Rainbow of Opportunity

The greatest deign jump forward in Macintosh history, in my opinion, were the jewel toned iMac originals.  While the Mac has obviously moved onwards and upwards with slimmer stylings, the idea of the personalized color pallet has never quite died.

In that respect Speck Products has recently released a new line of hard plastic casings for the new Macbooks.  The color options have never been as diverse as they are now: Clear, red, green, aqua, purple, pink, and orange (although orange is only for a limited time).  The plastic itself is $50, but Speck cases have always been priced in that area.  The cases are cool, but also protect your computer, which is a definite bonus.

Macs continue to gain popularity, especially on college campuses, it’d be especially nice to be able to pick your own out of any crowd.

Security Contradictions

Macs are supposed to be the safest computers anywhere, the myth goes that viruses can’t touch Macs.  Today it seems like that might have changed.

Its been recently reported that the Mac Support section on apple.com now lists anti virus software as a suggestion to secure your computer.  This is a very new development (and it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence).  Are Macs losing their touch?

I have yet to decide if the dollar for dollar investment is worth buying extra virus protection for my computer, especially when in store advice doesn’t always match that posted online.  It can’t hurt anything but your wallet, but is it really necessary?

Mac Attack

The evolution of Mac continues.  This time it’s another upgrade to the MacBook line.

There are a few new and obvious design changes.  No longer encased in black or white plastic the MacBook follows in the footsteps of its brother the MacBook Pro (also with it’s own upgrade) with a new aluminum body.  The trackpad on the new Mac is now click sensitive, no more buttons.  With new features like LED backlighting , a crumb resistant keyboard (just like the MacBook Air)  and new integrated graphics for supposed more responsive game play and realistic environments.

The new line comes in both a 13 inch Macbook and 15 inch Pro models (priced at $1299 and $1999 respectively).  Is it the greatest leap we’ve ever seen? Probably not, but Mac continues to be pleasing to the eye and as dependable on the inside as it was before.

Software for Security

It’s that time of year, where many of us are heading back to the college dorm or out there for the first time.  There are a lot of questions about room size, and roommate personality, food, safety, etc. etc.  While there’s not much one can do about problems such as food or personality, when it comes to computer worries technology usually has an answer.

For anyone paranoid enough about the safety of their material on a Mac there is the Rohos Logon Key.  When you fear that password login is not enough to keep your excellent Shakespeare paper from plagiarizing eyes just grab a USB drive and the Rohos software and no amount of password guessing or stealing counts for anything.

The concept is simple, plug your USB flash drive in to “unlock” your Mac and unplug it to reapply the locked safety feature.  Like any key (car included) the system’s not full proof, but the idea is solid.  And, with so many other college unknowns, a jumpy freshman may find extra computer security makes the rest of the world of higher education seem a little more secure too.

My View of Vista (or Why I May Need a Mac)

You may recall when I took Windows to task for treating me like an idiot. Welll, I just bought a new laptop that came pre-loaded with Vista and suddenly Windows XP seems like a lean. efficient OS that treats me like I’m a PhD.

I could rant about how Vista now asks you a third time before allowing you to do any task more complex than opening an application, but it’s a minor annoyance compared to some of the lovely new quirks to discovered.

I still use Microsoft Office for XP. It continues to serve me well and they haven’t added anything significant enough to justify me spending a thousand dollars on an upgrade. (One of the few things I miss about working for a big company - they paid to upgrade your software!). Part of that Office suite is Outlook 2002. I successfully installed Office on the new Vista machine and cloned my email account info, of course telling it to save my passwords. And it all worked fine until I closed Outlook. When I started it up again, it had purged my passwords and thus failed to retrieve my email until I used the account management tool to re-enter the passwords. A Google search on the problem confirmed that it was common to Outlook 2002 and that Microsoft had no intention of fixing it. “Please send us $1000 for newer versions of software you didn’t want to replace”.

But wait! It gets worse. I had no trouble detecting and logging into my home wireless network - except that it came up “Local Only”, meaning no Internet connectivity. After frustrating attempts to figure out all the new “user friendly” nomenclature for networking I gave up and decided to use good old DOS brute force. Finding out how to open a command line window was a chore and when I finally did and tried the old faithful “ipconfig /release” command, it told me that it required “elevation”. Huh? I live at sea level in a one story home. Did I need to hit the roof? My account was set as “Administrator” but apparently that wasn’t good enough.

In a classic Catch-22, I wanted to check the web for updated drivers, but that required web access that Vista wasn’t giving me. I tried plugging in a cable direct to the router and all of a sudden all the connections worked! Sweet! Or not…

I go to a client’s office where I’ve always successfully connected to their wireless network, but I get the dreaded “Local Only”. After seeking help (and I HATE to do that) from their network admins, I was ready to give up and plug into a network jack. Presto! Once I did that, wireless kicked in. See a pattern emerging?

I was on the road last weekend. Tried to connect in the airport. Yep - Local Only. When I got to my destination, I used someone else’s computer to research the issue. It’s common. I tried to follow some of the proposed solutions. But the only one that ever worked was “plug it into a router”. That’s kind of hard in an airport.

Microsoft is mum on the issue. The net community hasn’t been able to overcome it. And my smug, welf-satisfied Mac friends are all saying “I told you so…”