UK Mac

Panic! LaCie External Hard disk... whhirrrr_click won't mount!
It fell on it's side yesterday and now just goes whhhirrrrrr_click_whhhirrrrrr_click_whhhirrrrrr_click_whhhirrrrrr_click_etc and won't mount up and appear on the desktop. Worse still... my home folder is located on this disk and I get the message "disk cannot be used now" I'm in Abu Dhabi at the moment, not b... 20 Apr 2010 16:30

Preferences Check - Errors Found
I asked OnyX to check my preferences and it reported: /Users/johnhill/Library/Preferences/com.apple.xecurit.plist: Conversion of string failed. The string is empty. /Users/johnhill/Library/Preferences/com.apple.xecurity.plist: Conversion of string failed. The string is empty. The former was last modified on 1Dec... 15 Apr 2010 04:50

> VoiceOver?
Is there a free speech synthesis engine that is better than VoiceOver's voices? VoiceOver isn't terrible, but the giveaway signs of speech synthesis *are* there. So I wonder what better tools might be available. This looks, or rather sounds, like it might be almost better, albeit producing somewhat stilted ... 14 Apr 2010 09:55

Force-quit iPod/iPhone application
If Safari (or some other application) on the iPod stops responding to input, is there some way to force it back to a starting state? Daniele ... 14 Apr 2010 07:41

To upgrade to Snow Leopard or not?
I have been running my MacBook Pro 17" machine on the OS I bought it with about a year ago. It is a 2.16GHz Core Duo machine with 2GB RAM and 320GB hard drive I got from eBay. Compared to my old machine which was a 1GHz PowerBook G4 17", it is a screamer. I've been happy with it, but I was wondering if I would... 17 Apr 2010 20:45

Saw my first iPad today
First of many I expect. Spotted a guy using it on the train in to Paddington this morning. Can't really say much about it - it's bigger than I expected, but the interface stuff didn't really come into play since it was being used for watching video. Tried to do some more surreptitious spying but my view then... 15 Apr 2010 11:24

XQuartz
I have just been advised of an update of XQuartz from 2.3.5 to 2.5.0. It seems that this is something to do with X11, which I also do not understand. Is it advisable to apply this update to my Snow Leopard (10.6.3)? If I look at X11 Get Info, it says it is The X Window System and does indeed say it is XQuartz ... 14 Apr 2010 04:25

Apple Store down
New MacBook Pros and hopefully a great new Mac Pro. Stuart -- cut that out to reply ... 16 Apr 2010 18:27

USB2 PCI card
I'm looking to fit a USB2 PCI card in my G4MDD, my iPod's suddenly started moaning at me about it!. Any reccomendations as to what card to get/avoid? -- Graeme Wall My genealogy website <www.greywall.demon.co.uk/genealogy/> ... 13 Apr 2010 09:29

Minimum useable system to manage iPhone?
Friend has a G3 iBook (600mhz or 700mhz) and wants to buy a second-hand iPhone (1st Gen) - will he be able to manage it on that? (He also has an iLamp, but it's - to use his words - a bit 'flakey') Cheers ... Mark ... 13 Apr 2010 04:01