The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

I love to listen to my iPod when I’m walking to work. One problem that I have is volume control. One song is too loud, the next one too soft. And sometimes I have my hands full and I can’t manually adjust the volume. That’s why I like Sound Check.

Sound Check tried to maintain a consistent volume level for all the songs on your iPod. To use Sound Check, first you have to enable it in the Audio pane of the iTunes Preferences window. iTunes adjusts the volume of the tracks in its Library. When the songs are uploaded to the iPod, the Sound Check settings are maintained.

Jim called with a question about whether or not it’s safe to defragment an OS X G4 journaled hard drive. He has a sawtooth G4 tower.

OS X’s built-in disk optimization method, in fact, only works for volumes that are formatted in HFS+ and *have journaling turned on.* So, this means in most cases it’s not necessary to defrag your hard drive if you have journaling turned on with OS X 10.2 or later.

Apple has an informative article on OS X fragmentation located here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

Want to optimize your Mac OS X 10.4.2 or later system? Try OnyX, a free utility available here:

Check our our WGN page here: http://WGN.OnDeckTech.com

Tonight we have Jason Snell from MacWorld on the air with us, and the lines are packed with Mac listeners! Thanks.

Carol called, and it sounds like, given she can print to her HP, that she should try installing the HP printer drivers onto her laptop. She’s getting gobbledy-gook when she tries to print. It’s good she’s getting *something*, as it means she can “reach” the printer across the network. That it’s indecipherable may be because the printer driver is incorrect. A driver is a piece of software (program, or code) that tells your computer how to communicate with another device, in this case, the device is a printer. If you don’t have the right driver, your computer may not be able to communicate properly with the device in question (again in this case an HP printer).

Thought your Mac was immune to a computer virus? Think again. A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald reported that two Mac users were the victims of the what security experts call the first-ever virus for Mac OS X.

The Mac’s vulnerability could also increase as Apple transitions to a product line that uses microprocessors made by Intel, security experts said.

Read the entire article at Macs Becoming Virus Targets .

Apple’s always had the good sense to not just hire good product designers, but good advertising firms as well. With this newest round of ads, they tout the joys of belonging to the Cult of Jobs by personifying PCs and Macs as people. Apple is represented by Justin Long, possibly known for his acting in the Brittney Spears film Crossroads. Windows is brought to life by the recent addition to the Daily Show, John Hodgeman. All six are worth a watch, as they’re snarky enough to make any Apple fanatic’s day.

See all six here .

The Web can be a scarey place, especially for kids. As a repsonsible parent, you want to do all you can to protect them from the unsavory sites. One of the first things that you can do is to activate Parental Controls in Safari.

The first step is to create a separate account for your child (or children). Next, turn on parental controls by choosing System Preferences, clicking on the Accounts icon, and selecting your kid’s account. In account preferences click on the Parental Controls tab and click on the checkbox next to Safari.