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

1. Blog from 01.com about a comparison of the servers, here
2. Comparison table of Exchange Hosting vs. Zimbra hosting here
3. Business Week blog about the differences, here

Zimbra is a full-featured Microsoft Exchange competitor, that runs on OS X and OS X server, as well as Red Hat and other Linux variants.

Delivering mail, calendar and contact sharing and syncing to desktops and mobile devices from a server, Zimbra integrates with off-line clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, and Apple Mail, iCal and AddressBook. Both Leopard Server’s upcoming iCal Server and Zimbra’s upcoming Zimbra Collaboration Suite version 5 are CalDev compliant, posing intriguing possibilities for even more integration. Zimbra 5 also has full support for Apple’s iPhone, at no extra charge beyond standard licensing costs, with iZimbra.

We like Firefox, for all platforms, especially when used in conjunction with Zimbra, the enterprise e-mail, calendaring, contact and document sharing software. And we all know how easy it is to take screenshots on a mac. But have you ever wanted to take a screenshot of an entire webpage, especially one that scrolls beyond the size of your screen? And what about when using Firefox on a PC using WindowsXP or Linux? Well, now you can, with Pearl Crescent, a new Firefox extension. You can get Pearl Crescent here . It comes in both a free basic version, and a Pro version for $15. For independently written software, those are great prices, especially for what it can do. We know around here we are going to be recommending this often to our users.

Joan, thanks for calling in. Here are the links we discussed on the air tonight:

Syncing photos to your iPod from your Windows PC

How to restore an iPod to its factory settings

Updating your iPod’s software

Also, the iPod assistant is worth a shot if none of these help out:

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

Let us know how it’s going!

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me if I knew how to do this, as he was writing up a document about a PC-only application in which he wanted to include screenshots, and rather than switch back and forth between Mac OS X and Windows XP, it seemed easier to do it all in Microsoft Word on the PC partition of his MacBook Pro. After a little googling, we found this wonderful little article that explains how easy it is to accomplish this task. Now go forth and PrintScreen!

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

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.

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.

Living not far from Oz Park in Chicago, when reviewing the lopsided percentage of our web traffic using the Apple OS or at least not Explorer, I’m reminded of the cinematic refrain, “O what a world, what a world? Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

Microsoft is not the Wicked Witch. Apple is not a good little girl. And yet it might make you think for a second when you look at our statistics, that Microsoft just doesn’t matter that much, at least not to our visitors, with only about 30% of you on the Microsoft platform, and fewer than 1 out of 10 using Microsoft Explorer on a given day.

We had a question on the show tonight on whether or not you can network Windows with Macintosh. The answer is a resounding “Yeah!”

Apple’s overview on the features of Mac OS X Windows - Mac Networking: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/networking/

Here’s an overview at Apple’s Knowledgebase on how to actually perform the connection between a variety of different Windows OS’s and Mac OS’s, going back the last 8 years: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=19652

My friend Joe came to our office today, he’s been trying to use Yahoo Messenger on his 12″ PowerBook to communicate with his friend in Italy, on her Windows system.

Here’s a tutorial he’s going to try, let us know how it goes:

http://www.mvldesign.com/video_conference_tutorial.html