The Mac Observer Forums

Copying same data to multiple drives

2009-11-09T19:25:30Z

Does anyone have a suggestion for an easy way to copy the same set of data to several drives at once?

I’m working in an education setting where some teachers have a class set of flash/jump drives, and want to put the same data on all of them without dragging and dropping to each one separately.

I am thinking in terms of having a couple large hubs with all the drives attached, and imaging them all with one click. Any thoughts on how to script this, or suggestions for existing software that would do it?

Tips creating media server

2009-11-09T09:50:50Z

The talk of AppleTV in the forums made me think about using an old G4 I have to run as a media server. I’ve got a leftover MDD G4 1GHz with 2GB or RAM. I was thinking of jamming as many ATA drives in it as I can and setting them as a single volume RAID, then serving up iTunes and iPhoto stuff through my TiVo Desktop. Now that my new iMac has wireless I was thinking of relocating the Airport and DSL modem to the basement to reduce clutter and I could stick the G4 there, serving up content to TiVo through the Airport Express. Any tips on how to set it up as a server, or if this would be a good idea?

Thanks.

Gmail vs. MobileMe

2009-09-22T10:59:27Z

I have multiple personal email addresses and all used to go to a paid web host where I ran my own IMAP server. For the sake of reliability I moved it all over to Gmail a few months ago. However, MobileMe has its appeal and I am torn on which one to use.

Gmail Pros: Proven reliability from personal experience, fast, has lots of quick keyboard shortcuts.
Gmail Cons: Tags don’t necessarily translate well into folders. Do I want to trust Google, the giant information cataloging and searching business, with all my personal info?

MobileMe Pros: Push notifications to my iPhone. Web interface is integrated with my contacts and calendar. Has real folders instead of tags.
MobileMe Cons: I’ve never used it as my main mail provider before so it doesn’t have a track record of reliability for me (yet), and it’s not free… though that is kind of a moot point because I was already paying for it anyway.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and other pros/cons you may have for either service. Thanks!

iLife ‘10 Speculation

2009-11-05T12:08:11Z

I have iLife ‘08. It does everything I need. iLife ‘09 has some neat features, facial recognition in iPhoto is interesting, The big thing I use is iWeb and ‘09 didn’t change much to iWeb as far as I could tell. I just don’t use Garge Band and iDVD and because of that I couldn’t justify the $99 (Canadian price) to upgrade. Well I came into a few bucks extra and have been thinking of upgrading. My questions are

Any rumours/speculation/wild guesses about when iLife ‘10 might come out?
Any rumours/speculation/wild guesses about changes in iLife ‘10?

Who uses 1Password and what do you think about it?

2009-09-26T09:36:51Z

I downloaded the trial, but would like to hear what any long time users think about it.

Convenient, a pain to use, good place to store and retrieve vital information?

Just your thoughts.

Thanks,

George.

Router Suggestion

2009-09-18T16:43:06Z

My current setup is an old Belkin G router with the wireless turned off. I have Ethernet out going to an Airport Express which gives me wireless. I’m not sure why, but I think the old Belkin is taking a crap. I keep having to power it off all too often. I recently updated my dsl to 6.0 Mbps, so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it or not.
I have my xbox, imac, and Directv hooked up via ethernet to the Belkin. I use the airtunes feature on the Express. My wife has a MB and I use my work PC at home some.
So, I’m in the market for a new router. Should I just get a new wired router-it seems so antiquated. I’m leaning toward an Airport Extreme. I have read about gigabit and am still confused. Will I see some benefit from that? Should I just buy a $60 N wireless router and let my express be a client so I can use the airtunes feature? I also have another express in another part of the house-it would be nice to have this act as an extender instead of just a client.
Is anyone using a hard disk connected to the extreme for TM backups? Does the hdd stay mounted and rejoin on restarts?
Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

Apple TV: What does it need to pique your interest?

2009-11-02T12:23:33Z

I think the Apple TV has potential but needs a few more extras in order to really get my attention. Namely, I think it needs an app store.

A couple months ago I found myself needing a hub for a media center to use with a new 42” HDTV. There were two main options in my mind as a Mac fan: A Mac mini or an Apple TV. I briefly considered the Apple TV option, but it didn’t really have a chance because of the following drawbacks:
- No NetFlix on the Apple TV
- No Hulu on the Apple TV
- No Pandora on the Apple TV
- No easy installation of other services/players/codecs/etc.
- No web/email (which could be easily operated with an optional Bluetooth keyboard)

Sure, the Apple TV is cheaper, but in my mind it’s not worth sacrificing so much functionality to save a couple hundred dollars. With an App Store all of these things could easily be added and would greatly enhance the value of an Apple TV. But sadly they do not exist, so I purchased a Mac mini on Craigslist instead.

I’m not bashing the Apple TV by any means, but I think there are a lot of people out there like me. People who would gladly drop the money on an Apple TV, but don’t see the value in a relatively small savings over a Mac mini (or even a cheap PC) when they can’t stream from third-party media sources, or really do do anything other than watch videos and listen to music.

Right now the Apple TV is basically an iPod Classic for your TV. I think it needs to be an iPod touch for your TV, in terms of functionality.

Document Management System for Mac OS X

2009-01-18T02:01:29Z

I’m wondering whether anyone can make some suggestions as to what would be a good document management system for Mac OS X. These are my requirements:

- scanner support (i.e., capturing images from a flat-bed scanner; the ability to create multi-page images / PDFs would be a plus)
- file import
- ability to categorise / index documents (the main type of document this system would be used for is expense invoices; being able include a few details in the system about the imaged document would be useful)
- ability to quickly search for and view documents

So far I have had a quick look at a few systems found via Google searches, including:

- http://mindwrap.com/
- http://www.o3spaces.com/Page/sp130/ml2/from_sp_id=129/nctrue/system_id=129/so_id=251/Index.html
- http://www.receiptwallet.com/

After having a quick look at these systems, I thought there might be a few others that would be worthwhile having a look at.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated. In case you’re wondering, I’d be looking at using this system within a small family business (so a 1,000 user, $xxx,xxx.xx system isn’t required).

Anyone suffering instability in Snow Leopard?

2009-09-22T13:26:46Z

Well, I’ve was having quite a few unexplained crashes which 10.6.1 seems to have resolved… for the most part. However, I’ve just been aware of something that you might want to check.

There is an incompatibility issue with fonts. To resolve, go to Applications and run Fontbook. Any incompatibilities are highlighted by a little yellow triangle. The advice (MacCast) is not to use the “resolve duplicates” feature but to delete or turn off the fonts with the warnings. The automatic process apparently keeps the active font, not necessarily deleting the incompatible one.

Hope this helps - Gregor

A true quantum leap

2009-10-23T02:26:46Z

Many many years ago, the first non-punch-card storage medium I ever used was 24 kilobytes, and it was around .5m square. Yes, half a metre!

Now a terabyte can fit on a fingernail.

http://www.google.com/sidewiki/entry/hamish.macewan/id/1W_ERTgCjLVvWkIaeKKtPDOMGSc