"It ain't looking good . . . I got the thing to pretend like it's an external firewire drive but the desktop PC I hooked it to wants to format it . . . "
PC to Mac: "Aw, HELL no, you gimpy no-bootin' M---F-----! Jus' cuz' you can't get YO sh-- started, you think you gonna' just dump all dat sh-- ova' on ME?! F--- that, M---F-----! I'll wipe yo ass out, you come knockin' on my doe'!"
Sorry, don't know what cam over me. ~SM
(Message edited by Swordsman on November 10, 2008)
Hey, you'd be amazed how stable Windows can be......
.....if you use an alternative web browser! Mozilla has spared me a LOT of random bugs the rest of my family keeps contracting, antivirus software or not.
'Course, I still run XP.... no Vista growing pains for me!
I like them both. The Mac can't be beat for photo stuff. Even if you just talking no more than the display, it's tough to beat. The 24" display is spectacular for simply reviewing photos.
I have 5 screens on my desk, the PC, the Mac and a pair of docked T-61's. Each has their place.
What's taken me a bit to catch on to is the backup protocol. The good news is that the .mac protocol pretty much has saved everything I've done.
If I completely lost the 500GB on the Mac it's not the end of the world. Most of it, except the RAW files of the photos, is copied someplace else.
The PC is pretty much a necessity in business. I'm sure you can run the Parallels and so forth but it's tough to beat a good old T-61 for pure . . .well, TOUGH. There's a reason it's the choice of all the corporate clients.
I'm going to try to sneak into the Mac store in the morning and beat the "I have to have an iPhone"" rush.
I've never understood the "current" idea that Macs are better at graphics. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the HARDWARE is what really defines your graphics, and that can be as good as the money you throw at it, no matter what the brand...?
The whole Macs are better at graphics is a myth. It used to be true in the 80's and 90's, but these days the Mac and PC versions of software are almost identical. Modern Macs are running on the same hardware PC use, so that shoots down that part of the argument. The only thing I can think of, is that Macs come out of the box with decent photo software, vs Windows only comes with MSpaint and the half way decent Windows Photo Editor. Either way, its not like you can't get Photoshop on either system.
>>>I hope you are going to let us know what happened at the Apple store.
So far, so good.
I called "Apple Care". Rang, pushed some buttons (ever heard ANYONE who's "options haven't recently changed"?) talked to Todd who knew his stuff, sounded like an American from Indiana, was very helpful and confirmed. . . you got a problem.
Within seconds he'd made me an appointment 25 minutes hence, at a nearby Apple store.
Took it there, they were waiting for me, Genius hooked it up to analytical software, saw where it was hung, getting a new hard drive (they didn't have it in stock which to me sounds like a Buell dealer not having a belt) but he said he'd have it ready to go tomorrow.
Compared to a Dell, and waiting on hold for an hour, this was a snap.
Court, in Apples defense, hard drives these days come in all sizes ranging from 40gb to 1500gb, in SATA, IDE, and SCSI interfaces, and several different RPM speeds. It is also possible they are not allowed to grab a new retail boxed unit for warranty work. I am sure they have some hard drives in the back to work with, but odds are it wasn't the one that meets or exceeds your original drive.
With Dell, they got several call centers, and depending on what you bought your hold times vary. The business support line is under 2 minutes wait, based out of Texas, and my favorite part is you can use web chat, that way I don't have to hear the guy say "Y'all".
Good point . . . like I told the guy . . I'm not hurting for the thing or the data. He's going to try to snag the .NEF files. If he gets them fine, it not life will go on.
I need, when I get it back, to figure out how to have all **MY** files store on one of the 1TB units. I need to figure out how to have iPhoto and Aperture see that as where they store stuff.
Photoshop died, pagemaker died, pagemill died. All reasonably up to date versions and all did what she needed, they just spontaneously explode on Vista.
Around $1000 just to get the software back to a runnable state again, and the upgrades required thee different calls to technical support, as their "auto upgrade detector" would not recognize the old disks or old license numbers.
Reepi, I use Photoshop 7 on Vista, which is what, 8 years old now? It is showing its age so I am going to be upgrading to the new CS4 when I get some cash.
Haven't tried the other two, but program and hardware compatibility with Vista has been better than XP.
Court, at least you are learning. I have seen you whip out the blackberry and you seem to use it fine, so you are doing better than 90% of the over 50 club. Been trying to teach my father, he is slowly picking it up. Types like a chicken pecking at food, but even thats up from "Wheres the any key?"
Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 03:00 am:
Court, I sprung for an Apple 500 GB Time Capsule which can be setup to be a wireless backup unit controllable by a virtual On/Off slide switch in OS 10.5. Automatic backups have never been easier. A plus is that all the Macs on my home network can backup onto it too.
Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 09:12 am:
I hadn't used Time Machine but perhaps I should pick one up today when I got pick the repaired Mac up.
I must say I was impressed with their service.
I spent a bit of time last night making copies of ALL my machines on one of the 1TB Western Digital drives.
Found stuff, including the audio of Erik's technical presentations at Homecoming 2007 and OLD Buell photos and data (including the entire 1998 Excel Master Build File) that I'd forgotten I even had.
It was like a trip back through time . . .
Thanks to all for the advise.
Froggy . . . I confess that I am a big USER but not nearly as fluent in the workings of this stuff as I should be. . . I'm on my 8th laptop, still have my old IBM with the 5" monochrome screen . . . here is the first phone I had in my car... this is before vacuum tubes were just for amplifiers.
The simple version is time machine is a built in application that creates a mirror image of all your files. Not just the current version, but EVERY version. As long as you have enough external storage space you can restore any file, or even your entire computer to any date and time.
For example. Let's say you are working on a word document. Lets assume you have made many revisions over a period of time. Lets say you need to access a version that you worked on weeks ago (long deleted from your actual computer), access time machine look for the file, then use the slider bar to travel back in time. It will have all the different versions saved in 30 minute increments. Even if you delete the original file from you computer you can access via time machine and recover it.
Another option is, say you install a new piece of software that cause issues on your computer, you can use time machine to reset you machine back to just before you installed the problematic app.
Since you have mentioned that your HD failed. If you were using time machine it would be able to automatically rebuild the new HD with minimal work on your part.
Time Machine is one of Apple's greatest OS features.
Here is a basic video that explains it
(Message edited by corporatemonkey on November 12, 2008)
Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 10:36 am:
Time Machine has saved my bacon a few times - not because I lost stuff, but because I saved over files. With Time Machine I was able to just go into the past and pull the original files back to the present. It's very useful.
However, don't depend on Time Machine as your only backup. You should also keep a copy of your most important documents somewhere off-site. Keep work documents on a hard drive at home, and home documents at work. Even doing a once-a-month swap of these two small external hard drives with vital documents will save you so much aggravation in case of a fire, flood, or other disaster.
If your Mac has firewire, you might want to think about getting an external hard drive the same size as your boot drive, and using a program called SuperDuper! to make a clone of your boot drive. Then, if your computer fails to boot, you can boot from Firewire, and it will bring up exactly the same operating environment as you're used to, and you can start to recover files that way.
Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 01:19 pm:
Court, you don't have "pick one up" talking about time machine. It's a software program that is part of the Leopard OS. If you have a mobile me account you can download apples backup software and use it as well as time machine, which is what I do.
Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - 10:17 pm:
I have a "me" account. When I get the machine back I can see I have a LOT of learning to do. It may have to wait till after finals in December but I may drop you a note and see if you can walk me through it.
Sounds good. For Time Machine it only requires an external HD with plenty of space and if your .me account is the paid one that gives you full MoblieMe bennies then you can download the apple backup software once you've logged in. The BU software has preset BU schemes but it's really easy to create your own custom one.
Court - if you have a MobileMe account, you're already well on your way to a good backup plan. You can use the backup utility to save your most important documents to the MobileMe iDisk - voila, instant off-site storage! Right now I save the work I'm doing for my dissertation on my laptop, on my iDisk, on my MacPro, on a thumb drive, on an external hard drive, and on my Time Capsule. I never want to lose everything because I have a hard drive failure or a fire. I also email some documents to three different email accounts as I'm working on them, so I have those copies too.
I have seen way too many people lose months of work because they didn't have a good backup plan.
You and I are in the same mindset. I always e-mail all my schoolwork to two accounts, Gmail (for their good search capability) and Columbia (crummy e-mail but I file EVERYTHING from syllabus, class notes, documents, lectures by class) so I at least know it's "somewhere".
I expect to hear back from the Apple folks today and I know that I have been synching with my iDisk so I expect darn few problems.
I'm in LUST with the Apple folks . . . rather than tell this group what they already know, I'm going to share the story in the Customer Service thread where others can learn.
Thanks to all for your help. I'm still laughing about the PC telling me to "go ahead, format the Mac" . . I'm surprised I didn;t!
Thanks again gang from the least smartest among your number!
