Ask Jacob

I have always loved the Missing Manual series from O’Reilly press. Here is a link the the O’Reilly iWork ‘09 book. You might also try O’Reilly’s Switching to the Mac guide in the same series.

Both would be well worth adding to your library.

- Jacob

Most every AC to DC adapter I have seen from Canon has an input voltage range of 100-240 volts at 50/60 cycles. The CA-590 that comes with that camera should be no different. I would however suggest that
you use a 240 Volt to 110 volt converter if you travel often. That conversion cleans up the sometimes spotty power you find in other countries.

- Jacob

There are some graphic performance differences between higher and lower resolutions. Particularly when it comes to consuming VRAM. However, with modern video cards, they don’t exhibit too much
difference between the 20″ and 24″ iMac native resolution resolutions. This is particularly true when you have 512MB of VRAM. Each extra pixel on screen has to be stored in VRAM on your Apple computer. So with only 256MB of VRAM, the difference between 1680 by 1050 and 1680 by 1050 can be enough pixels to push data out of VRAM. When that happens your Frame Rate drops.

Although you can set the screens for a lower resolution, LCDs really should be run at there native resolution for best performance.

- Jacob

You will not only need a Blu-Ray burner to make HD video discs, but you will need some additional software. Here is a good article on the HD editing workflow. Toast 10 Titanium is great Blu-Ray burning software.

I only have one recommendation for an external Blu-Ray burner, the LaCie d2 Blu-ray drive. For internal use, I like the MCE Blu-ray kit.

- Jacob

It all depends on the application you are using. If the primary application you are running is multi-threaded then the 8 Core model is the best choice. It is also the right choice for any RAM hungry applications because you have twice the RAM controllers and slots. However, for older software that just needs clock cycles the 2.93 Ghz will help you more than extra cores and RAM in your Mac Pro.

- Jacob

You can upgrade your memory and hard drive yourself. Here is a link to Apple’s MacBook Pro RAM installation page.

The hard drive is just as easy, as you can see by Apple’s instructions on how to install a replacement hard drive.

If you use a none Apple drive in the computer, you will have to deal directly with the maker of the hard drive for drive warranty issues and most Apple service centers will want you to have a Apple hard drive installed for testing. For that reason it may be a good idea to keep the pulled Apple hard drive safely stored in a static bag, until you are out of the Apple warranty period.

- Jacob

Windows is a fickle beast and especially in virtualization. It could be that a change or update to Parallels has cased a driver conflict in your copy of Windows. Follow these instructions from kb.parallels.com to remove and then reinstall the Parallels Tools.

1. Start Windows in Safe Mode (Press F8 key during the boot-up process and choose Safe Mode from the list).

2. Uninstall Parallels Tools
   • From the Windows Start menu, choose Control Panel > Add or remove programs.
   • Select Parallels Tools and click Remove.

3. Restart the Windows guest OS.

4. While Windows is running, install Parallels Tools again:
   • From the Parallels Desktop menubar, choose Actions > Install Parallels Tools. The Parallels Tools installation wizard appears in the guest OS window.
   • Follow the wizard instructions to complete installation.

5. Restart the Windows guest OS again.

- Jacob

It is possible to throw away essential Apple System fonts that will cause your computer to exhibit strange behavior like what you are experiencing. Here are Apple articles on the system fonts for 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard fonts.

Here’s a non-Apple font reference source but still a good article on font management in OS X.

It is recommended that you always use the Font Book to manage fonts because it will prevent damaging font deletion from happening. If you had the system discs, an Archive and Install would fix your problem but as you are missing those disks you will have to reinstall the fonts manually. Look through the lists and identify which two fonts you need back. Copy them from another Mac computer or let me know what they are and I can email them to you.

After that, you will need to install them back to the font folder you deleted them from and restart. If you can not navigate the file system, you will then have to boot the computer into Single User mode and install the fonts from the command line. Although, getting the proper system discs or a OS X install DVD would not be a bad idea, for the next time you have a problem like this.

- Jacob

My daughter has one of these G4 iBook. The only computer display port that you can use is VGA, an analog connection. You will need a Mini-VGA to VGA adapter cable to connect a VGA display.

The good news is that many LCD displays support both DVI and VGA connections, or have only VGA ports. Take a look at the 17″ LCD displays with VGA. You will be limited to a 1024 X 768 image, no mater how big the display, the iBook is set to only Mirror what is on the laptop display. That limit on your iBook is 1024 X 768 pixels, so do not over spend on a display.

- Jacob

Here is a handy little list of user recorded Mac system temperatures assembled to help others determine what is normal temperature for their Mac.

From the list, it looks like your iMac is in the proper range. As for RAM upgrades, you can go up to 3 GBs if you have a white plastic iMac or 4 GB if you have an Aluminum iMac released before 2009. Depending on what iMac you have, you can buy one or two of these 2GB stick. You only have 2 RAM slots so you will have to remove one stick of 1GB RAM for each 2GB stick of RAM you add.

The newest iMac introduced in 2009 can take up to 8GB of RAM using a 4GB RAM stick, but I would guess you do not have this version of the iMac.

- Jacob

I think a basic iMac would be a good choice for you. That is the kind of Mac my wife and I share and it makes a good home computer. This 20″ iMac model is excellent, it was recently replaced with a slightly different version of the same computer, so it is on sale. Any of the newer iMacs will give you power and performance to last many years. You can look at all the 24″ iMac as well.

The nice feature of the iMac is that it has the display and computer combined together in a single unit. So you really only need to worry about connecting the Keyboard/mouse and Power to get it running. If you have a high-speed internet connection at home, the iMac will have no trouble connecting. If you use dial-up internet, then you need to buy USB modem, like this Apple external modem.

- Jacob

There are probably many ways to accomplish your digital Jukebox project. You certainly can use your MacBook to play all your iTunes directly to a stereo. All you would need is a 1/8th inch to RCA cable like this one. Connect the line out from your Mac computer to the stereo.

Then you would just need to move your iTunes Library to the external drive by following these instructions from Apple regarding Moving your iTunes Music folder.
This would require you to keep your Mac connected to both the stereo and the hard drive, in-order for you to play the music. If that sounds OK to you then it is a fairly easy setup. Otherwise you may want to look at some wireless streaming options.

A truly slick option would be to use the cable above attached to an Airport Express. The Airport Express could be connected to the Wireless network in your house. Your router at home, that hosts the wireless network, would then have a LaCie network drive attached to an ethernet port. The LaCie 1 TB Drive would have your Music stored on it and then shared by the iTunes-compliant server component of the LaCie drive. All your MacBook Pro would need to do is play the music from the drive over to the Express, all wirelessly.

- Jacob

Panasonic and Cannon do a great job in producing Mac computer compatible HD camcorders. Take a look at the Canon VIXIA HF11 Camcorder or the VIXIA HG20 60GB HDD Camcorder. Both could be good choices for you.

One thing to consider though, still image cameras are quickly adding HD video capture to their feature set. If you are also interested in picking up a good still camera, one of those hybrid cameras may be your best choice. The Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GH1 was recently announced and it has video people and photographers equally excited.

- Jacob

Well the first step in troubleshooting a ADC monitor is to remove and then reinstall the video card. Believe it or not just reseating a video card can help. I assume these are LCD based Apple 17″ Displays, if they are CRT displays, then there are a host of issues that follow the CRT models. First the CRT models will not run off DVI to ADC adapters, and second the CRT models draw so much power it can be under powered on on many ADC video cards.

If the problem is with the LCD ADC display, then it may be a USB problem inside the display. When using the DVI to ADC converter, try not connecting the USB plug to see if that has any effect. Also make sure the computer is directly connected to the wall outlet. That should eliminate under powering issues.

Let me know how that works out,
- Jacob

Other than making sure you are using a retail copy of the Mac OS released after the PowerBook was produced, 10.3 or higher, it would probably be a hardware issue. The problem is most likely with the cable or logic board. A replacement PowerBook hard drive cable will be cheap enough for you to test with it. I think this is the right cable for your computer but double check.

If that fails to work for you, then it probably is a logic board issue and you will need to weigh the cost of the repair against just upgrading your Mac.

Please let me know what the outcome is.
- Jacob

I would have to say that if you edit HD footage, that yes you want the 8-Core Mac Pro. Not only will the multithreading features of Final Cut Pro run faster on the Octal Mac Pro, but you will be able to install more RAM. As you probably know, the new Mac Pro likes its RAM installed in threes per processor. The forth RAM slot shares its channel with the third slot. So for peak performance in the Quad-Core Mac Pro you will be effectively limited to 6GB. In the 8-Core Mac Pro you can get 24 GB of highly efficient RAM. Although 12GB will probably do just nicely for most of your HD projects.

- Jacob

It has been some time since I bought a none Apple battery but when I did buy one last it was from BTI. They have long had a good reputation for making OEM replacements. This 15″ MacBook battery should work for you. But you can always go with the Apple 15″ MacBook original battery, which is not a bad idea. Both are going to perform about the same on your Mac computer.

As for identifying your laptop the proper name of it is MacBook Pro 15″ Core 2 Duo. The terms titanium, aluminum, G3, and G4 all refer to much older Mac laptops.

- Jacob

Although that machine is not of value for a work Mac computer, there may be collectors or other fans interested in buying it. You could post it on eBay or craigslist.org and see who is interested in it. I do not know of a good price though, so eBay without a reserve and a padded shipping charge would be a good idea.

- Jacob

A fix for this would be to delete the below files from ‘Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration’:com.apple.airport.preferences.plist, NetworkInterfaces.plist, preferences.plist.

After you move those files to the Trash, you will want to restart your computer. This problem can be caused by the installation of FireWall software or other network related software. Let me know how that works for you.

- Jacob