From: Tony Lindsey, xxltony@cts.com Subject: Mac*Chat#116/16-Aug-9 Mac*Chat#116/16-Aug-96 ====================== Welcome to Mac*Chat, the weekly electronic newsletter for everyone interested in using a Macintosh computer professionally, no matter what their situation or profession. See the end of this file for further information, including how to get a free subscription. Any [comments in brackets] are by Tony Lindsey. Highlights Of This Issue ------------------------ I talk about why I like to use QuicKeys, Patrick Henebry gets an online job, I ask about Jaz drives, AOL 2.7, and PCI Pentium cards, we learn of a new service for online Mac users, Kelli Cronin asks about inexpensive color scanners, we talk quite a bit about RAM configuration and prices, including a tip for folks with 6100's and 7100's, several readers review network-friendly calendar and e-mail programs, we learn about Apple's newest developments with CyberDog technology and a service for folks who want to have "floating" e-mail addresses. Topics: Highlights Of This Issue Editor's Notes New Series - Diary Of A Mac Consultant Help For Folks With Disabilities, Continued Jaz Drives - How Good Have They Turned Out? America Online 2.7 PCI Pentium Cards - Working Well? Interesting Web-Site Question About Scanners Older Printer Woes RAM Prices Technical Section Starts... Here Networkable Calendar Programs Network E-Mail Reviews Cyberdog Learns A New Trick / Virtual E-Mail Addresses Legalisms Free Subscriptions To This Newsletter Editor's Notes -------------- By Tony Lindsey Well, I'm making money again - My entrepreneurial business goes in cycles, and I'm glad to say I'm keeping busy with my Mac consulting. Oddly, though, I'm hearing a lot of questions about new Macs, but I only seem to be working on older ones - People appear to be hanging onto their money, at least here in my neck of the woods. ----- My husband Dennis and I just celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary, and six years of being together. As I've said before, it's a good start! Dennis and the rest of the crew at the San Diego Union-Tribune are busy putting the newspaper's contents out on the Web: New Series - Diary Of A Mac Consultant -------------------------------------- By Tony Lindsey I have been in the mood to try something new with the newsletter. I deal with solutions to people's Mac problems nearly every day, either in person or over the phone, and I haven't put very many of my problem-solving procedures into Mac*Chat over the years. Starting with this issue, I'll be writing more about day-to-day problems and how they went away. Please give me your feedback as time goes by - I suspect this will be a popular series, and I'd like to hone my style as time goes by. ------- I went to my client Roland's yesterday. I've been helping him since 1987 or so. He has a business that uses ten or so PowerMacs and various older Macs and printers. One of his business-partners has been craving a single-keystroke way to swap between the "Letterhead" printer (a Hewlett-Packard 4MV containing two different styles of letterhead) and the "Plain Paper" HP printer. They had bought QuicKeys from one of the mail-order shops a long time ago, but never installed it. QuicKeys 3.01 is $89.99 from Mac Mall <800-222-2808/310-787-4500/fax 310-225-4005> and it's created by CE Software 1801 Industrial Circle PO Box 65580 West Des Moines, IA 50265 <800-523-7638/515-221-1801/Fax 515-221-2258> I installed it for them, making sure to also install the "Choosy" extension for QuicKeys. It allowed me to assign a single keystroke (in this case, Control-L for Letterhead, and Control-P for Plain) for the proper printer on their network. While I was setting it up, I also made sure the "Report printer selection" option was turned on. That way, they get immediate feedback that they chose the right printer. I travel a lot with my PowerBook, and I have to use a lot of printers as I go from client to client (they get a bill from me the instant I'm done with my work). I use one keystroke with QuicKeys to remind my PowerBook of my home-printer's existence as soon as I'm back on my own network. I also took the time to demonstrate the power of QuicKeys to everybody in Roland's shop who wanted to learn. It's an astonishingly useful utility, and I have had it installed on my Macs since it first came out. You can automate just about any grinding, boring, repetitive chore, and do it simply. I use one keystroke (usually Control-function-key) to fire-up my daily essentials, such as my address-book, schedule, e-mail, phone-call log, and so on. Bim-bam-boom, and I'm there. I used it this very morning to customize my Claris Emailer program. It uses a really stupid keystroke (Command-Option-K) to check mail. I taught QuicKeys to force Emailer to check mail when I press Command-M, since that makes more sense to me. If you do a lot of repetitive, boring work, please look into a good macro program. I'm a very efficient user of computers, and I give a lot of the credit to QuicKeys. Help For Folks With Disabilities, Continued ------------------------------------------- [See issues 114 and 115 for earlier discussions of this topic - Among other points, Patrick had asked what he could do to track-down online employment, since he was unable to travel.] By: Patrick Henebry Well, the power of the Net strikes again. I have gotten a few responses from your posting. One of which was from Joseph Sobsey, Director of Recruitment, Seneca Corporation, Vienna, Virginia They have been in business for 5 years and even do Help Desk work for Apple. Seneca keeps on file a database of "freelance remote consultants", their available hours and areas of expertise. calls are routed accordingly. I have also E-mailed and talked with their head PC guy (believe it or not I know more about PCs than Macs). I have been offered a trial period (after being tested on my skills) and should receive the contract on Monday via FedEx. This will mean digging in and learning more as well as buying more reference books in order to have a wide enough range to generate full time billable hours; but I don't mind. I *like* learning. I'm also willing to work my tail off at their pay rate. I'll keep you posted. THANKS!!!! Jaz Drives - How Good Have They Turned Out? ------------------------------------------- By Tony Lindsey I'm beginning to notice that the 1-gigabyte removable-cartridge Iomega Jaz drives are taking hold as a good standard in the Mac community. I even know a few of my PC-clone buddies who are using them. How is their dependability, what's the best street price for the drive and media, and where do we get disks in bulk? America Online 2.7 ------------------ By Tony Lindsey I've been very happy, now that version 2.7 of the America Online software has proven to be stronger that the horrid 2.6. My "distresss call" ratio has gone down by quite a bit. The disk for 2.7 mentions some form of "damaged database repair utility" being included. Does anybody know how that works? PCI Pentium Cards - Working Well? --------------------------------- By Tony Lindsey People who are using the newer PCI-slot Macs (the 7600, 9500 and the like) now have the ability to install a Pentium-equipped card in one of their slots and run Windows 95. Even the CD-ROM drive works with it, from what I'm hearing. What's it like to live with one of these goodies? What's the best deal? I'm beyond sick of SoftWindows, and so are my clients. Interesting Web-Site -------------------- By Brent Crandall MacintoshOS.com: An Online Destination for Macintosh Users is pleased to announce "Classified Connection", a forum designed to assist users sell and acquire Macs and Mac related products. Opening Monday, August 12th, the Classified Connection is one of the many FREE services provided by the developers of MacintoshOS.com. Question About Scanners ----------------------- By Kelli Cronin I'm shopping around for a affordable (cheap...I'm still in college) color scanner, and I recently saw catalog ads (MacZone and MacMall) for scanners under $400. Does anybody know pros and cons of either the Microtek ScanMaker E3 ($400) or the Artec Viewstation AT3-M ($350)? I'm unfamiliar with Artec and their scanner sounds too good to be true (24-bit, single pass, SCSI-II, 4800x4800dpi, scanning area 8.5"x11", Adobe Plug in Driver, long-life cold cathode fluorescent lamp) Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Older Printer Woes ------------------ By: QuickDraw GX does not work with the LaserWriter II SC. I installed QuickDraw GX and selected the LaserWriter II SC GX driver. However, when I tried to print documents, it would open a connection to the printer, than fail to print. After failing to print, it would leave the SCSI bus in a "trashed" state, which would make SCSIProbe fail to show any devices at all. After using SCSIInfo to Reset the SCSI bus, the devices would again show up. I tried different programs to print with and I tried reselecting the LaserWriter II SC GX driver with no success. RAM Prices ---------- [This continues the discussion from the previous issue - I visited Chip Merchant's site for this morning's price for a PowerMac 32-meg SIMM, and it's heading for $200 even. Here's something I thought was even MORE interesting - I noticed that a Level-2 cache-card for a PowerMac 6100 or 7100 was only $63! This will greatly speed-up those two Mac models. What is the minimum and maximum amount of RAM you would suggest for a designer working out of her spare bedroom, running the newest Illustrator, Photoshop and QuarkXpress? Obviously, 2 gigs of RAM would be preferable, but I'm talking about somebody who has to pay for this stuff out of her own pocket. I have my opinions, but I want yours.] ----- By: David Martin Another valuable RAM price tracking site besides RAMTracker and RAMWatch is MacSource's RAMSource page. It doesn't always have the very lowest price for each company, but it does break the prices down by company in a nice table, a useful feature if you need to find 3-4 cheap vendors rapidly. As with any of the price trackers, you'll want to check with a couple vendors over the phone before you make a purchase. ------ By: Craig Lee I've found that Technology Works has good prices (I've bought there a couple of times) and they also have a cool online configurator on their web site ------ By: A Faithful Reader RAM Prices Since I just sent out for and received a number of quotes for RAM prices I thought you might be interested. Two things to keep in mind however: 1. I am in a University and I ask for education, government, etc. discounts. Sometimes I get them, sometimes they charge extra for processing a purchase order. 2. In this order I wanted about $10,000 worth of SIMM's and DIMM's. 16 Mb SIMM MacWarehouse (Educ Div) was the cheapest at $101, The Chip Merchant was the highest at $119. 16 Mb DIMM MacWarehouse (Educ Div) was the cheapest at $104, The Chip Merchant was the highest at $119. 32 Mb SIMM MacWarehouse (Educ Div) was the cheapest at $199, The Chip Merchant was the highest at $220. My understanding was the MacWarehouse would honor almost any type of education association, Purchase Order a department or credit card for personal (home) use by a student, staff or faculty. Be sure to ask. You can never tell what sort of "Special Discount" these companies might have. When I spoke to MacWarehouse I asked about the discrepancy between published and quoted prices. She told me to ignore the advertised prices as they went to press months ago. However if you offer to pay the advertised price I doubt that they will refuse. Technical Section Starts... Here -------------------------------- Networkable Calendar Programs ----------------------------- [In issue #100, I asked for reviews of networked calendar programs, and in issue #115, I re-posted some of the responses I received.] By Michael Kinsman, Pepperdine University We have a small (5 person) office. We use Remember? by Dave Warker for our calendaring program. It allows you to set up appointments for each person, to display the whole office calendar at each site, has a really great output, particularly when your printer can print 4-up (we get a month to an 8-1/2x11 piece of paper), and has not caused us a problem in the three years we've used it. Best of all, it's shareware. The URL for downloading is Network E-Mail Reviews ---------------------- [In issue #100, I asked: - What's the best, simplest way to handle e-mail within a local network, and ultimately to allow everybody in that building to connect to the Internet through e-mail or otherwise?] ------ By: Stephen Froehlich There are all of the normal choices, but my best suggestion is get 1 machine to run UNIX, and run a POP server. Sure, there's some set up on that one machine, but the setup on the PC's is super-easy, and going cross-platform is kein problem. I know that my UNIX adminstrator whished we did just that instead of MSMail and a gateway (from StarNine). Of course, this is an area wrought with opinion, and that must be tied to an inherently unmaclike environment, so anything will be tricky, but I like the fact that every OS in the world has a simple, easy to set up POP Client. (Personally, I just Telnet in and use Pine, though. It may not be elegant, but darnit, it works, and I can check my mail from anywhere on the internet) ------ By Tom Scheel We (Habitat) use SoftArc's First Class. I like it because it is a very easy to use email system (with Lotus Notes like discussion conferences on top of email), cheap (licenses are per concurrent user rather than the more expensive per copy of the client), and most importantly, easy to set up. A second server is necessary to connect to the Internet (and truthfully, the internet connection is not perfect - email/Newsgroups only and somewhat complicated). Softarc info: <905-415-7000> ----- By: Glenn I recommend and have installed Now-Up-To-Date in numerous clients sites as a group calendar program. Some clients even use it as a form of simple email by posting items to others calendars. It works well for groups of from 1 to 100's of users, is fairly easy to set-up, and is simple to administrate and maintain. It's ideal for an office environment where people are in and out of the office a lot ( or dial-in remotely ) and don't want to leave a lot of post-it notes and "x called" msg. sheets around to be lost or forgotten. For larger groups it should have a server machine ( doesn't need to be dedicated, it will co-exist well with other server programs ), but can also work well in the background on a users machine. -------- By: Glenn The simplest email program I have found ( other than using Now-Up-To-Date as mentioned above ) is Snap-Mail from Casady & Greene It's almost too easy to setup and use, allows for attachments, and requires almost no administration other than installation. It doesn't require a server, but will work with one if available ( some sites I have set up use a SE or SE/30 as a NUTD/SnapoMail/Retrospect server ), and now that they have added the ability to use gateways, it will work as an internet mail system also. Cyberdog Learns A New Trick / Virtual E-Mail Addresses ------------------------------------------------------ In issue #113, I mentioned that I wished I could test Apple's CyberDog technology on my non-PowerPC portable Mac] By Jon Kreisler Apple has been hard at work (or is that hardly at work?) fixing bugs and making improvements to Cyberdog. Now, v1.1 is out in beta (seems like most companies these days are releasing betas for general consumption, just look at Netscape.) According to Apple, Cyberdog 1.1 will work on a 68030 or better Mac, with the following requirements: - System 7.5 or better (7.5.3 rev. 2 is recommended), - Mac TCP or Open Transport with TCP/IP - 8MB of RAM, using virtual memory or 16 MB of RAM with virtual memory turned off - OpenDoc 1.1. The beta software for Cyberdog and the pre-release OpenDoc 1.1 can be downloaded from the Cyberdog web site: ----- P.S. What do you think of my new Email address? It's actually a mail-forwarding site, so you can change your REAL Email address without having to notify hundreds of people. A virtual address, so to speak. You can check it out at: They charge $18 per year for unlimited mail forwarding, with discounts for extended subscriptions. [That sounds less-expensive than registering your own domain name, unless I'm wrong about this.] Legalisms and Information ------------------------- Copyright 1989-1996 Tony Lindsey. The contents of Mac*Chat may not be republished, either in whole or in part, without the express permission of the editor. However, Mac- oriented BBS's may re-post entire copies of each issue. Small excerpts of Mac*Chat may be reproduced for personal use, or by nonprofit groups (such as Mac User Groups) if full credit is given, including this notice, and how to subscribe. Please contact the editor for any publication requests. This newsletter is intended purely as entertainment and free information. No profit has been made in return for publication of any of these opinions. Time passes, so accuracy may diminish. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies. ----- This file is formatted as setext, which can be read on any text reader. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback and suggestions. Unfortunately, due to the massive numbers of messages I get every day, I can't guarantee a personal reply. Send all such messages to: Tony Lindsey Tips from readers are gratefully accepted. Please write them in a user-friendly way, and if you are mentioning an Internet site, please include a paragraph explaining why others should visit it. Mac*Chat back-issues may be found within any Info-Mac ftp archive at /info-mac/per/chat - For example: and read with any Web browser at Current issues may be found on the comp.sys.mac.digests newsgroup. TO FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN GET A FREE SUBSCRIPTION: ------------------------------------------------ Send email to and put the word "Subscribe?" into the Subject field. The body text can be anything at all, since it's ignored. You'll automatically receive detailed instructions on how you can add YOURSELF to the Mac*Chat mailing List. It's all handled by computer. ============== ____ ====================================================== Tony Lindsey \ _/__ Free, weekly e-mailed Mac-oriented newsletter Mac*Chat Editor \X / ================= \/ =====================================================