Aoraki Macintosh User Group Home Page

Snippets from Previous Meetings

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Several computing queries and suggested solutions included:

DIAL-UP OVERLOAD

Sometimes I get sent very large e-mail messages, which take ages to download on my dial-up connection. How can I prevent my e-mail application from downloading them?

Several solutions were suggested:

• Use Webmail (if your Mail Server has provides it) to check the sizes of incoming mail before you download it.
• If youŐre using Mail as your e-mail application, go to Mail/Preferences/Accounts/Advanced and make an entry in the size-prompt line:
  
  This will prevent messages over the specified size from being downloaded automatically.
• Use Gmail to see the size of incoming files — see: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html

Solution: erase the drive, using Disk Utility — as reformatting the drive gets rid of invisible files. [Note: it's advisable to reformat as MacOS Extended (Journaled), as this is more secure.]

INTERNET DISCONNECTING

Sometimes when I leave my computer to download I come back to find that itŐs disconnected. How can I make sure that it keeps connected ?

• If you're on a dial-up connection it's likely that your modem preferences are set to disconnect if the computer is idle (ie. you don't touch the mouse or keyboard) for a certain time. Remedy this by going to System Preferences/Network/Internal Modem/PPP Options, and either remove the checkmark next to ‘Disconnect if idle for ... minutes’, or increase the number of minutes.

LOST BOOKMARKS

I inadvertently deleted the bookmarks in my Firefox web browser — can I retrieve them?

• Probably not — if you can't immediately undo the delete action with Command-Z, they're likely to be irretrievable, unfortunately. In some applications, deleting information (usually files or folders) puts it in the computer's Trash, and other apps, such as iPhoto and iMovie have their own separate Trash, from which the files are retrievable.

LOST SETTINGS

I recently backed up my computer and clean-installed Leopard, but my Address Book has lost its contents, and myiChat has lost its settings. Where are they?

Still on your computer, in the Home folder of your back-up. Make sure neither application is open, then look for the files and copy them into the corresponding places in your new Home file.:

• Address Book contents: look in Home folder/Library/Application Support/Address Book, and copy this file. When copied, check (in its Get Info window) that this file has Write access.
• iChat (or any other application) settings: look in Home folder/Library/Preferences and copy all files which start with com.apple ... iChat.

Thank you to those who contributed comments and solutions in this session.

SESSIONS

MacBASICS — FILE HANDLING

Tony gave an outline of basic procedures for naming and storing files, as well as methods of viewing information about them. This included use of the Info Window (File Menu/Get Info, or Command I) to display information about a selected file (including its kind, location, size and preferred application for opening it):

Detailed information on files and handling for users who are new to Macs (or computing) is available on the Apple Support website:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304729 This is part of the online Grand Tour:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/tour/

iMAC G5 MODELS

Sheryl and Tony showed us their iMac G5 computers, which enabled the 20” and 24” screens to be compared. For those who were formerly used to screen resolutions of 640x480 pixels, the amount of information which can be displayed on monitors of up to 1920x1200 pixels (almost 7.5 times larger) is surprising! Larger screens also facilitate simultaneous working with multiple documents and windows.

The current G5 iMacs are somewhat heavier than their immediate predecessors — which had plastic screens and casings — as the screens are glass-covered and the casings are anodised aluminium, both of which are recyclable, says Apple!

What comes with the iMacs? Leopard (MacOS 10.5) of course, as well as iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08. Being machines with Intel processors (as are all new Macs) they will also run Windows if required, although this is not pre-loaded.

Also demonstrated were the new design of almost flat laptop-style keyboard with which these iMacs are equipped, which are very easy to type on, requiring a somewhat different touch style from the earlier keyboards on which the keys had greater movement. The Apple Mighty Mouse is also supplied, and this can be programmed too. Have a look at http://www.apple.com/imac/ for further information.

Thank you Sheryl and Tony for presenting the details about these items.

NON-STANDARD IMAGE PRINTING

A query was raised concerning last month's session about printing of non-standard-sized images — the notes on the session are reprinted here with a slight amendment for increased clarification:

A question concerning the printing of non-standard ratio images (eg. panoramas or tall pictures) led to an impromptu session which examined satisfactory ways to print these. Using the iPhoto ‘08 print settings does not appear to cater for such images, having no orientation settings.

Kim suggested that to overcome this difficulty, open the image using the Preview application, and then print it— the Preview print settings include both Orientation and Scaling options, which allow a maximum image size to be obtained, despite the non-standard dimensions:

TIME MACHINE

As an iMac with an external Hard Drive connected was available at the meeting, Tony was able to demonstrate Time Machine, Apple's automatic backup application that's part of Mac OS X Leopard. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows and documents, so that, if you need to, you can easily go back in time to recover anything. The Apple website http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/features/timemachine.html has full details of Time Machine's capabilities — some excerpts:

• Back up everything.
  Time Machine backs up your system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day — so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.
• Go back in time.
  Enter the Time Machine browser in search of your long-lost files and you see exactly how your computer looked on the dates you're browsing. Select a specific date, let Time Machine find your most recent changes or do a Spotlight search to find exactly what you're looking for. Use Quick Look to verify the file's contents if you wish. Then click Restore and Time Machine brings it back to the present. Time Machine restores individual files, complete folders, iPhoto libraries and Address Book contacts. You can even use Time Machine to restore your entire computer if need be.
• How Time Machine works.
  Time Machine automatically tracks file changes and is aware of file system permissions and user access privileges. It's working with more information than other backup utilities and doesn't need to bother you for input.
• Pick a disk. Any disk.
  You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server or Xsan storage devices.
• Anatomy of a backup.
  For the initial backup, Time Machine copies the entire contents of the computer to your backup drive. It copies every file exactly. Following the initial backup, Time Machine makes only incremental backups — copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup. When you travel back in time you see the entire contents of your Mac on a given day.
• Timing is everything.
  Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups for everything older than a month.
• Working on your schedule.
  Say Time Machine is in the middle of a backup and you want to shut down your Mac or put it to sleep. Who wins? Like you have to ask. Time Machine simply stops the backup process and remembers where it is. It automatically resumes when your Mac is active again.
• Back up only what you need.
  By default, Time Machine backs up everything on your Mac. But if you want to exclude certain files, thatŐs easy enough. Just go to Time Machine preferences and check ‘Skip system files’ or specify folders you wish to skip.
• Backing up to a full disk.
  One day, no matter how large your backup drive is, it will run out of space. And Time Machine has an action plan. It alerts you that it will start deleting previous backups, oldest first. Before it deletes any backup, Time Machine copies files that might be needed to fully restore your disk for every remaining backup.

POWERPOINT

Tony gave a very brief introduction to the basics of producing a presentation using the PowerPoint application. PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications, and is mainly used to display graphic information to group audiences.

A presentation is generally created as a series of slides, each of which may contain text, images, sounds, movies, or a combination of these media types. The resulting slideshows can be set to play automatically with timed slides, or can be controlled manually by mouse-clicks or using the arrow keys to advance the slides. Being a Microsoft Office application, it has a wide range of available formatting tools, such as shadows on text and basic image editing facilities.

Several problems which may be encountered when sharing PowerPoint presentations with others are:

• Fonts in a presentation are dependent on those installed on the computer on which the show is made, and of course text will not appear correctly on another computer without the required fonts. PowerPoint gives a warning if you load a show without the required fonts.
• To view a PowerPoint show, the recipient needs to have a version of the PowerPoint application which is compatible with the presentation — included in later versions of the application is facility for checking compatibility with earlier versions.

Other points to note:

• If you don't have Microsoft Office, you can download the free PowerPoint Viewer for Mac: visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q190986/ This may not play some presentations created with newer versions.
• Many of the features of PowerPoint are available in Apple's Keynote application.