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

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

Changes in Boot Camp 1.2 beta

Boot Camp 1.2 beta contains several updates and is intended for all new and previous Boot Camp beta users.

Boot Camp 1.2 beta includes:

• Support for Windows Vista (32-bit)
• Updated drivers, including but not limited to trackpad, AppleTime (synch), audio, graphics, modem, iSight camera
• Support the Apple Remote (works with iTunes and Windows Media Player)
• A Windows system tray icon for easy access to Boot Camp information and actions
• Improved keyboard support for Korean, Chinese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, and French Canadian
• Improved Windows driver installation experience

It’s kind of like faster-user switching, but staying within the same Account!

A prospective customer of ours, new to the Mac, found, downloaded and is enjoying the software, and wrote us:

The website is here:
http://virtuedesktops.info/index.php/downloads/

The actual download is not easy to see.
It is here.

http://virtuedesktops.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/VirtueDeskt

This is a beta and a non-apple solution.  The upcoming release from apple (leopard) is supposed to have this function built in.  This beta has worked well for me.  The worse thing that has happened is that it has quit once or twice.  So I keep a copy on my desktop to restart it.

I’m not sure who came up with the three-pane system most software mail clients (and some web clients) use, but I’m desperately curious as to what they were thinking. It’s one of those things we don’t normally think about because, well, we’ve just been using it forever and gotten used to it, but how many times have you had to fiddle with that middle divider to get just the right amount of body showing and still be able to see more than a few e-mails. It just doesn’t make any sense to cram two fields that need to be long on top of each other. Enter Letterbox .

VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is essentially a means of controlling another computer remotely. It can be done on a LAN or over the internet. People use it for all sorts of things, but offhand, it sounds like it would be great for tech support, right? Assuming the problem isn’t a network one, you could just VNC into Grandma’s computer and fix the problem. Unfortunately not. VNC usually requires a bit of configuration, most of which if not all needs to be done on the client-side. And since Grandma is the one who needs tech support in the first place, she’s probably not going to be capable of forwarding ports through her firewall. Even if you managed to set it all up in advance, invariably an IP address will change or you’ll need some type of information that Grandma just can’t give you.

There are so many different ways to set something like this up. This final installation of this blog series if going to mainly focus on what I’ve experienced so far, and what I plan on doing with my network.

So, my network at this time includes:
Airport Extreme
Airport Express
Cable Modem
Epson R200
LaCie 250GB External
Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
Core Duo Macbook
tv or Mac Mini eventual purchase

As you may have noticed by now, I’m pretty serious about this project. I have been ripping DVDs every day since the tv was initially announced back in September under the code name “iTV”.

I had no idea where I would end up when I started, but now that I am finished with Parts One and Two, I know what I need from here. I will share with you know some things to consider.

At this point, you are either finished with, or well on your way to having all of your media ripped into Quicktime format, and assembled into a massive iTunes Library. You will start to get an idea of how large your Library will be, and should be planning accordingly regarding a means for storage (more on this in part 3).

Right now, we are going to focus on organization - getting all your music and video in the same library, and properly tagged.

Since you have no doubt heard by now that the tv has been delayed, I thought this would be an excellent time to share some tips that will make your impending digital home theatre experience all the more sweet. As an added challenge, I will try to subtitle each entry with a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers song. So, here we go!

In this installation, I want to tackle content. Apple offers movies on the iTunes Store now, but who wants to pay for iTunes-compatible versions of movies they already own? Who wants to wait for all the legal battles to be fought so that they can finally download their favorite films on iTunes? Not this Mac addict.

This update contains several improvements to enhance security and stability, including fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.

System requirements

Before you install this update, make sure that the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.3 Update is installed on your computer. To verify that you have installed this update, select the Microsoft Component Plugin file in the Microsoft Office 2004/Office folder on your hard disk, and then on the File menu, click Get Info.

Additionally, your computer must meet the following minimum requirements:

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.