one ?
Mac Pro, with digital audio out, VLC sending digital encoded audio over the fibre to the stereo. Often crashes when starting a new chapter of a DVD or similar encoded video with dolby sound. It is always the following driver at the top: com.apple.driver.AppleHDA This causes a kernel panic, a real system ... 1 Jul 2010 22:15

More backup questions
I want to back up 3 Macs to an external drive: a G5 running 10.4.11 and 2 MacBooks running 10.6. For the MacBooks, I can use Time Machine but there's no Time Machine in 10.4. I have Retrospect on the G5 but I believe that if I back the G5 up to the ext. HD with Retrospect, Retrospect will own that drive and I won'... 13 Jul 2010 00:01

RAID (1 and/or 5), direct wired or NAS
Hi, folks. Just looking to get some opinions and experiences - I'm seriously thinking about home office network backup and storage and need to weigh out costs, simplicity and reliability. Anyone used a Newertech Guardian Maximus? It's a RAID1 dual drive array which plugs right into the desktop machine's fir... 8 Jul 2010 15:51

sparsebundles are growable, right?
So why does it seem necessary to specify a size? Is this just the initial size? For example, I intentionally tried (without specifying a size): hdiutil create -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs HFS+J -volname Earth Earth and got this error: hdiutil: create: WARNING: size unspecified and no other options imply a size... 1 Jul 2010 04:31

SATA docking station.
Anyone here use a SATA docking station like http://www.newertech.com/products/voyagers3.php ?? I'm wondering how well they work for continuous use as in a cheap alternative to an external drive. I've got a couple external drives (one firewire and one USB) and I don't believe either have a fan in them. My... 6 Jul 2010 20:02