LAUG 2.0 News

Ok, I may be dating myself, but does anyone remember that Saturday Night Live skit where they talk about something being a floor wax and a dessert topping? I think it was Dan Akroyd and someone else. Don’t confuse this with the Bassomatic…that was something entirely different (Mmm, that’s great Bass!).

Why is this relevant? CheckIt is just about everything you want rolled up in one package (technically 2 since it’s on 2 cds). If I were on a desert island and I was only allowed one utility program, it would be CheckIt.

First, Checkit includes Tech Tool Platinum. Tech Tool is the best all around utility for the Mac. If something isn’t working right on your Mac, odds are Tech Tool will find it. It incorporates all the functions of the old Norton such as disk defrag/speed disk and repair, data recovery, along with checking each and every aspect of your hardware—ram, motherboard, hard drive, and so forth This is the program every Mac user should own and keep in their laptop bag for emergencies on the road.

But wait, that’s only the tip of the iceberg! Buy Tech Tool as part of CheckIt and pay about $90.Buy Tech Tool from Micromat and it’s the same price. However Checkit includes a suite of other programs.

Included in the CheckIt Suite is the Spring Cleaning Suite. Sweet. There are about 25 different programs that let you clean up every aspect of your hard drive. For example, you can search for duplicate files, eliminate broken aliases, find the largest files. If you want to clean up your hard drive of unneeded junk and save yourself from having to upgrade, Spring Cleaning is the program to run. Personally, I used the quick compare to compare a backup of my iTunes folder and make sure my external and internal music libraries were synced up. I also freed up about 10% of my laptop’s hard drive by letting it eliminate a variety of unneeded and duplicate files. Since laptop hard drives are expensive, getting rid of waste is a big savings. If you were to buy just Spring Cleaning it would be $50.

And if that weren’t enough, they through in Retrospect which is considered an industry standard for backing up your Mac. Though many people can use the backup software included with a .Mac account, Retrospect makes backups as well as restores easier. In addition, you can restore your files to a computer that doesn’t have .Mac or Internet access. This product by itself costs $90.

Checkit Suite is probably the best bargain ever for Macintosh software. It helps you backup your computer, clean up the hard drive, as well as protect and diagnose practically any problem. Operators are standing by and quantities won’t last, so call today. Oh, I think I’m getting that confused with the Bassomatic again!

Pros: Perfect suite that includes every aspect of managing and protecting your computer.
Cons: Can’t think of a one.

5 out of 5 dog cows

Is your music yearning to be set free? Sure, there’s your iPod, but sometimes it would be nice to sit on the couch and listen to your music on your home audio system with the same ease from the “old days” of doing nothing more then putting in a CD and hitting “play.”You may have tried Apple’s Airport Express, but tired of it the first time you realized that you had to get up and walk to another room in order to start the music. Slim Devices’ amazing third-generation Squeezebox solves this dilemma and in the process turns out to be a fun, simple, and revolutionary way to bridge a home stereo system with your Mac’s music library. The Squeezebox lets you control and listen to your music wirelessly from any place in your home via a nice-looking little piece of hardware that hooks up to your stereo.

The Squeezebox itself is small and elegant, about the size of paperback book. It comes with a small stand so it can rest on top of your stereo system or anywhere you have a few inches of shelf space. The design of the Squeezebox is Applesque in its minimalism, without any buttons and a beautiful blue screen which displays information on the current song and can be used (with the included remote) for navigating through your music library or viewing news headlines. As a nice touch, the display will even broadcast holiday and seasonal greetings, which was amusing except it was still wishing me a happy new year in mid-February!

The actual setup and use of the Squeezebox is easy. You use the included RCA cables to hook it to your stereo, and then follow the guided setup with the remote. You will need to enter data such as your wireless network’s name and password (if any), but these steps are very easy thanks to the setup assistant. You also need to have a computer that actually holds the music library (the Squeezebox itself doesn’t store your music; the music streams from your Mac). Setting up the Squeezebox software on the Mac is a piece of cake, and it will automatically scan your iTunes music library and import all your playlists. Once this initial setup is done, you are ready to listen to music. You can navigate, play and control everything from the Squeezebox itself using the remote control, or if you wish you can manage the tunage from your Mac (or any other Mac in the house) using a simple Web interface. The web interface gives you a lot of power; you can create and manage playlists, set preferences, and if you pride yourself on your geekiness, delve into a plethora of highly technical and fully customizable settings.

If you have an Airport Express, you may wonder why the Squeezebox commands double the price to do roughly the same thing. There are many advantages to the Squeezebox over the Airport Express, especially for audiophiles. The Squeezebox has both a remote control and a display, so it can be controlled from your living room without making you walk over to the computer in order to do something as basic as switch tracks or pause the music. Another advantage of the Squeezebox is that it plays a much wider variety of music types then the Airport Express, including FLAC, Window Media, and OGG. It can even automatically connect to numerous internet radio streams directly from the Squeezebox! The device itself also features an optical output for connection to higher-end audio equipment and can have its built-in software upgraded automatically to support more features in the future. I would also like to add that Slim Devices’ support is phenomenal. They have a very thorough web site, with excellent and responsive technical support, and an active user community, a nice change from Apple’s sometimes truculent support.

With so many superlatives,it is difficult to find any negative aspects to the Squeezebox, but unfortunately, a few things stood out. Navigating through a large music library using the remote and Squeezebox itself (as opposed to doing it on the computer) can be slow and and the web interface, while powerful, doesn’t have the polish of a native OS X application like iTunes. Worse, whenever I added new music to my library, the Perl process used by the Squeezebox software churned away using some 80% of my processor for several minutes at a time. I also noticed rare music dropouts while listening to the Squeezebox, although to be fair I was using an 802.11b wireless network rather then the faster 802.11g. Finally,the Squeezebox will not play copy-protected music downloaded from the Apple music store; keep in mind that this limitation is Apple’s fault (for not licensing their copy protection), not Slim Devices’.

Those small areas of criticism are minor compared to the amazingly powerful pluses of the Squeezebox. This device is truly revolutionary,and it will give you the ability to enjoy your Mac-managed music library on your stereo system anywhere you wish. If you want to listen to your digital music library on a home audio system, “Squeezebox” is the only thing you need to know.

Pros: Amazing feature set, plays a wide variety of music formats, beautiful and elegant, excellent support.
Cons: Navigation and performance quirks, won’t play copy-protected tracks.

http://www.slimdevices.com/
$249 - $299

4 out of 5 dog cows

This month’s meeting started out with a few pieces of business. Dave was able to network with many vendors, on behalf of the user group, at Macworld. Because of this, we have been receiving lots of free giveaway items. Our goal is to have a free prize for everyone who attends our meetings. At every meeting,we have a free giveaway table where you can find back copies of Mac related magazines, demo software, etc… You will also find a “tip jar” where you can make financial donations to the group. These donations help to defray the cost of office supplies and Web site hosting. We hope to never charge admission to our meetings. We want to thank Jeff Huffman of Jeff’s Audio/Video, jeffsaudiovideo.com, for the use of a projector for tonight’s meeting.

The next regular order of business was introductions. Those present were asked to tell the group what they do to keep their Mac in shape and if they had ever experienced a system crash. As expected, there were virtually no reports of major system failures from the group.

The next topic covered in the meeting was Apple news. The annual Macworld was held in San Francisco in January and many new products were announced and demonstrated. Apple is in the process of switching to the use of Intel-based processors from the G-series.

The new Intel-based iMacs are now shipping. The new MacBook Pro laptop was announced and Apple is currently taking orders for an imminent ship date. The use of the Intel processor will not affect the performance and reliability of the products. The new Macs operate in exactly the same way as the previous G5 units. Features of the new MacBook Pro include a built-in iSight camera and the new MagSafe power connector. In order to make the transition to the new processor architecture, Apple has created a technology called Rosetta that allows any OSX software to run on the new machines. The new machines will no longer support classic (OS9) software. All new software versions for the Mac will be written in a new code called Universal Binary. Universal Binary programs are designed for the Intel Macs but will also run on any of the previous, G-series, Macs.

On the software side,Apple is now shipping new versions of iLife and iWork. iLife 06 comes standard on all new Macs but can be purchased from Apple. iLife has consisted of five applications, iTunes, Garage Band, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. A new application has been added to iLife called iWeb. The new iPhoto can handle a greater number of photos and responds much faster and features more photo editing options and effects. iWeb is a new Web page editing application. iWeb includes built-in templates and is targeted toward amateur web pages for personal photo albums, etc… The program is designed to easily publish to your .mac account. iMovie is a video editing program for your digital videos. One new feature in iMovie 06 is live video previews with special effects. The new GarageBand includes new features for creating podcasts. New features in iDVD include new themes and support for wide screen format. A new iWork 06 was released at MacWorld but few new features were added.

The main program of the meeting concerned Mac repair and maintenance utilities. Norton Utilities is no longer being produced for the new Macs.OSX 10.3 (Panther) introduced Journaling technology. This makes it easier to recover from problems. Consequently, the utility market has been greatly diminished since Panther was released. Defragging your OSX volume is no longer necessary for the average user. The system now incorporates those processes in its regular maintenance routines. The most effective maintenance strategy is to leave your Mac on at all times. The system will run periodic maintenance routines on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Putting your Mac totally asleep will not allow these processes to run. Set your Energy Saver preferences to adjust your sleep preferences. A good surge protector is a worthwhile investment. Several shareware and free programs exist that force your Mac to run these maintenance processes and can be found at versiontracker.com. Another excellent tool that comes standard with OSX is the Disk Utility application found in your Applications>Utilities folder. This program allows you to repair your file permissions using the Repair Disk Permissions function. Fixing the file permissions solve 80% of all software problems. Disk Utility also has a Repair Disk function. In order to use this function on your boot drive, you must boot your Mac from the CD that came with your Mac. Another reason Mac users don’t need to run a lot of utilities is because of the current absence of viruses, spyware and other malware that effect the Mac. Software utilities can do nothing for hardware failures. If you hear clicking or whining emanating from your hard drive, make sure you have a recent backup copy of your important files because the hard drive will fail soon. Recovering lost data that has been overwritten is almost impossible or, at least, very expensive. There are three major commercial utilities that you can purchase. TechTool has replaced most of the functions of Norton. TechTool is recommended as the first major utility to try if none of the Apple installed utilities work for your problem. Disk Warrior creates the structure of your hard drive. This is a good second line tool if TechTool doesn’t find the problem. Drive Genius is a much more professional/technical program and not useful for the average user. Backups are critical. All hard drives fail eventually and a good backup will save you hours of trouble. There is software that can recover some lost data. The first thing is to not use the computer after a critical file is deleted. Any use may overwrite that data. Critical files that have been totally lost can usually be recovered by a company such as Drive Savers. A typical file recovery by Drive
Savers costs $2500.

Apple frequently issues software updates through the Software Update preference panel. It is recommended that you set Software Update to the manual setting within the Software Update preference panel. Run a disk utility or the Repair Disk Permissions function in Disk Utility before running a major software update.

Remember, in most cases, you may never have to do any maintenance on your mac and it will work for years. That’s why you bought a Mac!

A podcast from the February meeting of the Lawrence Apple Users Group. This month’s topic is using Mac Utilities and Maintenance. Check us out on the web at http://www.laugks.org. Subscribe to the podcast RSS Feed.

 

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