This is the thread for all you Mac geeks out there... First topic: Jobs's keynote at MWSF and the associated announcements. New PowerBooks - 12" and 17" models Airport Extreme - Apple's implementation of 802.11g Keynote - Presentation software (what...
Quote SwingKitten, I'm not a mac user, but if I were you I might consider selling your iMac and using the money to buy an external drive. Seems like that might be the easiest option. I keep all my music on my windows laptop and back it up on my 100gb external, and that works fairly well for me.
See, but the thing is, I don't need to just keep it on my laptop and back it up.. I need to remove it from my laptop but still have access to it from time to time. In which case I will need to connect my external drive whenever I want to update my iPod.
I guess I'm leaning toward option 2 at this point...
1. Buy an external FireWire drive to keep my music and/or photos on, or
Get an external FireWire enclosure and a new larger hard drive. Put the new hard drive in the enclosure and then create a bootable backup on it (using something like SuperDuper). Now put the new hard drive in your macbook and the old on in the external hard drive enclosure. Now you have a larger internal hard drive and a 60Gb backup disk.
arthur
I would totally have to hire someone to do this because, though I'm sort of 'puter savvy, I have no idea how to even go about what you wrote up there.
As you stated, this is a bit beyond your skill set and level of comfort. You can go to TekServe, and have them do this for you.
Never the less, excess is quite correct. That would be the best solution in my mind. But not the cheapest. I would try to sell your Imac on Craigs list to offset the cost. My guess is your total cost with labor will be around 400 - 450.
You can purchase a 5400 rpm drive like this or a 7200 rpm drive like this. The higher the Rotations Per Minute on the drive, the faster it will be. Although I would personally get a 7200, I think you will be fine with a 5400. It depends upon what you are doing with your computer.
You need the buy the drive, and a hard drive enclosure. I would recommend the hard drive enclosure that looks like this:
Have them clone your current drive to the new one you just purchased. Then have them install that drive. They can then take your old drive and put it in the hard drive enclosure. Ask them to reformat it for you so that it is empty. That can become a backup drive that is light, portable, and doesn't require a separate power source.
Call or email Tekserve for a quote. You can use this post to explain to them what you want done.
TekServe
119 W. 23rd St. NYC 10011
T 212.929.3645 F 212.463.9280
email: help tekserve.com
SK, keep it simple. Just buy a pre-enclosed drive from LaCie or whatever. 450 dollars is WAY too much to pay to solve this problem. In any case, do you really need a hard drive upgrade or do you just need to clear space.
Just get an external drive for a hundred bucks and change. If you want, you can buy one of those little 2.5" pocket drives (mine was 160GB and cost 100 dollars at Costco) if you don't want some lumbering big ol' external drive, although in my experience the big guys are MUCH more reliable.
If you want to use the iMac instead, it would be no problem at all to have it stream music wirelessly. The only issue is that your iMac would have to be on all the time, and iTunes would also have to be on whenever you wanted to play music.
Don't spend 450 dollars for a complicated solution to a simple problem.
It is not a complicated solution to a simple problem. It is a problem, with possible solutions, with different consequences to each solution.
As someone who does this for a living and has many different types of clients, I can tell you, you are projecting your values a bit here.
Most people I know buy a laptop for the portability. Telling them that they have to carry around a honking external drive absolutely defeats the purpose for some people. When I have made that suggestion to many of my clients, they have said they would much rather pay more money up front than have to deal with trying to keep two itunes libraries in synch, or have to have an external drive attached to access their Itunes library.
If money is an issue for her, that's cool. There are indeed a few different solutions to the problem. It really depends upon what is important to the particular user. (Not to mention, if she wanted to sell her Imac anyway, her total cost could go down to 100 - 200 dollars)
Your post has this "Don't listen to their stupid suggestion" tone to it. As a computer consultant who gets paid pretty well for my opinions, and as someone who has a whole lot more experience at addressing different needs for different types of people than you do, I can say you don't know nearly as much as you think you do.
If you were to reread my post you would see that I offered several solutions. The first would be getting the big old drive. I listed pros (reliability, cost) and cons (size and portability). I also talked about getting the smaller drive, which would be much more portable but possibly less reliable. And then I talked about using the iMac as a streaming music library, and the caveat of having to have it on all the time.
And you know what, maybe I am projecting my values. I don't think it's necessary to spend all that money and effort to do a complicated hard drive swap on a MacBook. It's costly, it requires someone to open up your computer, you have to give up your computer for a little bit to get it done, there's the potential for something to go wrong (especially if the new drive you buy isn't up to snuff) and there are plenty of other alternatives that don't cost as much and are much less complicated. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend the procedure. I think it's perfectly fine to say that. You may disagree. There's no need to attack my credentials or expertise and to dress me down with this holier-than-thou "You don't know as much as you think you do" mantra. You have no idea what I know or what I don't know.
To add - for all you say about how my post has this "Don't listen to this stupid suggestion" tone to it, you sure are eager to call me stupid in your last paragraph. How does that work?
Alright, so I need to set up a webcam in the classic style: a single image taken periodically from my MBP's iSight, uploaded to a webserver.
Is this something I can do with built-in software? Is there some freeware I could do this with? I've never tried anything remotely webcam related before, so I'm a total newb.
Quoted from "FoolsRun" Alright, so I need to set up a webcam in the classic style: a single image taken periodically from my MBP's iSight, uploaded to a webserver.
Is this something I can do with built-in software? Is there some freeware I could do this with? I've never tried anything remotely webcam related before, so I'm a total newb.
Quoted from "FoolsRun" Alright, so I need to set up a webcam in the classic style: a single image taken periodically from my MBP's iSight, uploaded to a webserver.
Is this something I can do with built-in software? Is there some freeware I could do this with? I've never tried anything remotely webcam related before, so I'm a total newb.
You need EvoCam!
http://www.evological.com/
I was hoping for a freeware option, since what I'm trying to do is ideally very simple, but I'll give that a look and see if the shareware meets my needs.
Quoted from "flat-top" Are there any comments on the new I-Mac introduced this week?
http://www.apple.com/imac/
BluesforCP and I were ogling the new iMacs at the Apple Store in Soho yesterday. Really sweet looking machines. She's thinking of getting on to replace her dead PC.
IMacs are nice. One thing to consider is that Apple may be releasing Leopard soon (October?) and if you wait until then you won't have to pay for an upgrade. (Perhaps Apple offers free upgrades if you've bought it within a certain time window or something, but I dunno...)
I inadvertently arrived at the cutting edge of technology. My old iMac fried its logic chip last Wednesday. The genius at the Apple store said it'd probably be about 800 to fix, so I decided to buy a new computer. First I selected a MacBook, but after my girlfriend reminding me they also have iMacs, I switched. It's the new one, iMac 7.1. Go me. I also got an iPod with their education discount thingamajig. The 30gig iPod is the same price as the 8gig Nano, btw.
I plan to be upgrading my old Dual G4 tower with one of these new iMacs after Leopard comes out. Maybe in a year or so, and I can get a free iPod with purchase.
I was going to go for the Mac Pro tower, but I realized that I don't need all that expandability and horsepower. These new iMacs have plenty of power under the hood, it'll run all the apps I need it to run just fine, and it'll cost less and look nicer.
It's great to be getting out of the "my computer is the fastest ever!" game.
I have a P5 20" iMac which I love, but it sort of bothers me to have to pay for a new monitor when I replace it. On the other hand, you can now buy a 19" monitor for under 200 , so I suppose it's not a huge hit, but still...
As I mentioned elsewhere, the hard drive on my iBook pooped out over the weekend. Rather than drop a few hundred on a new one, I decided it was ultimately more cost effective to just go ahead and get a new computer, so I bought the new iMac. So far it definitely kicks ass. 8)
I had a hard time deciding between this and another laptop because my need to travel with it is very rare, but does happen, and it's a huge difference in power, as well as how long desktops tend to last vs. laptops (I do not want to worry about a replacement in the next 3-4 years again). In the last minute it occurred to me that maybe I can still run the laptop off an external drive as the startup disk, which the store said was definitely doable and told me roughly how to set it up, so I'll probably just do that. Of course, had I thought of it sooner and really worked it out in my mind, I probably would have done that for now and waited until Leopard came out, but that's life. Hopefully I'll still fall in the grace period, because that will really suck to have to drop another buck on that in a couple of months. But that's life.
Of course, the two downsides here are 1. it's a lot more money than I wanted to drop, especially since I'm trying to save up for a trip to Egypt in January, and 2. despite a couple of failed attempts and getting what I needed to do this, I let the backing up of files slide more than I realized. At this point I don't even know exactly what I lost apart from a few things (mostly pictures and a little bit of writing). But on that one, it's nobody's fault but mine so I'll get over it.
Anyway as I'm setting up the new one, I have a couple of questions (and I'm sure more will come later).
1. Fortunately my music was saved because it was already being run off an external hard drive. However, my playlists are gone. But they are on my ipod which I don't want to sync because I have a feeling it'll wipe them out instead. Air sent me a link for a program that was supposed to get them off, but it kept crashing. Any other suggestions?
2. Even though I downloaded the plugin, it doesn't seem to want to play wmv files. What's up with that? Of course I find wmv files annoying anyway, so maybe that's a blessing in disguise. :)
3. Is there a way I can leave the wire going to my stereo plugged into the computer and still be able to switch between using the stereo or internal speakers? When I go to Preferences, it always gives me only one option for sound output, depending on whether it's plugged in or not.
4. I've noticed in Word that the measurements seem off. That is, when it says "Size = 100 ", one inch on screen is really about 3/4 inch. Is that a Word issue or possibly a mac/monitor issue? The help menus in both have been decidedly unhelpful.
Thanks in advance.
(oh, and one unexpected bonus: I can finally use Second Life again 8) )
4. I've noticed in Word that the measurements seem off. That is, when it says "Size = 100 ", one inch on screen is really about 3/4 inch. Is that a Word issue or possibly a mac/monitor issue? The help menus in both have been decidedly unhelpful.
Thanks in advance.
(oh, and one unexpected bonus: I can finally use Second Life again 8) )
I think that is just a Word issue, but I don't have a Mac, so I could be wrong. Even though I know you'd rather not spend the cash, congrats on the new computer!
The logic board on my macbook decided it no longer likes my ethernet port. To get around the problem I've connected my cable modem to my laptop with the USB port and then connect through Parallels. Is there anyway to get OS X to support an internet connection through the USB port directly?
Yeah, I'm still under Apple Care so it's not that big of a deal. Unfortunately I have my prelims in a month so I really can't afford to be without my computer for a week.
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Lounge:
The Kitchen Sink
- 1/11/03 12:00 am by Mugsy Malone
- 153359 views
This is the thread for all you Mac geeks out there... First topic: Jobs's keynote at MWSF and the associated announcements. New PowerBooks - 12" and 17" models Airport Extreme - Apple's implementation of 802.11g Keynote - Presentation software (what...Page(s): < Previous 1 2 ... 39 40 41 42 43 ... 47 48 Next > (1412 items total)
SwingKitten
See, but the thing is, I don't need to just keep it on my laptop and back it up.. I need to remove it from my laptop but still have access to it from time to time. In which case I will need to connect my external drive whenever I want to update my iPod.
I guess I'm leaning toward option 2 at this point...
SwingKitten
I would totally have to hire someone to do this because, though I'm sort of 'puter savvy, I have no idea how to even go about what you wrote up there.
Wexie
excess, think of your audience man! ;-)
As you stated, this is a bit beyond your skill set and level of comfort. You can go to TekServe, and have them do this for you.
Never the less, excess is quite correct. That would be the best solution in my mind. But not the cheapest. I would try to sell your Imac on Craigs list to offset the cost. My guess is your total cost with labor will be around 400 - 450.
You can purchase a 5400 rpm drive like this or a 7200 rpm drive like this. The higher the Rotations Per Minute on the drive, the faster it will be. Although I would personally get a 7200, I think you will be fine with a 5400. It depends upon what you are doing with your computer.
You need the buy the drive, and a hard drive enclosure. I would recommend the hard drive enclosure that looks like this:
Have them clone your current drive to the new one you just purchased. Then have them install that drive. They can then take your old drive and put it in the hard drive enclosure. Ask them to reformat it for you so that it is empty. That can become a backup drive that is light, portable, and doesn't require a separate power source.
Call or email Tekserve for a quote. You can use this post to explain to them what you want done.
TekServe
119 W. 23rd St. NYC 10011
T 212.929.3645 F 212.463.9280
email: help tekserve.com
Marcelo
SK, keep it simple. Just buy a pre-enclosed drive from LaCie or whatever. 450 dollars is WAY too much to pay to solve this problem. In any case, do you really need a hard drive upgrade or do you just need to clear space.
Just get an external drive for a hundred bucks and change. If you want, you can buy one of those little 2.5" pocket drives (mine was 160GB and cost 100 dollars at Costco) if you don't want some lumbering big ol' external drive, although in my experience the big guys are MUCH more reliable.
If you want to use the iMac instead, it would be no problem at all to have it stream music wirelessly. The only issue is that your iMac would have to be on all the time, and iTunes would also have to be on whenever you wanted to play music.
Don't spend 450 dollars for a complicated solution to a simple problem.
Wexie
Marcelo, Marcelo.
It is not a complicated solution to a simple problem. It is a problem, with possible solutions, with different consequences to each solution.
As someone who does this for a living and has many different types of clients, I can tell you, you are projecting your values a bit here.
Most people I know buy a laptop for the portability. Telling them that they have to carry around a honking external drive absolutely defeats the purpose for some people. When I have made that suggestion to many of my clients, they have said they would much rather pay more money up front than have to deal with trying to keep two itunes libraries in synch, or have to have an external drive attached to access their Itunes library.
If money is an issue for her, that's cool. There are indeed a few different solutions to the problem. It really depends upon what is important to the particular user. (Not to mention, if she wanted to sell her Imac anyway, her total cost could go down to 100 - 200 dollars)
Your post has this "Don't listen to their stupid suggestion" tone to it. As a computer consultant who gets paid pretty well for my opinions, and as someone who has a whole lot more experience at addressing different needs for different types of people than you do, I can say you don't know nearly as much as you think you do.
Marcelo
If you were to reread my post you would see that I offered several solutions. The first would be getting the big old drive. I listed pros (reliability, cost) and cons (size and portability). I also talked about getting the smaller drive, which would be much more portable but possibly less reliable. And then I talked about using the iMac as a streaming music library, and the caveat of having to have it on all the time.
And you know what, maybe I am projecting my values. I don't think it's necessary to spend all that money and effort to do a complicated hard drive swap on a MacBook. It's costly, it requires someone to open up your computer, you have to give up your computer for a little bit to get it done, there's the potential for something to go wrong (especially if the new drive you buy isn't up to snuff) and there are plenty of other alternatives that don't cost as much and are much less complicated. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend the procedure. I think it's perfectly fine to say that. You may disagree. There's no need to attack my credentials or expertise and to dress me down with this holier-than-thou "You don't know as much as you think you do" mantra. You have no idea what I know or what I don't know.
Trazy
SK: I agree with Marcelo. Get a 2.5" external drive. Quick, easy, and cheap.
On another note... NEW iMACs!
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/07/live-from-apples-summer-mac-product-press-conference/
Marcelo
To add - for all you say about how my post has this "Don't listen to this stupid suggestion" tone to it, you sure are eager to call me stupid in your last paragraph. How does that work?
Wexie
I think both of our posts speak for themselves. If you want to talk about it further, let's take it to PM.
aklamo
I vote against LaCie :( They don't make hard drives, just crappy enclosures.
Buy a seagate hard drive.
flat-top
Are there any comments on the new I-Mac introduced this week?
http://www.apple.com/imac/
FoolsRun
Alright, so I need to set up a webcam in the classic style: a single image taken periodically from my MBP's iSight, uploaded to a webserver.
Is this something I can do with built-in software? Is there some freeware I could do this with? I've never tried anything remotely webcam related before, so I'm a total newb.
Trazy
You need EvoCam!
http://www.evological.com/
FoolsRun
I was hoping for a freeware option, since what I'm trying to do is ideally very simple, but I'll give that a look and see if the shareware meets my needs.
rikomatic
Flappers, Dandies & Lindy Hoppers Take over Governors Island for the "Jazz Age Lawn Party" (video)
Blowout Final Concert & Dance Competition for 2010 Midsummer Night Swing Festival
Chivalrous
Did she sing the Happyslip song?
Martinis do not contain vodka. —Rachel Maddow
Phlurg
IMacs are nice. One thing to consider is that Apple may be releasing Leopard soon (October?) and if you wait until then you won't have to pay for an upgrade. (Perhaps Apple offers free upgrades if you've bought it within a certain time window or something, but I dunno...)
Monsignore
I inadvertently arrived at the cutting edge of technology. My old iMac fried its logic chip last Wednesday. The genius at the Apple store said it'd probably be about 800 to fix, so I decided to buy a new computer. First I selected a MacBook, but after my girlfriend reminding me they also have iMacs, I switched. It's the new one, iMac 7.1. Go me. I also got an iPod with their education discount thingamajig. The 30gig iPod is the same price as the 8gig Nano, btw.
Marcelo
I plan to be upgrading my old Dual G4 tower with one of these new iMacs after Leopard comes out. Maybe in a year or so, and I can get a free iPod with purchase.
I was going to go for the Mac Pro tower, but I realized that I don't need all that expandability and horsepower. These new iMacs have plenty of power under the hood, it'll run all the apps I need it to run just fine, and it'll cost less and look nicer.
It's great to be getting out of the "my computer is the fastest ever!" game.
Phlurg
I have a P5 20" iMac which I love, but it sort of bothers me to have to pay for a new monitor when I replace it. On the other hand, you can now buy a 19" monitor for under 200 , so I suppose it's not a huge hit, but still...
deadkytty9
'Huge' is relative.
:wink:
Phlurg
Hah! Grad student. Points and laughs.
deadkytty9
quietly weeps :cry:
Chivalrous
As I mentioned elsewhere, the hard drive on my iBook pooped out over the weekend. Rather than drop a few hundred on a new one, I decided it was ultimately more cost effective to just go ahead and get a new computer, so I bought the new iMac. So far it definitely kicks ass. 8)
I had a hard time deciding between this and another laptop because my need to travel with it is very rare, but does happen, and it's a huge difference in power, as well as how long desktops tend to last vs. laptops (I do not want to worry about a replacement in the next 3-4 years again). In the last minute it occurred to me that maybe I can still run the laptop off an external drive as the startup disk, which the store said was definitely doable and told me roughly how to set it up, so I'll probably just do that. Of course, had I thought of it sooner and really worked it out in my mind, I probably would have done that for now and waited until Leopard came out, but that's life. Hopefully I'll still fall in the grace period, because that will really suck to have to drop another buck on that in a couple of months. But that's life.
Of course, the two downsides here are 1. it's a lot more money than I wanted to drop, especially since I'm trying to save up for a trip to Egypt in January, and 2. despite a couple of failed attempts and getting what I needed to do this, I let the backing up of files slide more than I realized. At this point I don't even know exactly what I lost apart from a few things (mostly pictures and a little bit of writing). But on that one, it's nobody's fault but mine so I'll get over it.
Anyway as I'm setting up the new one, I have a couple of questions (and I'm sure more will come later).
1. Fortunately my music was saved because it was already being run off an external hard drive. However, my playlists are gone. But they are on my ipod which I don't want to sync because I have a feeling it'll wipe them out instead. Air sent me a link for a program that was supposed to get them off, but it kept crashing. Any other suggestions?
2. Even though I downloaded the plugin, it doesn't seem to want to play wmv files. What's up with that? Of course I find wmv files annoying anyway, so maybe that's a blessing in disguise. :)
3. Is there a way I can leave the wire going to my stereo plugged into the computer and still be able to switch between using the stereo or internal speakers? When I go to Preferences, it always gives me only one option for sound output, depending on whether it's plugged in or not.
4. I've noticed in Word that the measurements seem off. That is, when it says "Size = 100 ", one inch on screen is really about 3/4 inch. Is that a Word issue or possibly a mac/monitor issue? The help menus in both have been decidedly unhelpful.
Thanks in advance.
(oh, and one unexpected bonus: I can finally use Second Life again 8) )
Martinis do not contain vodka. —Rachel Maddow
WiseFolly
I think that is just a Word issue, but I don't have a Mac, so I could be wrong. Even though I know you'd rather not spend the cash, congrats on the new computer!
excess
The logic board on my macbook decided it no longer likes my ethernet port. To get around the problem I've connected my cable modem to my laptop with the USB port and then connect through Parallels. Is there anyway to get OS X to support an internet connection through the USB port directly?
Thanks,
Arthur
aklamo
OOf! Take that one to the geniuses. Are you out of AppleCare?
excess
Yeah, I'm still under Apple Care so it's not that big of a deal. Unfortunately I have my prelims in a month so I really can't afford to be without my computer for a week.
arthur
BluesForCP
I just bought the iMac too! Goodbye, PC. I just have to wait 'til October for delivery. Evidently, big wait on the wireless accessories.
flat-top
Alright, OK, You Win!
Great News...Enjoy your new i-mac! :D
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