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

Long long ago in a galaxy far far away, there were no computer graphics (yet). But there were still computer games. Want to (re)visit that lost time, for just a moment?

A customer pointed me toward a pre-Zork computer game that has made its way online here:

Colossal Cave Online

Need a hint? Check out Rick Adams Colossal Care Adventure page .

We had a listener write in with a problem that sounds like it could be solved by a download and update from Apple:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbooksmcfirmwareupdate11

This updates the firmware of MacBooks to version 1.1, solving a heat and freeze issue.

Safe Boot (aka “Safe Mode”) allows you to start up your Mac with a simplified operating system, helpful for identifying and circumventing minor corruptions to startup items, extensions and fonts. Here’s info from Apple’s website on Safe Mode on the Mac, since it was discussed, too, press Shift during start up to enter safe mode on Mac OS X:

From time to time, for a plethora of reasons - we may lose connection with Mail. No, that sentence was not just an excuse to use the word plethora. Your Mail settings may have changed, you could be having issues with your ISP, but regardless of the issue - Mail troubles can be confusing and frustrating. But there’s help!

Under the Window menu in Mail, is a little tool called Connection Doctor. This feature arrived with Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” , and was designed to diagnose and fix networking issues directly from Mail.

Everyone’s talking about the iPhone (although no one is talking with it yet), and while this article is about communication, this is the last sentence that will mention the iPhone. For the moment, pass on, you hordes of latest gadget-lovers! We have other fish to fry. Last Website Wednesday Night we had a caller bring up the question of video conferencing between Macintosh OS X and Windows XP. In the past we’ve promised we’d share at least one way to make this work, and today is that day.

This show, on WGN AM 720 broadcast from the Tribune tower in downtown Chicago is, for tonight, dedicated to novice computer users! We’re spending time talking about the basics, thinking many people in the audience may have just received computers over the holidays, remembering a short dozen years ago how Steve and Johnnie left their computer in the box for months before working up the courage to open it…

For those of you who’ve just gotten your Macs, you may want to visit Apple’s web page devoted to first-time users, Mac 101: http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ .

It has been brought to our attention, with the rest of the corporate computing world, that the new version of Microsoft Exchange is cutting its ties with Outlook. In the most recent release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Outlook 2007 has been stripped of its CAL ( Client-Access-License). In previous versions of Exchange, users who bought Exchange CALs also received Outlook CALs. Merely an assumption here, but many people will be outraged that their previously free mail client is suddenly no longer free. This could force a material shakeup in the market-share, not bad news at OnDeckTech. We host an Exchange alternative called Zimbra, a powerful alternative to Outlook/Exchange.