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In most cases, all your music should be safely stored in one iTunes account and regardless of what happens to Apple iPods, all the music is on your computer. In that case you can just re-sync from iTunes to a new iPod and the music will all be on the new Apple iPod, assuming it all fits.

It is possible to setup your iPod to be manually managed and you can add music to your iPod from many sources. In that case you could have half your music in your work computer’s iTunes library and the other half in your home computer’s iTunes library. If that is the case you will need to ether merge the libraries together or reconnect your iPod to both libraries in a manually managed mode. Here’s Apple’s instructions on manual iPod & iPhone content management.

These Wi-Fi to ethernet adapters, like the Belkin unit you have, are great for connecting older Apple laptops and Apple computers to a wireless network. Because you have both PCs and Macs you have two options. You can program this Belkin Wireless Ethernet Bridge via your Dell with the setup wizard included on the CD that came with in the box. Connect the device to your Dell with an ethernet cable and use the setup wizard as if you were going to use it to get your Dell on the network with the adapter. Once you have the Dell online via the Wireless Ethernet Bridge, disconnect it from the Dell and plug the ethernet cable into the G3 Apple computers ethernet jack.

Then it is just a matter of setting the G3’s TCP/IP settings to use DHCP.

If you do not want to use the Dell for this or you have problems, you can use a web browser. First you have to set your G3 computer’s TCP/IP settings to Manual, and set the following settings.

IP address: 192.168.2.200
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.2.199

Save those settings and then open a browser and type this IP address into the browsers address bar: 192.168.2.225

That should get you to the router’s web interface to finish the setup based on the users manual. After you configure your adapter you will have to change the TCP/IP settings on your G3 back to DHCP.

Here’s a link to your Belkin G Gaming Adapter downloadable user manual.

On most apple computers you can switch between iPhoto Libraries by holding down the [Option] key when starting up the iPhoto application. Next click “Choose Library” and select the library on the external drive. Click Open and your external library will open on your Apple Mac.

The best way to charge your laptop battery is inside of your laptop, so what you really need is an outlet in your car. To get a house-style 115-120V AC plug into your 12V DC car, you’ll need a DC to AC inverter.

This 375 Watt Tripp Lite PowerVerter would be a great choice to charge your laptop and other devices.

As a used of G4 apple laptops“>Apple laptops you could also make due with this smaller Tripp Lite PowerVerter 150-Watt Ultra-Compact as well.

It sounds like you may have your Apple Mail window open too large. The green button on most Apple windows will toggle on and off the “fullscreen” mode for the window. Try clicking the green button on the top left hand part of the Mail window to see if you can reduce the window’s size. If, after clicking the green button, the window is still too large, you can manually resize the Mail window. Click and hold on the bottom right hand corner of the Apple Mail window and move the mouse pointer towards the Red button on the on the diagonal corner.

As you get closer the window will change size and the mail being viewed should also be resized to a readable length. Let go of the corner when it looks right to you.

Well practically any FireWire or USB drive would work for you with new or used Mac minis. You could go with a stackable drive and hub combo that looks like it is part of your Mini, like this NewerTech 160GB miniStack or you could get a slick styled one like this LaCie 500GB hard disk drive.

I would also recommend that you upgrade your Mac computer OS to Leopard, if you have not done so already. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Time Machine feature is a perfect background backup utility for you. Every hour, your iBook will be backed up and you could go back to a version days previous in order to recover deleted chapters.

This may be a situation where dumping your network preferences could help. They are located in the “Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration” folder. You can throw the whole SystemConfiguration folder into the trash and then restart your system. This should take you back to default settings and you will need to go into your Network Preferences and make changes and save them to get things back to normal.

One of my favorite features of the Mac computer FireWire port is that it supports “Target Disk” mode (all but the B&W G3). You can put a Mac into Target Disk mode by turning it on while holding down the [ T ] key. After you see a FireWire symbol floating around on the screen you can connect your two Macs together with a 6-pin to 6-pin fireWire cable. The hard drive of the Mac that is in Target Disk mode will appear on the desktop of the other Mac. All you need is the cable, here is a link to an inexpensive Firewire cable, if you do not already own one.

The drive you bought may be USB 2.0 only, and that could cause problems with a older USB 1.1 found on some used Macs. The drive will work fine for the G5 and newer Macs. Make sure you format it via Disk Utility to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

To rule out any hardware issues you should boot up your Mac computer in Target disk mode. You do that by starting the computer while holding down the [T] key. Make sure you get a blue screen with the FireWire symbol moving around on the screen. If you see the blue screen then it is most likely a OS / Driver issue and it may be worth the effort to reinstall the OS. You should also try a PMU reset to make sure that there are not any corrupt settings affecting the operation of the screen. Here are Apple’s PowerBook / iBook PMU reset instructions.

Also make sure that the resolution of your screen is set to the native resolution for the built-in LCD, 1024 x 768.

The 0.2 GHz difference between the 1.8 and 2.0 GHz Mac computer Intel processors is not overly significant for Audio tools. The more important consideration is with regards to whether it is a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo processor. The newer Core 2 processors support 64-bit processing and have better efficiencies.

If you are thinking about a used Apple G5 system, then either the 1.8 or 2.0 GHz processor would be good choices. The main thing to do is make sure that Pro Tools supports the hardware on the Operating System you are looking at.

The problem with side mounting a Mac Pro is that it is a little too tall to fit in a 19″ rack on it s side. The feet make it over 20″ tall. Most racks have more than enough room horizontally for the Mac Pro once you are past the mounting rails, so it is possible. In order to sideways-mount the system you will have to have side access to the rack. Then you just need a 19″ wide shelf.

It is not as convenient as having front removal/installation access to the Mac Pro but it will fit in just 6Us of rack space.

It sounds like you at one time had file sharing turned on and shared a mounted volume.

Your system keeps trying to re-share that Zip disk or thumb drive but it is not working properly. If you do not need to share any files on that computer over the network you can just stop sharing it. Choose Control Panels from the Apple menu, then File Sharing from the submenu. Next click the Start/Stop tab and click Stop.If you need to keep File sharing on, then look at un-sharing those items by:

- Selecting the Zip disk or memory disk in the Finder.

- Choose Get Info from the File menu.

- Sharing from the Show menu.

- Click to deselect the checkbox for “Share this item and its contents.”

That should take care of both problems you are having.

A red tint to a LCD panel can be an indication of imminent death - of the display that is. It can also be a failing cable, so it is a good idea to do a visual inspection. Make sure the mac computer display cable’s connector pins where the plug meets the computer. Make sure that no pins have been bent over or broken off. You will need good light for this. Then look at your monitor cable, noting any nicks or kinks.

After the visual inspection, reconnect the cable and power up your computer. If it is still rose-coloring your image, start moving your display cable to different positions, watching for a change in appearance.

If all that fails, it could be time to let the display rest in peace and replace it with a new Apple 23” Cinema Display.

I have not encountered this before, so I ran back to the service department to see if they had seen this before. A few Mac computer techs had seen the zebra stripes before and in each case it took the replacement of the screen to resolve the issue. It could be that your issue may not be as severe as what we have had here, but it would probably warrant a trip to an Apple Authorized Service Center to have it examined.

About fifty bucks. Just kidding.

There are a few key differences between the two models. The Second generation (gen) of iPod Touch is slightly less expensive, has speakers, external Volume buttons, and built-in Nike+ support (for nerds that run). It’s also slightly thinner than the previous model.

Other than that all other features can be made equal by updating the software on the iPod to the latest version.

You should bear in mind that video on the iPod touch a wonderful thing, so the more memory the better. A full movie can run up to 2gigs, and with anything less than 8gigs you run the risk of limiting yourself or juggling video and playlists more.

I am glad to help you move over to the Mac computer community. In general, GarageBand will run perfectly on any of the Intel Macs with at least 1GB of RAM. Although GarageBand is a good application, it is geared to simplicity and may leave you wanting more musical options. It is still powerful and you can start with GarageBand and upgrade your projects to Logic Express later.

Depending on what kind of equipment you plan on buying you could get by with a MacBook and not the MacBook Pro. Any of the plastic-cased MacBooks would work for what you are doing, but stay away from the Aluminum MacBooks as they lack FireWire and that is a good interface for studio equipment.

If your budget can afford it, the new Unibody MacBook Pro is an easy choice. In my opinion it is one of the best designs laptops Apple has ever made.

The basic specs of this unit are more than enough power for your audio work at any level, even studio work.

New Mac computers (and some used Macs) come with the application iPhoto pre-installed, and this would be the perfect way for you to import and organize your photos. The fastest way to bring your photos into iPhoto is to first open the iPhoto application. Then insert the photo CD and select the photos you want to move. Hold down the shift key to select large groups of photos. With the photos highlighted, drag them over to the iPhoto application running on the Dock. The iPhoto icon should darken when you are in the right spot. Let go of the mouse button and iPhoto will start importing the photos into the application.

You can also choose “Import to Library” from the “File” menu from within iPhoto. You will need to navigate to the CD and select the photos you want from within the import window.