Category: Hardware

Be Aware of Firewire-USB Conflicts

Have you ever purchased a new piece of hardware for your Mac and had difficulty getting it to work correctly? If you have, you can understand the frustration I felt when I first got a new Western Digital My Book Premium hard drive and tried to get it to work with the Firewire 400 connection on my Intel Core 2 Duo Mini. The drive mounted fine and I had no problems cloning my internal drive to it, but I had only headaches when I tried to boot the drive. My Mini and the drive froze on a gray screen with the Apple logo and I couldn't even boot to my internal drive without shutting down everything and disconnecting the WD drive.

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Horizontal Mouse Scrolling

Did you know you can scroll horizontally with any mouse on a Mac computer? Read this tip to find out how to do this.

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Try the Software Before You Buy the Hardware

You probably know that many hardware manufacturers provide software for their products, but did you know that you can often try the software before you buy the hardware. Doing this can sometimes help you decide between two similar products or determine if a particular piece of hardware is compatible with your Mac.

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Using Mac OS X Tiger on Older Macs

A few months ago, I read a forum thread about using Mac OS X Tiger on older Macs and I decided to try it with my old G3, 500 MHz iBook. I didn't think it would work but, to my surprise, I found I was wrong. My iBook has only 192 MB of RAM and the stated minimum RAM for Tiger is 256, and, initially, Tiger was more like a turtle than a cat on that old iBook. But, with a few adjustments, I found myself using my iBook as an acceptable, but slow, backup Tiger computer.

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Benefits of External Hard Drives

Now that most computers come with larger internal hard drives, many people may feel that they don't need an external hard drive. But there are several good reasons to add an external hard drive to your computer configuration. Many companies produce excellent hard drives and selecting the one that's right for your needs may not be an easy task. In this article, I give some of the reasons for using an external hard drive and discuss briefly what you should look for when buying a hard drive.

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How to Buy a Mac Computer

Deciding on which computer to buy can be a daunting experience, especially in today's world of constantly changing technology. But if you do a little planning and research before buying, the experience will be a much easier and better one.

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Catalog Your Disks with DiskCatalogMaker

If you store files on CDs and DVDs, but never record or remember what is on each disk, DiskCatalogMaker is the perfect program for you. DiskCatalogMaker is an easy-to-use, low-cost ($19) shareware application that lets you create catalogs of your CDs and DVDs.

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Clone Your Hard Drive

The safest and easiest way to back up all your data is to clone your hard drive to an external drive. The process is easy but some pre-planning and a few extra steps can improve the results. In this short tutorial, I'll guide you through the process.

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Disk Burning in Mac OS X: Painless and Free

Do a Google search for CD and DVD burning with Mac OS X or read magazine articles on the subject and you're sure to find references again and again to the expensive, commercial program, Toast. Certainly, Toast can accomplish most burning tasks but why spend $80 or more when Mac OS X's built-in programs and freeware programs can do the same tasks just as well. In this tutorial, I briefly explain how to burn media and data disks with free software for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.4.

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