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Front Page News
February Meeting
The February meeting will be held at the Bluebonnet Library on February 18th, the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 6:30 P.M. This month's meeting will feature a presentation on Bryce 3D by Glenn Matherne. The meeting will start at 6:30 P.M. with the presentation starting shortly afterward. At 7:30 P.M., we will begin the Question and Answer session. Meeting will end at 8:30 P.M. so that we can clean up and leave prior to the 9:00 P.M. closing time. Please come and enjoy the meeting. You are also invited to join us after the meeting at Brewbachers for the social hour.
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I hope everyone enjoyed Don's presentation at the January meeting as well as my adlibing at the beginning of the meeting while we were waiting for Don and while he was setting up. Thank you Don!
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Compaq, Dell amd Hewlett Packard have all announce official support for Linux. IBM has announced that they will release a version of their Notes server forLinux. It appears thatMicrosoft will soon be distracted from Apple. Hopefully Apple can take advantage of this opportunity.
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Preliminary tests of the G4 look real good. Integer performance looks real good just like in previous models of the Power PC processor. The new Altivec instructon set provides a good boost in certain areas. Equally exciting is the floating point speed of the G4. The future looks bright.
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Memory prices declined steadily until July of 1998, then they started going back up. For DIMMs, they have started going back down. They are almost as low as they were back in July. Unfortunately, SIMMs are still pretty high. DIMM pricing is in the following range: 64 MB at $95 and 128 MB at $190. SIMM pricing is in the following range: 16 MB at $37 and 32 MB at $73.
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One vendor ran a Valentine's special by reducing the price on the Strawberry iMac.
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Palm Pilot Palm Pilot list prices have been reduced. The Palm III's list price has been reduced from $369 to $299. The Palm Professional has been reduced from $249 to $199. According to deal-Mac http://deal-mac.com, the best price on the Palm III is down to $199.95 + $5 shipping. The Palm Professional can be found for $165. Return to Top of Page
Apple has reduced the prices on PowerBooks (apparently because of surplus inventory). Prices as low as the following have been seen: PowerBook G3/233 32/2.0/20x/56k/10BT at $2029, PB G3/266 64/4.0/20x/56k/10BT at $2549, and PB G3/300 64/8.0/20x/56k/10BT at $2949.
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CD-R - CD-R and CD-RW prices have begun to fall. Panasonic 4x/8x CD-R drives are as low as $200 forinternal and $250 for external. Yamaha 4x/4x/16x CD-RW drives have been seen at $400. This could be the normal price drops over time or the pressure from future price drops in DVD drives.
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The G3 Pro Macintoshes have been shipping for a while now. Floppies and Superdrives are readily available. Various problems have been discovered, but none have been show-stoppers. The new G3 Pros (referred to as b&w) have proven to be great machines and very good prices. Compatiability has been very good considering the major redesign that these new machines represent. The G3 Pros represent the bridge to the future of the Macintosh line and world. And the future seems to be off to a good start!
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So this month, I decided to find the perfect Valentine's Day card for people in a hurry to do something they should have done last week. Need I mention that you forgot to make reservations for that posh resturant you're supposed to be going to. Better e-mail 1-800-Flowers for that bunch of roses, too.
My personal favorite is a little company called Blue Mountain Arts . This little company specializes in making really cool greeting cards with an environmental twist. Their electronic cards are a free service and range from cute to glitzy with music and animation options. I have to love a company so successful that they are suing Microsoft for blocking the delivery of their cards on the MSN.
For those who have to have the best that money can buy, the good old stand buy, Hallmark Greeting Cards sells animated and musical versions of their popular Valentine's series for $2.50 each. They really look great and if you can't find the one you want on at 6 PM on Sunday at RiteAID, this site has a card for you.
Others may prefer a bandwidth friendly Valentine card like those at Ad-On-Web. Ad-On-Web's Enviro-cards are simply e-mail cards with animation that load quicly on most computer systems. Best of all, these cards are free.
There are are literally thousands of more free cards. The point of these free cards is to either advertise their website or to collect e-mail addresses for junk mail. Others are amateurs simply providing a service. Either way there is something for everyone.
So get off of you duff and send an electronic e-mail Valentine to your loved one. Did I mention that you can order flowers, candy and even get reservations by internet. There's really no excuse left this year.
I wonder if I can get the FTD guy to spell out my girlfriend's name in rose petals without having to bail him out for breaking an entering.
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One would think that a dead battery would not be a big deal. We all know the computer runs off the power cord - not a battery. So what is the big deal?
It turns out that the battery is very critical for a Macintosh. The battery allows the PRAM (Parameter Ram) to remember its settings when power is off. If the battery fails, the PRAM can lose all of its settings or lose a few, or just drop a few bits making the settings invalid.
Okay, so now we know what the battery is, but what is PRAM and why is it a big deal? Some of the values stored in PRAM are: power management settings, boot device, date/time, and video settings. If PRAM is corrupt, your Macintosh might not boot, might not mount all drives, video might forget its setting or not work at all. Video symptoms are the real killer. Quite often, when the video fails to function it is diagnosed as a bad power suppy, motherboard or video card (all of which are expensive repairs).
The first machines to exhibit no video because of bad batteries were the LC/Performa series. Recently, many other models have demonstrated bizarre behaviors that have been traced to bad batteries. Normally batteries don't go bad until the Macintosh is over four years old (or at least two years). This can change though. If your Macintosh spends an extended period not connected to a power outlet (unplugged or plugged into a power strip that is off), this can shorten the batteries life.
What can you do? Obviously you can replace your battery. Strangely enough, Radio Shack carries most of the batteries the various Macintoshes need. They also have a phone number they can call to make sure which one is right - but if you are planning to replace your battery you should go ahead and take it out and take it with you to make sure you get the correct one. Most of these batteries cost in the $10 to $20 range.
In other words - good batteries are essential to proper system operation.
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Last month, I got a email about how to record cool sounds onto your Macintosh. So, I though well, I just got a new Yamaha keyboard synthesizer and I'm starting to make music (my parents and co-workers might disagree)...so, I ought to look at ways to put your worn music on your computer.
There are any number of combinations to put sound onto your Macintosh, but it comes down to a question of time and money. If you are will to plunk down $5000 and the time to learn how to use all of the equipment and software, you can create and sell your own audio CDs. On, the other hand, for $15 dollars, you can sample snippits of other people's work for your own amusement. Most of us aspiring musicians are somewhere in the middle.
First of all, you need a source of music. The cheapest way to go is to buy or borrow an audio compact disk for $16.99 or less. The next best thing is to learn to play an instrument. Electronic keyboards are the best value as they can play multiple instruments and expensive ones can record and play music files. Start at about $200 or more. You can also use software based keyboards such as Bitheadz Retro AS-1 for $200.The best way to make music is to turn your study or living room into a home studio. Plan on spending at least $5000 to record at industry standards.
The next thing you'll need is software to record or sample this music. The cheapest way to go is to use Norman Franke's freeware, SoundApp to grab and then convert sound from a CD to Mac friendly format such as Aiff or System 7 sound. The next best thing is to record music by analog means to the Mac using Prosoniq's free Sound Artist 1.0. For better results go MIDI and use the $15 program Midigraphy to record digitally. For more professional results use the $199 program, Cakewalk Metro 4.0 to record and mix or Bitheadz Unity DS for $400. The pros use Steinberg Cubase VST, $1200 multiprogram set and Opcode's Vision products, $1200.
Of course, you'll need hardware to do all of that recording. The best thing about audio recording is that it works on almost all Macintoshes. However, the newer your Macintosh, the quicker you can record with good results. I would stick to a Power Pac with at least 32 megs of ram and at least a 1 gig hard drive to start with. A better system would have an AV Macintosh such as an 8500 with 64 megs of ram and a 4 gig hard drive. Professionals use G3 powerbooks and desktops with Opcode, Korg, Roland or Ensonic audio cards ($495 and higher) with as much as 1 gig of ram and 9 gig or more disk arrays.
Interfacing with the Macintosh is quite simple. For beginning sound dabblers, you can use a walkman CD player with a home stereo adapter (mini plug to two RCA plugs) and plug directly to your Macintosh's sound in port for $50 or less. An Av Macintosh is a better choice as you can record from your home stero, CD player or tapedeck with RCA cables. For more professional results get a Midi interface for $50 and connect from your keyboard to your printer or modem port. Professional use multiple sets of instruments and have to patch all of these MIDI cables into a MIDI patch bay and connect this to the Macintosh's modem or printer port.
There are also many ways to record vocals for you do it your self crooners. The simplest way is to use the Plaintalk mike that comes with your Macintosh. A better way is to connect a good dynamic mike ($50 or more) to a cassette deck and connect the deck to your Mac's mini plug.
Still better is to get a professional cassette recorder with 4 or more tracks and prerecord your vocals and harmonys. More professional is to use a DAT recorder, but they are starting to get rare and expensive. MIDI mics are available, but sound funny. Professionals are moving to using Alessis's SuperVHS DAT recorders with high quality studio microphones ($400 to $30,000).
So, you can make your own kind of music and sing your own kind of song on your Macintosh. It really just depends on how much effort you want to invest in it. Demos of some of the products discussed are available on the current MacAddicts CD. You might want to check out a few of these really cool products.
Next time a tree falls in the forest, sample it.
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As Macintosh users, we all know that lots of software exists for the Macintosh. We also know that very little software is on the Macintosh aisle. We also know that many products run on both the PC and the Macintosh. Unfortunately, many of the boxes containing dual-platform software are not labeled as Macintosh compatiable. Up to now, you just had to know which ones were dual-platform.
The Hybrid CD Overview web site HTTP://HOME2.INET.TELE.DK/MSI/HYBRID/INDEX.HTML is here to save the day. This site is an index of hybrid CDs - CDs of software that run on both platforms.
The site helps you track down products in several ways. Of course it hasan alphabetical index (including digits to find products starting with a number). They also have a recent section to keep you up on the latest releases.
There are not a lot of bells and whistles at this site - just a lot of good information. Quite often the PC labeled version of software goes on sale when the Macintosh version doesn't - with this site you can save the additional money. Check it out.
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Did you ever get that feeling that you had been left at the starting gate.....a year ago AAPL was selling in the $18 range and now sells in the $38 range. You even considered cashing in that insurance policy but didn't and now could kick yourself. Well, don't despair. Five years ago AAPL was selling in the $50 range and it looks very promising to return to that level early this year! Sells of iMac are continuing in a strong manner and don't look like the flash in the pan as was predicted. About 50% of sells are new Mac users, not just old users going through an upgrade cycle. The very good news is that about 13% of these new converts were frustrated Wintel users.
The new blue and white G3 pro units are also selling very well and everyone is looking forward to the new consumer laptop. Yes, the $50 range is a very real possibility...so though you won't see a 200% profit a nice 25% is not too shabby.
I THINK THEREFORE IMAC.
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