Archive for the ‘computers’ Category.

Multiplying Hard Drives

When my 24 inch iMac was dying it’s long and painful death amongst the many issues I encountered was an annoying drive related problem. Since, the entire machine was becoming more unstable by the day I had more to worry about than the niceties of drive names. Sadly I’ve encountered the same issue several times recently and knew the time had come to undertake some research and hopefully formulate a fix for it.

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Ain’t Advertising (Ten) Grand?

I thought I beyond being surprised by the depths to which Microsoft will stoop to gain a user. Sadly this week has proved that I am not and I viewed the latest attempts from Redmond to woo users to the newly minted Internet Explorer 8.

The strategy this time is to offer the chance to win $10,000 to those prepared to use Internet Explorer 8 to pinpoint clues which reveal the location of the cash.

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Safari 4 – Almost a Disaster

So after a fantastic night chatting with MacBiters in the MacBites chat room during WWDC I eagerly downloaded the release version of Safari and installed it.

While I’m installing I ponder the slightly surprising decision to revert the top mounted tabs to their original location but I’m sure I’ll get used it again.

Trouble is after downloading it and installing it I didn’t get as far as seeing the tabs. Instead I was greeted with this:

Safari 4 error message

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Like a Headless Chicken

In the midst of the iMac fiasco I made the decision to buy a Mac Mini. I’d toyed with purchasing one before deciding to wait for the inevitable upgrades – trouble was Apple took far longer than I anticipated to upgrade the Mini.

Well the upgrades finally arrived and I bought a base model priced at £499.

I had a specific job in mind for the machine, as well as it being a spare system available in the case of a failure elsewhere. That job was for it to act as a host for several external hard drives and the two office printers. By hosting the external drives on the Mini I would be able to run backups and archive data to discs without impacting the performance of my main workstation.

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More AppleCare Woes

I’ve had enough

So where were we up to with the story of the repair from hell?

Oh yes Friday, 24 April 2009 no news, status “Repair in Progress”.

Worse than that I haven’t had any communication from the Store regarding my e-mail sent 4 days ago. This is despite a promised investigation, by the staff member identified only by a first name, I have heard nothing at all from anyone.

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AppleCare … Do They?

My iMac

As those of you who follow me on Twitter or those who have heard the Mac20Q Roundtable Podcast or the International Mac Podcast will know I am the *not so* proud owner of a sick iMac right now. Many of you have contacted me with advice and/or support for which I publicly thank you all now. I thought for posterity I should detail the whole sorry saga, here goes …

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Using a Netgear Router on BE

gt834pn_router_small.jpgAs listeners of MacBites will be aware I have been suffering greatly with streaming Flash video problems in the last few months.

The purpose of this post is provide details of the configuration settings I’ve used on a Netgear router to solve my problem, so if you’re affected read on and see if it might work for you.

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Well I’ll Be There, Will You?

Finally, the news I’ve been waiting for a long time – the Liverpool One Apple Store is opening it’s doors on Saturday 26 July 2008 at 9 am.

I’ll definitely be there covering the great event live for MacBites – hope to see you there.

photo

The Fox Gets More Fire

So after 8 million downloads in it’s first day and amidst claims of speed increases and enhanced stability am I about to make Firefox 3 my primary browser?

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Lose Your Dock … Recover Your Mind

At a recent Mac club meeting one of the talking points was the differences in how Windows and OS X handle application switching. So I thought I’d consolidate some of the ensuing discussion in a blog post.

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