Messages

1

2004 / Third party RAM

« on: February 07, 2004, 11:30:04 AM »

I have bought from OWC many, many times in the past. Mostly, but not 100% good results. Kingston has always had a good reputation,  but that has seems to have eroded somewhat, if you follow and give credence to the reports at MacInTouch. My most recent purchase was from Viking Components by way of Amazon, of all places. Viking is a major player in the OEM market, which is why I chose them. They don't sell directly to consumers. I was completely satisfied with my recent purchase.

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2003 / How many of you own your own Cable Modem?

« on: September 01, 2003, 07:55:23 PM »

Bbob offers good advice.

I am a Cox subcriber and they gave me (as part of a promotional deal) a Surfboard 3100 to access their service. It works very well, and I own it free and clear. Unless it's a very proprietary or expensive device, I would never consider renting.

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2003 / HTML programs

« on: August 28, 2003, 10:21:53 PM »

Very good and reliable advice has been given so far in this thread. An online resource which I rely on is Web Design Group's site. In addition to their comprehensive library of tools and resources for web authors, their BBS is excellent.

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2003 / PC users:need simple graphics program suggestion

« on: August 05, 2003, 05:54:13 PM »

It occurs to me that if your friend is producing these images himself, he probably has a digital camera. If so, the software which came with his camera can probably re-size the images. He may just need to be pointed to the software settings to use.

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2003 / PC users:need simple graphics program suggestion

« on: August 04, 2003, 05:15:26 AM »

Irfanview (free) has been recommended to me;  LView Pro has more capabilities and is not very expensive. There are said to be  pre-compiled Windows binaries available for The Gimp, a very full-featured Open Source image manipulation program.

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2003 / PrintShop for OS X

« on: July 16, 2003, 04:58:48 PM »

Any word it installing it puts 20,000 free fonts in your /Library/Fonts directory?  

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2003 / HTML editors.

« on: May 13, 2003, 08:48:47 PM »

PageSpinner is inexpensive and may meet your needs. Likewise, TextWrangler  (the current "light" version of BBEdit) has a lot to recommend it. Either would be a good choice.

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2003 / old performa 6200cd tips on how to bring it up to speed

« on: March 11, 2003, 06:24:00 PM »

I have one of those computers also. Excellent advice about that model can be found at the Low End Mac web site (http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/6200.shtml). From personal experience, I would suggest the following, not necessarily in order:

[*]Put two 32 MB RAM chips in it which will give you the maximum possible 64 MB;
[*]Remove the internal modem, if present, and connect something like a Global Village 56K external modem via a serial port;
[*]If desired, install a comm slot Ethernet network interface card;
[*]Replace the stock hard drive with any semi-modern IDE drive, which will be much faster;
[*]Install Mac OS 8.6;
[*]Install software which doesn't tax the system too much. For web browsing iCab would be a good choice, an older version of Eudora is good for mail, and for word processing something like Claris Works or Nisus Writer should work well.
Printers with serial connections are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. If you can acquire an older Apple LaserWriter or HP LaserJet that might be a good move. Or if you elect to add an Ethernet port, then you can print to any network printer.
It's going to take a little bit of hunting for you to find the hardware and software I mentioned. It is, after all, an eight-year-old machine.

9

2003 / Beware the \'find and replace\'...

« on: March 13, 2003, 05:28:00 PM »

Likewise, beware language translation done by a machine. Altavista's Babel  Fish  Translation Tool provides one example.

To see how bad such tools are, take a simple paragraph and give it a round trip through the software. English to German then back to English, for example. The results are invariably bad and often hysterically funny, too.

Reminds me of the game we played in elementary school, "post office," where a simple sentence was passed verbally from person to person until the final recipient would reveal how the message came out.
 
 [ 03-13-2003, 06:30 PM: Message edited by: themphill ]

10

2003 / Dual platform large networks - any thoughts from those with

« on: March 09, 2003, 11:47:00 PM »

Paddy:

There are more than two platforms to consider, I think. What about UNIX and its many variants, for example?

I think it would be unwise (irresponsible, in fact) for a school district to commit to using just one platform. Competition among vendors most always benefits the consumer. When comparing prices of Wintel vs. Apple solutions, be sure to look beyond the initial hardware costs and consider also the long term software licencing costs. Maintaining Microsoft licenses can be a considerable burden over time. There can be other hidden costs associated with choosing a Microsoft solution as well. Virus protection is a requisite when deploying Window computers.

As far as networking, in a properly designed network the choice of operating system should be largely irrelevant. Even more so in the future, as open standards such as XML continue to gain acceptance.

I work for a municipality and use a Mac to do much of my work. My choice of operating system is entirely personal, but I must say people's jaws drop when they see me remotely administering the Police Department's Windows-based servers through a secure VPN tunnel from the comfort of my office, using a Mac. And the Mac's underlying UNIX-based OS gives me great flexibility in accomplishing my other day-to-day tasks.

Your school district should base its choices on what represents the best monetary value, and not be swayed by sales presentations from any particular vendor. They would do well to examine what other districts are doing, not just locally but from farther afield. From that, they can work out what the "best practices" appear to be.

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2003 / Advice on QuarkXpress 4.1,please!

« on: March 09, 2003, 08:47:00 AM »

The 4.1 upgrade CD will only modify an existing XPress 4 installation. Version 4 and 3.32 can happily coexist on the same computer, and even be run simultaneously.

Like tacit, I prefer 3.32 and favor it when I have the choice. Version 4 can save files as version 3 but any special features, such as Quark picture clipping paths, will be lost. Be on the lookout for more subtle changes as well. For example, any custom traps set in version 4 will be lost and reset to default values.

Printers and output bureaus should accept files in either version, but you way want to inquire in advance their preference.

12

2003 / Networkable CD Jukebox Recommendations

« on: February 27, 2003, 06:08:00 AM »

Sorry you got burned by your previous "solution."

You may want to consider storing your stock art on a large shared volume so it's quickly available. A tape system (DLT or AIT if you can afford it) along with Dantz Retrospect is a good way to archive old projects. If your filing method is well organized it should be a snap for artists to retrieve exactly what they need.

At a busy prepress shop where I worked, we went to such a system and saved countless hours over the previous method of using optical disks and CDs.

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2003 / Networkable CD Jukebox Recommendations

« on: February 25, 2003, 10:10:00 PM »

I was asked similar advice a number of year back by the school district for which I was a volunteer advisor. My advice at the time was "don't waste your money." They took my advice, and seem to be happy with their decision today.

If you have a lot of data to serve, it makes more sense to serve it from a real network server with a lot of disk space. That way you aren't tied to a certain disk format and a proprietary serving system which could quickly become obsolete.

I recently retired an optical disk jukebox system which had met such a fate.

Network attached storage devices (like the Snap Server) seem to me to be a poor long-term investment for the same reasons.

14

2003 / Techsurvirors?

« on: February 25, 2003, 10:36:00 PM »

airbusdriver:

 The typo seems to be in the URL. Correct?

Other details in the photo draw my attention, though: Those sure look like firefighter's boots to me. Are you a firefighter? And is that a Porter-Cable drill depicted? Just curious.