December 2006

IMPORTANT NOTICE
ON PAGE 11 !!!
New MaUsE Meeting Hours Posted
December 2006
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President and Grand Wazoo: Michael Shaw
Email: [email protected]
Vice President & Resident Mac Genius
Aaron Vegh: Email [email protected]
MaUsE DoubleClick Newsletter Editor
Michael Shaw: [email protected]
Apple Ambassador Hm: (905) 983-9205 Orono
Bruce Cameron Email: [email protected]
Treasurer and Grammarian: Hm: 905-404-0405
John Kettle Email : [email protected]
Publicity Director and Jolly Good Fellow
Jim Danabie
Logistics and Morale Officer: Chris Greaves
Email: [email protected]
Secretary Email: Stan Wild
[email protected]
Nebulous Executives at Large:
Marcel Dufresne and Guy Lafontaine
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
208 Winona Avenue, Oshawa, Ontario, L1G 3H5
MaUsE Message Line: 905-433-0777
www.mause.ca
Submissions from MaUsE Club members are always welcome. Send them to me at <[email protected]> if there
are files or pictures attached. I have never refused a submission yet. There is always room for another piece on ANY
Mac-related topic and Iʼll make room if there isnʼt. I would
like your submissions. But I wonʼt beg. Apple, Macintosh,
and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.,
registered in the U.S. and other countries.
The MaUsE (Macintosh Users East) is an independent Mac
user group and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved of by Apple Computer, Inc. Its very much like
they don’t even know we exist. Shhhh.
Notice
The MaUsE Meeting in January will be held on
the 24th at 7:00 P.M. in Whitby, Ontario, at the
New Whitby Public Library on the corner of
Henry Street and Dundas Street (Highway #2).
Henry Street is four streets west of the four
corners in Whitby and FREE parking is available
after 6:00 P.M. just south of the nearby Scotia
Bank. Be there or be square.
The next meeting
will be held at the
new Whitby Public
Library in Whitby,
Ontario, at 7:00 on
Jan. 24, 2007
!!!!!!!!
Henry Street
New Whitby
Public
Library
(Highway #2)
Please feel free to contact any of the following individuals if you have comments or questions relating to Macintosh Users East.
What you are looking at is the December 2006 edition of the
DoubleClick monthly newsletter from the Macintosh Users
East, (MaUsE), a motley collection of mostly harmless cranks
who reside in Southern Ontario with their motley collection
of old and new Macintosh computers. Until recently this
newsletter was created by me, Michael Shaw, DoubleClick
Editor, on my Sonnet-powered personal antique PCI Macs.
I used mostly PPC 9600/800, a stock Daystar Genesis MP
800+ Macintosh clone, and a Sonnet-powered G4 Daystar
Genesis MP 800+ Macintosh clone.
This issue, however, was created on a OWC Mercury Extreme powered 1.4 GHz G4 Power Macintosh AGP Graphics
tower, (with our thanks to OWC), and a 1 GHz G4 iBook.
A Kodak DX7590 is used for all pictures. Everything not
specifically attributed to someone else can be blamed on me.
Back issues can be downloaded from the <www.mause.ca>
website for a laugh.
King Street
Free Parking
Scotia
Bank
Center Street
Dundas Street West
Executive Contact List
Micromat Drive 10
For this article I will tell you a little about Drive 10. You’ve likely never seen this one. Drive 10 was an
early OSX-compatible utility from Micromat. It shipped on a CD with Mac OSX 10.2.2 and since Apple
computers generally do not recognise operating systems released prior to their manufacture, not very
many of the newer post-Jaguar Apple computers can use it. Trying it in a new Mac will get you the warning at right. There are no updates beyond version 1.1.5 because Micromat no longer supports Drive 10.
Micromat brought Drive 10 to market in 2003 because their prime utility, TechTool Pro 3, was designed
to work with pre-OSX Mac operating systems and hardware and their new OSX professional disk repair
utility version, or TechTool Pro 4, was not yet ready for release. Drive 10 felt light-weight compared to
previous versions of TechTool Pro. What was really nice about Drive 10 was the animated interface. The
application window was very much in tune with the extreme OSX graphics. Drive 10 lined up a series
of colourful icons in the application window representing the tests it would run and then as the program
ran they proceeded from right to left across the window gliding smoothly into and through a magnifying glass that would highlight the icon representing each test in turn while it was running. The program
would generate a report when the tests were complete.
Drive 10 offered a wide range of fifteen distinct
tests to run on your disks. These tests included:
• Unit Ready: Ascertains the drive’s ability to
receive commands.
• Supply Voltage: Checks the power supply
voltage level that powers your drive!
• Self-Diagnostic: Runs manufacturer’s selftest on the drive.
• Rezero Unit: Determines the drive’s ability to resynchronize and rezero the read/write
heads.
• Format Check: Establishes whether the drive
was properly formatted during initial setup.
• Spare Sectors: Checks the service tracks to
isolate whether there are enough spare blocks
for block repairs.
• Surface Scan: Checks entire media surface
for defects that could cause read or write errors. Blocks are repaired by remapping.
• Random Read: Used in conjunction with the
Random Write test, reads data from a random
memory location.
• Random Write: Used in conjunction with the Random Read test, writes data
from a random memory location.
• Seek: This test checks the ability of the initiator to position the device heads
in preparation for access to a particular logical block.
• Linear Read: Used in conjunction with the Linear Write test, reads a linear
set of blocks from the drive.
• Linear Write: Used in conjunction with the Linear Read test, writes a linear
set of blocks to the drive.
• Read Buffer: This test is used in conjunction with the WRITE BUFFER
command as a diagnostic function for testing the drive’s buffer cache and bus
integrity.
• Write Buffer: This test is used in conjunction with the READ BUFFER command as a diagnostic function for testing the drive’s buffer cache and bus
integrity.
• Volume Structure: Tests and repairs critical volume structure elements like
Volume Header, Extents File, Catalog File, Attributes, etc.
Several features were less
obvious. From the Services menu it was possible to rebuild volume
structures and defragment your drives. Despite
the warning that Drive 10
had not been tested with
Tiger and might not work
under OSX 10.4.8 I ran it on my iBook. I took the precaution of using an external Iomega Zip 100 disk as the drive to examine and defrag. The program
appeared to work perfectly and the drive still worked when Drive 10 was
finished. However, I visited another Mac user recently who had defragged a
hard drive in his Tiger-equipped eMac with Drive 10 and rendered the drive
invisible and inaccessible.
TechTool Deluxe
If you’ve been paying attention you
will see that TechTool Deluxe uses a
familiar looking window. Looks like
Drive 10, don’t it though. Actually
its TechTool Deluxe, the AppleCare
diagnostic and repair utility created
specifically by Micromat for AppleCare. I received a copy of this program on bootable CD when I bought
AppleCare for my G4 iBook.
TechTool Deluxe was never a commercial public release as such: it is
available ONLY by purchasing an
AppleCare Protection Plan for a
Macintosh computer but I have seen
OLDER copies of the bootable OSX
10.3 TechTool Deluxe CD sell on
eBay for as little as $1.99.
TechTool Deluxe offers these features:
• Repairs Directories by Rebuilding
• Volume Repair Preview Report
• Bad Block Detection on Drives
• Checks the Drive Mechanism
• Checks USB Functionality
• Checks Memory
• Checks Video RAM
• Checks CPU
TechTool Deluxe is based on Micromat’s powerful TechTool Pro diagnostic and repair utility.
TechTool Deluxe checks the major computer components covered under the AppleCare Protection
Plan.
Even more important than being merely a diagnostic program that tells you what is wrong with your
Macintosh, TechTool Deluxe can also repair many
of the problems it finds. The critical thing to know
about TechTool Deluxe is that it was issued by Apple Computers to be used with a specific computer
running a specific operating system. You can’t just
throw any bootable
copy of TechTool
Deluxe into any
Mac and get perfect
results. In fact, you
might get a very big headache. Check
the OSX version on your bootable disk
before you use it. If you want to use
TechTool Deluxe on any Mac running
Tiger make sure that you go online to
the Apple website first to check that your AppleCare has not expired. A valid AppleCare entitles you to a fresh download that will
Make sure that your copy of TechTool Deluxe is compatible with
OSX 10.4.
There was a need for a new updated Tiger-compatible version
of the software to be included with AppleCare and Micromat responded with two new versions: one for PowerPC Macs running
Tiger and another for Intel Macs running Tiger. When I went to
Apple support and checked my own iBook serial number I found
that I could download a free bootable Micromat utility CD image
of TechTool Deluxe 3.1.1 right from the Apple Support website.
I downloaded the file and followed the instructions on the download page and soon had a new CD with the updated software.
I compared the old and the new
versions of the TechTool Deluxe application and found that the new TechTool
Deluxe CD has maintained the same easy to use interface and all of the same
tools as the older version. Of course, the new utilities have been re-written to
make them work properly with OSX 10.4 Tiger. Another difference is that the
OS on the utility CD disk image has been updated to Mac OSX 10.4.4.
To see if you can get a FREE download that you can burn into the latest Tiger-compatible version of TechTool Deluxe go to: https://support.apple.com/techtooldeluxe/main?id=dl
To see if you qualify
to get a FREE
download that you
can burn into the
latest Tiger-compatible version of
TechTool Deluxe
go to: https://support.apple.com/
techtooldeluxe/
main?id=dl
Micromat
TechTool Pro 4.5.1
As you may have noticed, the past few issues of the DoubleClick
have been featuring many of the brightest and best disk repair
utilities for Mac OSX. I have featured Drive Genius, Picture Rescue and Data Rescue II software from Prosoft, and DiskWarrior
from Alsoft, and in this issue, Drive 10, TechTool Deluxe and
TechTool Protege from Micromat.
Of course I have saved the best for the last. I will demonstrate
TechTool Pro 4.5 and DiskWarrior 3 at our January 2007 MaUsE
Meeting.
TechTool Pro 4.5.1 is a complete Macintosh repair shop in a box.
When Norton’s Utilities for Macintosh disappeared a lot of Mac users looked
to Micromat to fill in the void Norton left and an OSX-savvy TechTool Pro
4.5 is definitely it. This is the most complete (and expensive) replacement for
Nortons Utilities and if you only have one disk repair utility for your Mac this
is definitely it. With TechTool Pro you can repair your drives and files, recover
data, erase drives, defragment files and secure your system. And lots more,
too. This program isn’t anything remotely like TechTool Deluxe. If you have
ever experienced a system bomb, freeze, crash, or indecipherable error code,
TechTool Pro 4 can help you get your computer running smoothly again.
One surprising requirement for the new TechTool Pro is that you must have a
DVD drive in order to use it, either built-in or a FireWire external. When you
insert the TechTool Disk it shows up on the Desktop as two bootable DVDs,
one with version 4.5 for Intel Macs and one with version 4.5 for PowerPC
Macs running Tiger. If you check out the other featured on the TechTool Pro
DVD you will find a folder with a disk image in it that will enable you to create a bootable TechTool Pro 4.1 CD with Mac OS 10.3 on it for earlier Macs.
You don’t need to be an expert technician to run TechTool Pro 4. The interface allows you to easily perform a comprehensive suite of tests unattended,
so even novices can run the program with just one click of the mouse. At the
conclusion of testing a detailed report is generated. This report summarizes
what was done, alerts you of any problems that were found, and instructs you
how to proceed in that case.
The program multitasks for optimum speed and performance.
An innovative feature unique to TechTool Pro 4 is the eDrive.
The program lets you create an emergency startup partition
that includes TechTool Pro 4 on one of your hard drives. It
does this without the need to reinitialize your hard drive.
Once you have an eDrive (which can be easily updated), you
no longer need to use the program CD for testing or maintenance.
No product comes close to TechTool Pro 4 for ensuring that
all of your hardware and software is operating at peak performance. No other utility gives you the peace of mind that comes
from knowing that your valuable data is protected by the latest technology. With a single mouse click, TechTool Pro 4.5
can automatically run a series of sophisticated tests that will
troubleshoot almost any problem you are having with your
Macintosh. This really is the professional disk repair program for Macs.
Use TechTool Pro 4 to:
• Check critical computer hardware
• Repair hard drive problems
• Monitor computers in the background for impending problems
• Obtain a detailed summary of hard drive S.M.A.R.T. parameters
• Defragment hard drives
• Optimize volume directories
• Back up critical directory data
• Recover data from damaged drives
• Create an eDrive repair partition to work on a computer’s startup volume
• Securely delete important data from hard drives
TechTool Pro includes options to thoroughly check various hardware components, drives and other aspects of your computer system. One of the most important tests is the S.M.A.R.T. test, which checks for impending drive failure.
The application has five sets of utilities, each run from its own window.
When the program launches it initially provides the user with several “Suites”
of hardware diagnostic routines from basic to advanced. The second offering
is a set of “Tests” of the various hardware components, drives, volumes and
files in your computer. The third offering is for “Performance” and features
directory maintenance and defragging, or optimization. The fourth set of
utilities is called Tools and they include things like data recovery and drive or
volume erasure, eDrive creation, and a few other activities. The eDrive tool
creates a bootable partition on your hard drive with TechTool Pro installed
on it so you don’t need to reboot off the DVD. The Data Recovery tool helps
salvage data from a damaged drive. The Wipe Data tool scrubs a drive clean
so no data can be recovered from it. These are unique features that you might
purchase another program to do but they are just a small part of TechTool Pro.
The fifth offering is called Safety and contains setup preferences and routines
for on-going testing, protection and reporting for your directories, data and
drives.
TechTool Pro 4.5 is the best utility of its kind and I am very pleased to be
able to offer a copy as the grand prize in our November Raffle. There will be
a TechTool Pro 4.5 demonstration at the January 24th 2007 MaUsE Meeting.
Before I forget, I must offer thanks on behalf of the entire MaUsE membership to
Amy Woods and the generous people at
Micromat for providing us with a copy of
the latest version of TechTool Pro 4.5.1 on
DVD to be used as the Grand Prize at our
November 22nd MaUsE raffle.
TechTool Protege
through select dealers and resellers worldwide or
directly from Micromat, Inc. The retail price for
TechTool Protege is $229.00 US. DiskStudio is
$49.00 US. Current owners of TechTool Protege
may purchase the TechTool Protege CD Update
from Micromat for $25.00. Current owners of
DiskStudio may purchase a DVD upgrade for the
same price.
In the best of all possible worlds I would have one
of these. Micromat, famous for their award-winning TechTool Pro 4 application for Macintosh
computers (elsewhere in this issue) has come up
with a real winner. TechTool Protege really is a
pocket-sized toolbox for the Macintosh professional. This tiny FireWire-based device contains 1
gigabyte of memory and comes complete with the
latest version of Mac OS X, the latest version of
TechTool Pro and the latest version of Micromat’s
drive utility DiskStudio. And there’s still room left
over for your other utilities as well.
That means the next time you need to work on
a Macintosh away from home, you can plug in
TechTool Protege, boot very quickly and get right
to work. No messing around with CDs, portable
drives, installers and the myriad of other items
you’d usually haul around with you if you went
visiting a sick Mac. Being FireWire instead of USB
means that its bootable. Its tiny size makes it easy
to carry at all times so that a user or technician can
test and repair Macintosh computers whenever the
need should arise. TechTool Protege is able to:
• Diagnose Macintosh hardware
• Diagnose and repair hard drive problems
• Optimize and defragment hard drive volumes
• Rebuild volume directories
• Recover data from damaged volumes
• Repartition hard drives without losing data
• And perform other diagnostic functions
To provide Intel support for TechTool Protege, Micromat designed a new utility called Protege Manager. This utility allows the user to easily set up
the TechTool Protege flash drive for use on either
a PowerPC or Intel-based Mac as desired. Protege
Manager will ship on a CD.
DiskStudio allows a user to change the partitioning
of a hard drive on the fly. Reinitializing the drive is
not required. In addition to Universal Binary support, the updated version of DiskStudio adds support for the new GUID partitioning scheme for Intel
Macs and also support for the Master Boot Record
partitioning scheme for DOS. It now includes the
ability to identify NTFS volumes as well.
DiskStudio is able to:
• Add new partitions to a hard disk without the
need to reformat.
• Delete partitions previously created by DiskStudio or Apple’s Disk Utility.
• Erase and reformat existing partitions in a number of standard formats.
• Completely erase and repartition an entire hard
disk.
DiskStudio ships on media capable of booting both
PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Since the system
components needed to boot both platforms are too
large to fit on a CD, the program will ship on a
DVD. The DVD will automatically boot the correct system version needed for the host computer.
TechTool Protege and DiskStudio can be ordered
Micromat TechTool Pro 4.5 is a terrific suite of
utilities, the logical choice for Mac maintenance
ever since Nortons Utilities for Macintosh disappeared. TechTool Protege is a brilliant little
FireWire device from a company with a solid reputation for producing some of the very best Mac
utilities ever.
Crossword Forge
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
Crossword Forge is an easy to use crossword and
word search puzzle maker. The question of course
is why anyone other than a school teacher would
want to use this type of program. I would point out
that we all should be involved in our children’s and
grandchildren’s education. There are very few students who do not enjoy doing crosswords or word
searches. It is a great way to review knowledge
and to practice spelling, both of which are essential to a keen mind. It can also add a degree of fun
to newsletters and such. The January Double Click
will have a crossword in it. The first club member to email the correct solution will win a copy of
Crossword Forge. I believe that the January newsletter will be read much earlier than normal with
this incentive. You could very well find a use in
your home or work life.
Crossword Forge is a snap to use. It has been
around for a number of years. I had previously only
used it in the demo mode. I made up a crossword
for my family to try. But the demo mode did not let
me to print out a usable copy. It printed the puzzle
answer key, and the crossword puzzle squares had
the answers in them. You can of course remove
these limitations by purchasing Crossword Forge
for $48.95 American. You can obtain a copy of
it from www.solrobots.com/crosswordforge/. A
more in depth description of what it can do is also
found here.
When you start up the program the puzzle editor
screen shows up. From here you add your words
and clues. You are able to quickly put together a
usable game. A font editor is included to spice up
the area. Also you can choose a background picture. Check out the sample I am including with this
article. Once words and clues are chosen, push the
“make puzzle” button and a choice of crossword
or word search is given. Once a crossword is chosen you can create another version of the same by
pushing the create button again. You can quickly
make a different puzzle for each child. You can
also change the level of difficulty for a puzzle.
To make it easier, you can choose to show a list of
possible crossword puzzle answers and to make it
harder, you can change the word search options to
include diagonal words or reversed words in the
puzzle, or make it so that hidden words must be
guessed from clues. In the “Advanced” tab you can
change the dimensions of the puzzle. By changing the puzzle size you can determine how tightly
packed the words are.
It always displays a preview of the current puzzle. You can add titles and subtitles with any font
or colour you choose. In
addition to paper output, puzzles can be exported as pictures and
PDF, for use on the web
or in print publications.
It has a built-in English
spell checker. Crossword
Forge’s unique strength
lies in its ability to make
puzzles for any of the
world’s languages. It is
compatible with Mac OS
X 10.1 and higher. This
means you have access to
all of Mac OS X’s builtin dictionaries, including
English, Spanish, French,
German, Italian, Dutch,
Portuguese, and Swedish.
Make your own interactive web puzzles. Crossword Forge can now turn your crossword puzzles
into interactive web pages. This is called Crossword Forge Live. The puzzles are intuitive to use
and include eye-catching animations. Crossword
Forge Live puzzles include the same customization options. You can also add automatic hints.
As a teacher, if you are worried about having to retype puzzles you’ve created using other
puzzle editors, stop worrying. Crossword Forge
can import from many different text formats. It
can also export puzzles to the Web, PDF, Images,
or text. You can do more than just print your puzzles. Remember to check out the January Double
Click and find the crossword included in that issue
(not this one). The first to reply to Michael Shaw
at [email protected] will win this impressive
program.
November Raffle was a HUGE Success
I was talking with Marcel a few weeks ago and he suggested to me that in his
opinion one of the main attractions of our monthly meetings is the MaUsE Raffle.
Since I had assumed that MaUsE members came out purely for my presentations
this came as quite a shock. The November 2006 MaUsE raffle was another in a
long line of successful events. The prizes were:
• Micromat TechTool Pro 4.5.1 DVD
• Micromat TechTool Deluxe CD
• DEVONtechnologies DEVONthink Pro • iShowU Screen Capture
• AKVIS Sketch for Photoshop
• AKVIS Noise Buster for Photoshop
• DEVONtechnologies DEVONagent
• Lemke Software GraphicConverter
• Prosoft Drive Genius (on two CDs)
• Jiiva SuperScrubber on 3 CDs
• Coriolis iDefrag Utility • Computrace LoJack for Laptops • PopCopy2 CD
• Coriolis iPartition Utility
• AKVIS Chameleon for Photoshop
• TubeSock for YouTube
• ScriptSoftware iClock
• SuperDuper !
In all there was over $500.00 worth of software up for grabs in this MaUsE raffle.
These were not “door prizes.” MaUsE policy is that MaUsE Raffle tickets are
only handed out to the paid-up members who physically attend the meeting. Our
meetings are open to the public but the MaUsE Raffle is a “Members Only” event
and constitutes just one of the many privileges of belonging to the most excellent
Macintosh Users Group, possibly the best of all possible Mac User Groups.
Also, we went back to the way we used to do MaUsE raffles. I briefly described
the items being raffled and then each ticket drawn won the ticket holder his choice
from among all prizes in order of drawing. The first ticket drawn has first pick and
all subsequent tickets have a shot at the remaining prizes until all prizes have been
taken. I hope that this method increases the chances that people will win software
they will actually use.
If you MaUsE members get to your computers and email me with your requests
for software we will have even more products from other Macintosh software
makers for the January 2007 MaUsE Raffle. For those of you who didn’t win
anything at the October and November MaUsE raffles there will be another raffle
and more chances to win in January 2007.
IMPORTANT
NOTICE
The agenda of the January 24,
2007 MaUsE Meeting at the
Whitby Library will begin one
half hour earlier than usual, at
7:00 instead of at 7:30 P.M.
We will have a full agenda,
including more scathingly
brilliant presentations, another
MaUsE raffle, and lots more !
It was my pleasure at the November 22nd members meeting to introduce
the elected MaUsE Executive for the coming year to the members present at the meeting. The directors are:
MICHAEL SHAW — President and continuing Editor of MaUsE
DoubleClick, the finest Mac newsletter in Canada.
AARON VEGH — Vice-President and Program Director. (Also our
resident Mac genius. If you would like to know the latest information on
what is happening in the Mac world, chances are that Aaron will have
that knowledge and be ready to share it with you.)
JOHN KETTLE — Treasurer and Membership Chairman — Dean of
the executive committee and keeper of the club’s purse and membership
records.
CHRIS GREAVES — Our good will ambassador from Fenelon Falls,
always present to welcome members to our meetings with his trademark
cheery grin.
GUY LAFONTAINE — Very knowledgeable on all things Mac and
one of the club’s key resource people on Photoshop and Appleworks.
MARCEL DEFRESNE — Who loves to source out all sorts of useful,
but lesser known, software programmes and bring them to our meetings
and delight us with them.
and me, STAN WILD, the club’s scribe or Secretary.
Our good friend, Past President BRUCE CAMERON, will continue
to grace the executive meetings as an ex-officio member and the club’s
Apple Ambassador.
Now it is up to you to do your part in ensuring that we continue to have
the best possible Mac club with the best possible programs.
Be a MaUsE regular attendee. Come out to our monthly meetings and
talk with the members of the executive to let them know what you like
and have liked at the meetings. Equally important, let them know what
you would like to see included in the programs of future meetings.
Be a MaUsE Ambassador: let your Mac friends know what a fine club
we have and bring them to some meetings so that they, too, can enjoy
our fellowship, and, we trust, in time become club members.
If you have suggestions on how to make our club even better, and would
like the executive committee to give your suggestions full consideration,
you can easily contact any or all of the club’s directors and share your
thoughts with them: contact information for each member of the executive is given on page two of every issue of the MaUsE DoubleClick.
So here we are, just about at the start of a new year. Let’s all work
together to make it a very good one for our club.
-Stan Wild
MaUsE Secretary
Whitby, Ontario, Canada
[email protected]
November MaUsE
Meeting Report
Definitely one of the best meetings ever. John
Kettle announced that MaUsE membership is on
the rise. And we are solvent. Our Stan spoke of
the new 2007 MaUsE Executive and named the
names. The big surprise there is that we have a new
MaUsE President. Stan will make an official announcement elsewhere in this issue. All other positions will be filled by the same people who already
held the posts.
Aaron talked about back-up strategies and Shirt
Pocket Software’s shareware back-up program
SuperDuper !. I spoke about the conditions governing the raffle and briefly described the items so
that members could have a better idea of what to
choose when their number was called, and briefly
described SuperScrubber 2.0, security software for
erasing hard drives. Marcel brought his new iMac
in to demonstrate iClock. Hugh talked about the
portfolio-management (www.globeinvestor.com)
website he uses, and Aaron talked about open
source software. I ran over into Marcel’s time (mea
culpa) and so Marcel ran over into Hugh’s time
and so Hugh ran over into break, and Aaron got
squeezed between break and the raffle, which ran
over as well. Maybe in January, when meetings are
a little longer, we can get more done with more
time to do it in.
On behalf of the entire MaUsE Executive I would
like to wish you all a safe holiday with no nasty
surprises and I hope to see you all back here at the
MaUsE in January 2007. The January meeting will
be held January 24th (the anniversary of the Macintosh) and will start at 7:00 P.M., a half-hour
earlier than usual.
Jiiva SuperScrubber v2.0
At the October MaUsE meeting I demonstrated what can happen if you sell a
computer hard drive or Zip disk to someone who has access to Data Rescue II.
All of those files you so carefully deleted from the drive are still on it and can
be rescued in their entirety by an unscrupulous or curious person with good
data recovery software. For those of you who missed my presentation on SuperScrubber 2.0 at the November MaUsE meeting, in this issue I’ll tell you what
you can do to erase your data safely and completely by using SuperScrubber.
SuperScrubber is a disk utility that serves to completely and permanently erase
all data from a specified internal or external hard drive or partition, leaving
no retrievable trace of the old data. Using SuperScrubber allows you to give
away or sell your old computer without any worries, knowing that it no longer
contains personal or confidential data. Not only is that a good feeling, it’s also
really smart.
To REALLY erase files, you need SuperScrubber. Reformatting your hard drive,
dragging them to the trash or deleting them isn’t enough protection. Those files
can still be retrieved with sophisticated data recovery tools. As files are deleted
or dragged to the trash and then emptied, new data will eventually be written
over the space the files previously occupied on your hard drive. The old files are
not completely erased however, and leave magnetic footprints called “shadow
data.” SuperScrubber understands the phenomenon of Shadow Data and writes
data multiple times over your hard drive to ensure all previous information can
never be recovered. SuperScrubber conforms to the Department of Defense
standard for disk sanitization when selecting the built-in Military Scrub configuration. And if you’re even more paranoid than that, there are additional
customizable levels of security, too.
I tried out this Jiiva SuperScrubber software on an empty Zip disk like the one
that I used to show Prosoft Data Rescue II. It was surprisingly easy to use. I
launched the program and selected the Zip disk in the “Choose a disk to scrub”
window. The Next button took me to a window where I had to select the level
of security from a list of seven different programs used by the US Department
of Defense, the US Navy ISMC specs, the Russian and the German government
specifications and three more. They are all explained in the printed manual that
comes with the software. I chose the fastest of the seven methods. I’m glad I
did. Even with such a small drive (100 Megs) it took about ten minutes to erase
the drive three times and verify it.
Special thanks to Natasha Ericksen at Jiiva software for sending
a SuperScrubber Value Pack for our November MaUsE Raffle.
This software is available as three separate packages for G3, or
G4 or G5 computers. The Value Pack contains a printed manual
and all three packages on three bootable CDs.
Drive erasure is pretty serious business so the software asked me
more than once to verify that I had the right drive selected, knew
my administrators password, and really, really was sure that I
wanted to erase the disk.
The US Department of Defence scrubbing I chose required
only three scrub passes through the drive and then verification.
A scrub writes data to every byte of a disk. A 30-gig drive contains 30,000,000,000 bytes. Multiply this by the number of passes
and you see why secure erasing takes time. Scrubbing a 30-gig
drive using the Dept. of Defence configuration may take over four
hours. Your performance may vary with drive speed and your
hardware setup. The other erasure choices require 6, 7, 10 or 35
passes through the drive to complete. In the SuperScrubber preferences you can have the program let you know when it is done with
the procedure and initialise the drive after erasure.
You can run the SuperScrubber program right off the CD or install it on your computer’s boot drive in order to erase removable
drives or drives other than the boot disk but if you want to erase
all of your drives and partitions, or if you only have one drive installed then you can boot off the SuperScrubber CD, all versions,
and use it to erase all of your drives.
I checked the little Zip drive after I scrubbed it and it was empty,
empty, empty. The best data recovery software available could not
find a single file fragment anywhere on the disk. SuperScrubber
really works. Visit < www.jiiva.com > for more information and
testimonials about this program.
GraphicConverter 5.9.2
Jim would be so proud of me. He used to laugh at me every time the
GraphicConverter shareware window would open with the 30-second
countdown and the “You have been using GraphicConverter for 1,474
days...” message would appear. And I have been using it, too. More
than any other image conversion software including the expensive
Adobe stuff. You may not realise it but every one of my presentations
at the MaUsE meetings is a slide show in GraphicConverter. We may
lose the internet connection during a presentation and the demo gods
are not always cooperative but GraphicConverter never fails me.
GraphicConverter in one version or another has
been around for so long that it has one of the most
recognisable icons in Macintosh computing. It
gets updated regularly and has evolved into one of
the most powerful and useful shareware successes
ever. Download a copy of GraphicConverter and
install it by simply dragging the application to your
Applications folder. The name implies that GraphicConverter can convert images from one format
to another but the program can do a lot more. It
can import a staggering 96 different image formats
and it can convert them and save them in 38 different formats. It has unparalleled image format conversion capabilities. It has every format you can
imagine and 60-70 more. It’s fast and reliable and
gets the job done.
When you open a picture using GraphicConverter you get the toolbox beside
your image and an information window under it. At a first glance over the look
of the program, it resembles Paint, with filled and non-filled square, rectangle
and circle buttons in its tool bar. In terms of image manipulation, it does offer a
clone and stamp tool which function similar to those found in Photoshop, but obviously less impressive. But then you
start to click on buttons, explore the options, preferences and plug-ins and open the menus and GraphicConverter starts
to get more impressive. The Picture, Filter, and Effect, menus especially open a world of image manipulation tools and
information that exceeds everything except the programs for professionals. For desktop publishers like me GraphicConverter is the best and cheapest software available. I am delighted that Lemke Software has sent us a copy to be used
as a raffle prize. A lot of the software we get is of limited appeal to a lot of our membership but GraphicConverter will
be used by some lucky winner no matter what level of image manipulation he or she does.
GraphicConverter is simply the best image conversion tool I have ever used. It
puts everything else to shame in this respect. Sure it’s not Photoshop, or Corel,
or PaintShop, but then again it was never
meant to be. This is a Graphic Converter
and by name and by nature. It’s shareware, but if you need this sort of tool, the
30$ are more than well spent. It takes getting used to and even after a few weeks
you are still discovering options you
did not see before, but it’s the best I’ve
seen at what it does. For example, when
you delve deeply into the GraphicConverter Preferences you find that there are
six categories of preferences: General,
Open, Save, SlideShow, Convert, and
Browser. I have shown the Preferences
window opened at the Plugins preferences window found in the General
category. I just counted them and found
that in all there are sixty different preferences
windows listed under the six categories. That
should give you an idea of what this program
has evolved into since we first encountered it.
Installation consists of downloading and opening the GraphicConverter archive from the internet and dragging the GraphicConverter
application to your OSX Applications folder. Thats it. When it opens you will be instructed how to pay for it. If you don’t pay the program still works but there is a progressive delay when it opens and a screen asking you to send in your payment. Once
you’ve used it for a while you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. GraphicConverter is the very best of the shareware.
Special Thanks to Thorsten Lemke who sent our MaUsE Club a complete Lemke
Software package on CD to be used as a raffle prize at our November MaUsE Raffle. The package contained a copy of GraphicConverter with registration and trial
versions of FontBook, SnapsCleaner, CADintosh, and Elbsand Publishers.
InstallingAirport Extreme
Card Into G4 iBook
Wireless internet access is something I’ve never
had and never missed. All of the computers I use
on the internet are connected to my DSL router and
share an ethernet network with our LaserWriter Pro
630. On the few occasions when I have travelled
with an Apple notebook computer, my G4 iBook,
the hotels have provided wired service right in the
room. Wireless modems always have a few RJ45
ports on the back that accept ethernet cables. But
now I have a need to outfit the iBook for wireless
internet access. My eldest daughter has plans to nip
off to Japan in the near future and will need to do
emails and everything else in cyber cafes and other
places where wireless internet connection will be
required.
I went on the internet and found that there are two
types of internal internet cards for Mac computers:
AirPort and AirPort Extreme. The plain older AirPort cards are mysteriously much more expensive
than the newer AirPort Extreme cards. Make sure
you get the right type for your computer. My G4
iBook takes the newer, cheaper type, and I found
one on the Low End Mac SWAP List for $35.00
which included shipping from the States.
With the AirPort Extreme Card installed in my
iBook computer, I can
• Access an AirPort or other wireless network at
home, school, work, or Internet “hot spots,” and
use it to browse the Internet, send and receive
email, and more.
• Set up a Computer-to-Computer network between
two or more AirPort-equipped computers, which
you can use to transfer files or play multiplayer
games.
8. Release the keyboard by pulling down on the
keyboard release tabs (located to the left of the F1
and F12 keys) , then lift the top portion of the keyboard up slightly, and toward the display.
9. Flip the keyboard over and lay it on the palm
rest.
10. Touch a metal surface on the inside of the computer to discharge any static electricity. It is always
a good idea to make sure you are sitting down when
INSTALLATION:
you start a job like this and have everything you
1. Place your computer on a clean, flat surface.
2. Shut down your computer and wait thirty min- need at hand. If you get up and walk around during the process you may pick up a static charge,
utes before continuing.
3. Disconnect the power cord and any other cables especially if you walk on carpets and the weather
outside is cold and dry.
connected to the computer.
4. Gently remove the battery.
5. Turn over the computer.
6. Raise the display so you can access the keyboard.
7. Make sure the keyboard locking screw, located
in the small plastic tab to the left of the Num Lock
key is unlocked.
• Set up a computer to share its Internet connection
with computers using AirPort.
• Set up an AirPort network using an Apple AirPort,
AirPort Extreme Base Station, or Airport Express.
The Apple AirPort base stations are available from
your Apple- authorized dealer or the Apple Store at
store.apple.com.
11. Plug the antenna cable connector into the port
on the end of the AirPort Extreme Card. The antenna is easy to find in the Airport cavity.
To put it all back together:
1. Flip the keyboard back toward the keyboard
opening in the case. Hold the keyboard at a 45-degree angle above the keyboard opening, and insert
the tabs on the bottom edge of the keyboard into the
slot under the edge of the opening.
2. Lay the keyboard flat into the keyboard opening.
3. Pull down on the keyboard release tabs and then
press down on the top portion of the keyboard.
9. Open your Network System Preference to see
that the AirPort is shown as an alternative to your
other network types. Turn on your AirPort card and
enter the information suitable to your wireless network.
12. Install the AirPort Extreme Card under the wire
bracket and securely into the card slot.
13. Use the wire holder to secure the AirPort Extreme Card in place by inserting its prongs into
the slots in the RAM shield. Make sure the card
is inserted far enough into its slot that the wire fits
nicely behind it
Thats all there is to installing an AirPort Extreme
card in a G4 iBook. It took about fifteen minutes to
do it carefully and check that it showed up in Sys4. Let go of the keyboard release tabs to secure the
tem Profiler and worked. For your particular Mac
keyboard in place.
the installation procedure will be different, prob5. Close the display and turn the iBook over.
ably easier, and can be found on the Apple website
6. Replace the battery into the battery compartunder the Support tab.
ment. Hold the battery flush and use a coin to turn
the latch counterclockwise 1/4 turn to lock the battery into place.
7. Turn over your iBook
and open the display.
8. Reconnect the power
cord and any other cables
that were connected, and
restart your computer. If all
went well your Mac will
detect the card and alert
you that it has not been
configured.
Connecting to an OS X File Server
I was an innocent victim of the vagaries of eBay, once more. Yet again. It happened like this: I was just looking at CPU upgrades on eBay, checking the prices
after seeing what I thought was something outrageous on the LEM SWAP List,
when I noticed a Sonnet Crescendo G3 500 MHz PCI processor upgrade card
going on eBay for the ridiculously low price of $11.10 ! Outrageous !
This Sonnet card was the very best G3 upgrade for PCI Macs and retailed in
1999 for $1000.00 US. With taxes and exchange they sold here for close to
$1,400.00 Canadian. EveryMac.com estimates that they have an estimated current price of $149.00. The performance boost these cards give PCI Macs with
a 50 MHz internal bus is truly amazing: The MacBench 4 score for a stock 200
MHz 9500 is 477 and the same machine scores 1,716 with this upgrade. Anyway, I won the auction for $23.00 and will be using it to accelerate a 200 MHz
9500 running OS7.6.1. It is perfectly possible for an old 604e Mac like the PowerPC 9500 running OS7.6.1 to connect to your current OS X machine and share
files. Follow the steps below and it should work like a charm.
First, be sure to download and install the Open Transport 1.1.2 and AppleShare
3.8.3 updates if you have earlier versions. You can find these at < http://main.
system7today.com/updates.html.> Restart after all updates.
On your OS X computer, make sure Personal File sharing is enabled, under the “Sharing” tab in OS X System Preferences. Note your computer’s IP address at the bottom, as
well as the Computer Name, toward the top.
Back on your antique System 7 machine, select Apple Menu -> Chooser. Click on AppleShare. If you see your OS X computer already listed there under “Select a file server:”
click on it and click OK. If not, click on “Server IP Address...”, enter the IP address you
noted from above, and click OK.
You will be presented with an authentication choice dialog. Choose “Encrypted Password” and click OK.
In the next dialog, type in your OS X log in name, and your password (if you have one)
and click OK.
A dialog will appear listing your OS X users, along with your hard drives and any other media (CDs, etc...) you may have inserted in your OS X machine.
Choose which one you want to access, and click OK. Your choice will appear on the OS7.6.1 desktop. You can now open it and access your files!
PopCopy2 - The ClipBoard Accessory
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
You know that nasty feeling when you copy an item, then later go to paste
it only to find that you’ve already copied something else over top of it in the
clipboard? There are many applications that allow you to enhance the clipboard
such as CopyPaste which I paid for and used extensively with my old system
8.5 MAC. I have found that the old applications are not as convenient to use in
system 10. So again I went searching using version tracker. I tried at least four
other applications until I settled on PopCopy.
PopCopy lets you access copied items you won’t even remember having
copied. It keeps a history of everything you’ve copied in the MenuBar. You can
see what you currently have copied just by looking at the MenuBar. It is an application program so that installation is a snap. Download it and drag it into your
application folder. Double click on it and you are in business.
It works very simply. PopCopy keeps a record of all copy operations and makes
them available via the menu bar. Copy some text and paste it into a page. Copy a
URL from the web browser or a photo out of Word. It doesn’t matter what your
copy action actually worked with, PopCopy will remember it for you and makes
that clipboard content available in the menu bar for later access. Something that
makes the PopCopy menu extra useful is that it offers a visual representation of
what you copied. If it is an image, you see a tiny thumbnail of the image. If you
copied text, the first few words show up. This option does take up a lot of menu
bar space. I have turned off this option using the preferences for it.
PopCopy works with text, files, and images. That means if there’s anything
you copy and paste often, you can skip the copy step from now on. PopCopy
saves your clipboard item when you quit PopCopy, or restart your computer, and
restores them when you launch PopCopy again. It is a Universal Binary, so it
runs fine on an Intel Mac, or a PowerPC Mac.
The main, and quite possibly best, new feature in PopCopy is the incredible
new display that comes up with you press a Hotkey. You can now define your
own hotkey combination, and when you press it, you’ll see a new interface for
accessing your PopCopied items. You can see the previous and next items. There
really is no better way to choose what you want pasted. Pressing the Hotkey and
choosing the item now automatically pastes it. It’s a preference that you can turn
on or off.
Also, you now get much better previewing of items in
the PopCopy menu. If you have a file in there, you can see
its whole path. If you have a long text clipping in there, you
can see more of it.
For web designers there’s the added bonus of seeing the
image dimensions displayed with the icon. So if you add an
image to a page, you have the width and height there in a
handy record just waiting for you.
The publisher is Globoamericano. If you go to the web
site you can check out a video to see what PopCopy can do.
Download PopCopy for free. Try it out. You will be able to
use PopCopy normally, but you will be limited to a history
of the last five items. That is all I really needed. When I
used CopuPlus I never had to save more than 10 clipboard
items. But if you like it, and want to hold an infinite number
of items, buy PopCopy. It’s only $14, and it’s worth every
penny.
PopCopy was one of the terrific November
MaUsE Raffle prizes !
DON’T Forget...
Due to the fact that we feel we could
make better use of our MaUsE Meeting time, we have changed the 2007
MaUsE Meetings to an earlier startup time: 7:00 instead of 7:30 P.M..
Be there and bring a friend.
“Sol Robots” at http://www.solrobots.com
DEVONagent
Submitted By Aaron Vegh
Most people won’t need this software. DEVONagent is a tool for
gathering information from the Web,
and presenting it in a way that leaves
out the chaff, leaving nothing but
wheat.
It’s a real problem these days. As
a total tech nerd, I frequently tool
around the web looking for answers
to my questions. Which manufacturer is making the best-regarded
mid-range digital camera? How can
you pass an arbitrary variable from
a view to a controller in Ruby on
Rails? What techniques do people
use to get to sleep at night, without
resorting to pharmaceuticals?
Google is a fine resource. But with
its speed comes shortcomings. Phishing sites and link farms are creeping
higher in search results, providing the
kind of meat that only artificial intelligence has a use for. Other sites are
just dead links, long since removed
from Web servers, but unknown to
Google’s gargantuan cache. And of
course, you never know whether that
page with the enticing title and twoline description will be what you
need, until you click, wait for the
page to load, and read.
variety of search engines. It then collects the results, analyses them, and
presents them along with instantly-accessible notes on each link. It also removes the dead pages and link farms.
Click on a search result, and the builtin Web browser springs up immediately, showing you the content, with
your search terms highlighted.
So indeed, while Google (or any other
search engine) is dramatically faster at
showing you results, with DA you’ll
probably find what you’re after more
quickly.
Under the hood, DA
offers a whole lot of
power to those who
wish to use it. The
tool accepts Boolean
strings and special
expressions to help
you narrow your
search. You can use
a string like (“ruby
on rails” OR RoR)
AND toggle NEAR
partial
Where the search
will find either “ruby
on rails” or its common abbreviation,
along with the words
“toggle” and “partial”, as long as the
This is where DEVONagent comes first word happens
in. Using its default “Internet Fast within ten words
Scan”, DA will throw your query at a of the second. Very
cool, and it beats the pants off what you can sometimes put into making
the right query?). But it gets better:
Google offers.
you can have DA run your query on a
Another nifty feature is the keyword schedule, and notify you of the results
browser, which shows you a list of via email. How cool is that?
related search words related to your
query. Choose a keyword, and you’ll In all, DEVONagent offers something
see a chart of its relations to others, pretty handy to the true Internaut: a
along with a text output of pages with powerful tool for culling the Internet
of its sweetest meat, leaving aside
that content.
the bone and gristle. Yuck, gristle…
DA also offers Search Sets, which are I’ll be keeping this application in my
saved queries that you can run again Dock.
and again (and why not, after the work
2006 in Review
Notice to
Double Click Readers
Who Are NOT
MaUsE Members
If you are living in or near the Durham Region of Southern
Ontario and using a Macintosh computer and are not yet a
member of MaUsE you can use the information found on
the second page of this newsletter to get meeting info and
to get in touch with a member of our executive to find out
how to join.
If you just want to attend a few of our monthly meetings
please feel free to join us at the new central Whitby Library at 7:00 P.M. on the fourth Wednesday of the month.
Meetings are open to the public and admission is free but
eligibility for winning valuable MaUsE Raffle prizes at
our monthly MaUsE Meetings and receiving technical assistance are available only to paid-up MaUsE club members.
Other privileges of membership are listed on our www.
mause.ca website and include the right to borrow from the
extensive MaUsE Club Library and to submit articles for
publication in this excellent newsletter.
FREE* Software
For MaUsE Members Only
Have you noticed that the software reviewed in the DoubleClick invariably shows up as raffle prizes at our monthly MaUsE meetings? Software programs are expensive. Where do they come from?
Most of them come from my replies to press releases or from requests
that I make directly to the software companies on behalf of the MaUsE
DoubleClick that they send me two free copies of whatever catches my
fancy: one copy for me to review and one for the MaUsE raffle. So of
course I ask for stuff that interests me. If you would like to have me ask
for something for you to review in the DoubleClick, let me know. The
catch is that you MUST review the program in order to get a free copy
for yourself. See the software reviews in this and other recent issues. If
you think you could produce software review composed of a page or
two of text and pictures in exchange for a free copy of the program you
review then you are ready to contribute to the DoubleClick.
Of course there is no guarantee that you will get what you ask for. Some
companies are very obliging but others either don’t answer my request
or they answer to say that they don’t send out review materials. But, if
they do send it, and you do write about it, its yours to keep.
Like the other privileges of membership, the access to software titles to
review is only available to paid-up MaUsErs, but you only have to win
one MaUsE Raffle item or get one program to review to re-coup your
year’s $45.00 membership fee.
Email: < [email protected] > for details.
*Some conditions apply.