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MacOffice Pro Discount Offer Legit.?
Mac OS 10.4.11 update
Monitor spanning
Unable To Purchase Music From iTunes With OS 10.3.9
Document File Formats; Even Backed Up, How Long Will Your Data Be Accessible?
Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update A Smooth Ride So Far

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MacOffice Pro Discount Offer Legit.?

From Jim Boyle

Hi Charles:

On the 16th the following appeared on Applelinks;

I followed the links and tried to buy the product on a site called 2Checkout.com thru their link to PayPal. My confirmation e-mail from PayPal looked unusual so I sent it to and they replied that the e-mail was Phishing. I placed a comment on the Applelinks page last night. Now all the links are broken, even trying to go direct to MacOffice Pro. Do you know if this is a valid piece of software and how much does Applelinks vet the items they post?

Blessings to you
Jim

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Hi Jim;

That's a bit troubling, isn't it?

We received the press release from PRWeb via eMediaWire Newswire, which I would assume to be reliable. We usually do not double-check press releases received from them or other known and established PR distribution services like PRMac.

You can view the original PRWeb press release here:
http://www.prweb.com//releases/macofficepro/special_offer/prweb569835.htm

I just checked the links, and they seem to be working fine from here, and the links from the special offer Web page take me to the Mac Office Pro home page, so I can't seem to find anything suspicious or abnormal, or that would set off any alarm bells, although I haven't attempted to transact a purchase.

I've had no other reports of problems or irregularities with this offer so far.

I can't say with 100 percent certainty that everything is above board, but it does appear to be.

Charles






Mac OS 10.4.11 update

From Cathy

Hi Charles,

Have you installed the 10.4.11 update yet? I downloaded the Combo updater (321.5 MB!) but haven't installed it yet. Waiting to see if there appear to be any bugs with this one first. Just wondered what your experience might have been.

P.S. Your account of dealing with the aftereffects of Noel was very interesting to me since I've dealt with a few weather-related outages myself. One day I hope to get my own Mac, (right now, I'm using my company's iMac) and I really hadn't thought of using a laptop as my primary desktop machine. But the fact that an outage doesn't shut down the computer immediately is a big point in its favor. I was working on a document this past weekend when the power cut out and came back on. It occurred 3 times in a half hour! Apparently a bird landed on the wrong part of a power line and triggered the problem.

The only drawback to notebooks is the small size of their screens. I work in QuarkXpress on a 20-inch iMac and it's really nice to have the extra space for layouts. Do you happen to know, if I used the notebook to drive a separate monitor and had a power outage, could the notebook power the monitor or would I have to switch to the notebook display? (I just recently read about some new displays that will connect through USB. Would that be a benefit?) Also, when you use a notebook and a separate monitor, does the notebook display stay on or go dark when the monitor is running?

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Hi Cathy;

I installed 10.4.11 last week, and it's just great so far.

You can read a more comprehensive account here.

To my mind, living where power outages are banefully frequent, a notebook computer is a no-brainer for the power security issue alone, although there are plenty of other reasons to prefer notebooks.

As for monitor size, I'm used to working on smallish ones, so it doesn't bother me. The 17" display in my PowerBook seems almost sinfully expansive, and it's not even the high-res one!

Incidentally, the 17" high-res monitor in the MacBook Pros should be very similar in viewing area (ie: the amount of information displayed) to the 20" iMac display.

You can of course drive an external monitor from a 'Book, although it won't stay up in a power failure, and even if it would, the power draw on the notebook battery would be unacceptable.

The notebook display stays on when the external display is connected, and on many models of 'Book, monitor spanning is supported, so you can use both screens simultaneously with different content displayed. That gives you a LOT of extra space for layouts or whatnot. All current MacBook Pro and MacBook models support monitor spanning. iBooks did not, but all aluminum PowerBooks do.

Charles






Monitor spanning

From Cathy

Have you used a high resolution, 1920 x 1080 display? Can you still read text on the screen or does it shrink so tiny that it's difficult to see menus, file names and the like?

Sorry to sound dumb, but if you use monitor spanning are you basically controlling two monitors with the keyboard do that whatever text you're writing shows up on both? So if the separate monitor goes off from a power outage, would you just switch to the notebook and its regular display?

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Hi Cathy;

The 17" MacBook Pro comes with a 1680-by-1050 resolution display, which isn't quite the same as a 20" 1920 x 1080 external, but it's not too far off. The higher the res., the smaller text will appear, but that is usually adjustable in the preferences. My old 17" PowerBook G4 has a res. of 1,400 x 900, which I find comfortable at somewhat smaller than the OS X Finder defaults.

The proper term for monitor spanning is "extended Desktop" which is what it sounds like. The second monitor displays expanded area to work in. You can also opt for "Mirror Mode," in which the laptop display and the external monitor will show identical information.

If the power fails, you just revert to the biult-in monitor only, but you don't lose anything you were working on in the otehr monitor - it will just appear smaller on the internal display.

Even th most lowly current MacBook with its Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor can simultaneously support full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors.

Charles






Unable To Purchase Music From iTunes With OS 10.3.9

From skdnyc (posted to the Applelinks Discussion Forum)

The post can be found at:
http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/15/

Yesterday, I tried to purchase a newly released album from iTunes. I received a message stating that I need iTunes 7.5 to download the album. I have a G4 PowerMac and I use Panther 10.3.9. I downloaded the newer version of Quicktime for Panther and then downloaded iTunes 7.5. Both went through the installation process uneventfully.

I then went back into iTunes to purchase the album. After pressing the purchase album button, the clock spun for forty-five seconds. The arrow reappeared when the grinding stopped. The same thing happened when I tried to buy just a song. It also happened when I tried to select a tab at the top to look at iTunes preferences. I stopped trying since I am afraid that I will blow out my hard drive.

Thanks for any advice/solutions.

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Hi;

Not sure what's going on here. You seem to be doing everything right.

As a general comment, as we move into the Leopard era, it is inevitable that more and more functions will be closed to OS 10.3, and eventually 10.4 users as well.

There may also be some issue with your particular setup. It would be interesting to try making a purchase from iTunes on an onother machine running OS 10.3.9 just to confirm that it works or doesn't work.

Since you have a G4 Power MAc which will run OS 10.4 Tiger very nicely, one suggestion would be to upgrade your system, which would have other advantages as well. Panther is getting a bit long in the tooth.

There may also be some issue with your particular setup. It owuld be interesting to try making a purchase from iTunes on an onother machine running OS 10.3.9 just to confirm that it works or doesn’t work.

Since you have a G4 Power Mac which will run OS 10.4 Tiger very nicely, one suggestion would be to upgrade your system, which would have other advantages as well. Panther is getting a bit long in the tooth.

OS 10.4 DVDs are becoming available now remaindered since the release of Leopard. Or for example, here’s a place that has it advertised for $50 as a download ( http://www.sommerandengelhart.com/index.php?target=desc&progid;=4094 ), and at that price (or possibly cheaper elsewhere, such as eBay), it’s well worth upgrading even absent this problem with iTunes.

Charles






Document File Formats; Even Backed Up, How Long Will Your Data Be Accessible?

From Ben;

I found this out a long time ago when I first switched to Linux in 1999. I have everything in open formats on my website and the source files backed up on CD-ROM. I am also printing out most my writing in books through Lulu.

I have copies of everything important on the web, CD-ROM, LaCie hard drive, and print in my fire safe onsite as well as CD-ROM and print at my sister's house in town, my parent's house out of town, and my uncle in Europe. I also have my writings at several social networking sites as well. I upload immediately to my website, backup several times a day to CD-ROM, and backup once a day to my external hard drive.

I also use Pages mainly for flyers. I use HTML for my basic formatting for small documents which I convert into PDFs with htmldoc. When I finish writing a book, I convert it to LaTeX and fix it up with TeXShop and then I convert it into about 15 other open formats. I use Scribus for any graphic based books. Then it goes off to print.

I use both my Mac and Linux about the same amount. As far as editing PDFs, look at the .46 version of Inkscape for that.

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Thanks for the comment and tips, Ben.

Charles






Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update A Smooth Ride So Far

From Ben,

I have been using Safari 3 since the beta came out, and it has finally caught up with Firefox in support of web standards. Any web page that is designed to work on multiple browsers should work fine in Safari. If it doesn't work in Safari, it is either a Firefox or Internet Explorer only site or Explorer only which means it almost definitely is infected with spyware.

I don't see a need for Camino anymore - if it doesn't work in Safari 3, the only other possible solution is to try Firefox. Anything Mozilla specific that the site will likely use will not work in Camino. Another nice thing about Safari is that it is the only browser on the Mac where you can get PDFs viewed inline with Preview or Adobe Reader and Flash Player is optimized for it. It does crash a lot though, hopefully the final version is more stable.

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Hi Ben;

I'm so far liking the Safari 3.0.4 final in OS 10.4.11, however, my favorite browsers remain Opera 9.50 and Netscape 9.0 - Opera for its speed, versatility, unique feature set, and solid reliability, and Netscape for its attractive and convenient interface (I especially like the local temperature readout).

Charles




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Charles W. Moore


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