Category Archives: Free Advice

For what it’s worth …

Five Great Mac Bargains Under $30.00

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Got 30 bucks* or so just burning a hole in your pocket (or PayPal account) and want to do something nice for your Mac? Here are some of great values.

HP Deskjet D1660 PrinterHP Deskjet D1660 Color Printer ($29.95 – MacConnection) - Great down and dirty printer. Up to legal size, does envelopes, labels, fair job on photos, not a bazillion ink cartridges to buy (just two .. the HP 60 B&W and Tri-Color modules). Not for high-end proofs or “keepsake” photos. Just a good everyday printer. Oh yea, Windows boxes can use it too. Update – 4/3/2011: Product has been discontinued. Check out the HP Deskjet 1000 Printer. Same price. Similar specs.

SpamSieve ($29.95 – direct) – Apple Mail or Entourage Junk Mail filter not doing it for you? This is your solution to auto-detecting and handling of eMail nasties. Uses Bayesian spam filtering for great accuracy. Learns and adapts. Very few false positives. Especially helpful if you have a lot of different eMail accounts. Free Trial Available.

MacPilotMacPilot ($19.95 – direct) – If you didn’t know, many applications/processes have a number of hidden features you can tap into. Examples: change the login background image, lock your Dock, tons others. You can either learn the ins and outs of Terminal and then Google/Bing for the hidden goodies, or you can get MacPilot. MacPilot also has some powerful system customization tools such as broadband connectivity optimization, handling log files, remove unneeded foreign localizations (you don’t really need Mayan Languages, do you), and more. Although on these higher tech mods, you should really know what you are doing. But if you do, MacPilot makes it easy. Free Trial Available.

ASM (Application Switcher Menu)ASM ($9.50 – direct) – Long-time Mac users may remember Switcher, which among other things placed a system-wide menu to the right side of the menubar which listed all of your open applications, so you can quickly hide, quit, switch between them. Extremely convenient. Somewhere along the line, the Mac OS gained and lost again that capability. With ASM (Application Switcher Menu) you can get it back. Free Trial Available.

MacAlly iKeySlim USB 2.0 KeyboardMacAlly iKeySlim USB 2.0 Keyboard ($27.95 – from MacConnection) – Mistakenly get that “stubby keyboard” when you got your new Mac and don’t want to spend $50.00 for the Apple full-sized one? Or maybe your old keyboard has just gotten too darn grungy. Here’s a great replacement at a great price. It’s a Mac-specific keyboard (all the right Command keys, no funky Windows stuff) with two USB 2.0 ports, Volume and CD Eject Buttons. Great feel (I like a good old-fashioned “click”). IMHO, best bargain of the lot.

Happy shopping.

* Before any applicable taxes and shipping. Prices subject to change without notice.

.com/.net prices go up July 1

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If you own a domain name (or a hundred), and your registrar hasn’t bugged you to death about it already, VeriSign, the official overseer for .com and .net domains, is increasing prices on July 1 – 7% for .com and 10% for .net. Hence, your registrar will be passing the increase onto you.

So if you have a few extra bucks lying around, you can beat the increase by renewing your domains before the price goes up next Thursday.

Apple boosts MacBook Air

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MacBook Air - thinnest laptop everApple today announced its new MacBook Air line to begin shipping in November. The wireless notbooks now include new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and a faster architecture to provide robust support for 3D games and enhanced performance.

Starting at $1799.00, the new 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Air now comes with a 120 Gb 4200 rpm hard drive, a 50 percent increase from the previous generation, or a new 128GB solid state drive.

For $2499.00, you get a 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and the 128 Gb solid state drive.

The solid state drive is a Flash memory storage device with no moving parts, providing faster, more reliable access.

Apple’s MacBook Air is world’s thinnest notebook computer. Measuring just 0.16 inches at its thinnest point with a maximum height of 0.76-inches (smaller than the thinnest point on competing notebooks), the MacBook Air has a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, a full-size backlit keyboard, built-in iSight video camera, and a full-size trackpad with multi-touch gesture support (pinch, rotate and swipe).

There is no integrated optical drive inside the MacBook Air, however a companion MacBook Air SuperDrive is available for $99. The MacBook Air SuperDrive is a compact external slot-loading 8x SuperDrive drive designed for specifically for the MacBook Air. It is powered directly by MacBook Air’s USB 2.0 port, eliminating the need to carry a separate power supply.

MacBook Air delivers up to five hours of battery life for wireless productivity and includes AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi networking, and Bluetooth 2.1.

Note: this is designed as a completely wireless device, hence no built-in Ethernet port. A USB Ethernet adapter is available for $29.00.

RAM prices continue to slide

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MacWorld is reporting that contract prices for the most commonly used DRAM (dynamic RAM) computer memory chips have dropped nearly 18 percent in the past two weeks. Memory prices have been hovering at all-time lows for the past year.

The article cites DRAMeXchange in explaining the decline is due DRAM makers building too many factories to compete against each other and on hopes people would take to Microsoft Windows Vista, which requires much more DRAM than Windows XP – which they haven’t.

Prices are anticipated to stay at low levels throughout the rest of the year.

You can get current prices for your particular Mac here …

So now’s a great time to buy.

Firefox 3.0 Released

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Firefox 3 contains many features to help you determine whether a particular website is secure.Mozilla has released its Firefox 3.0 web browser for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux operating systems. The much awaited upgrade is based on the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine which includes over 15,000 unique changes.

The result is a browser that renders pages up to three times faster than Firefox 2, is much more secure, is more “in tune” design-wise with its respective OS, and offers a more personal and intuitive experience.

Among the numerous changes and new features, some of the highlights are:

  • Much faster pageloads.
  • More efficient memory usage.
  • Improved “Smart” Location/Address Bar – nicknamed “The Awesome Bar” by many – just start typing (not even a formal URL) – Firefox is tied in directly to your bookmarks and history – you’ll get what you are looking for a lot faster.
  • Star button (in the Location Bar) quickly adds bookmarks with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them – a “solid” star indicates the URL is already in your bookmarks (You can even add bookmark Tags for better searching).
  • One-click site info: Click a website’s favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping (see image). Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you’ve connected to
  • Malware Protection warns you of websites which are known to harbor viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware.
  • Web Forgery Protection (Anti-Phishing feature) will not display the content of pages suspected as web forgeries.
  • Easier password management information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
  • Smart Bookmark Folders gives you fast access your most visited bookmarks from the toolbar, or recently bookmarked and tagged pages from the bookmark menu. Create your own Smart Bookmark Folders by saving a search query in the new Firefox Library.
  • Improved Download Manager – including resumable downloads.

For a complete list of all the improvements, click here for the Release Notes.

NOTE: Firefox 3 is a whole new browser. If you are currently using Firefox 2 and have installed any Firefox Extenstions (Add-ons or Themes), you may need to check to see if an update is needed or available.

Free Advice – After months of testing the Firefox 3 Betas and Release Candidates, Firefox 3 has become my primary Macintosh browser – although I still use Safari for certain tasks (mostly out of habit). Using a second (or sometimes even third) browser is actually a good thing to do – and comes in very handy when … for whatever reason … a particular website isn’t behaving properly or displaying awkwardly.