MacNews - MacGroup
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MacNews - MacGroup
www.macgroup.org Serving The Mac Community Since 1986 Buying & Selling on June 2004 • $3 US � �� � � 2 MacNews - June 2004 Sell it on eBay by Terry White � �� � About “S ell it on eBay” has become a common phrase over the last four years. What some consider to be junk, others find valuable. eBay allows you to reach a global market of buyers and sellers. When I’m in the market for a new piece of hardware or electronic gadget I look to eBay just as quickly as I would Best Buy, Circuit City or the Apple Store. I have literally saved thousands of dollars on BRAND NEW electronics over the years. For example, every LCD projector that MacGroup has owned (three to date) has come from eBay. My last two video cameras came from eBay. The phone system I now use at home was the result of an eBay purchase from a local vendor. I love eBay! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just an eBay shopper, I also use eBay as a way to do house cleaning. I have sold dozens of items on eBay. When I wanted a better video camera (Sony DCR-VX2000) I wanted to sell my existing camera first (Sony TVR-900). I sold it on eBay for almost as much as I paid for it and I got almost two years use out of it. New eBayers beware! Although I have never been burned by an eBay purchase, there are tons of scams out there and you have to beware just like you do in your brick and mortar purchases and other dealings with strang- ers. You have to do your research. You have to check up the seller’s past performance. Also keep in mind, like everything else, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. When you keep common sense principles in mind, eBay can be an AWESOME tool for selling and buying. Like I said, I’ve never been burned, I did have a couple of hiccups. On one occasion I won a bid on a used discontinued answering system for my office phone. The reason I bid on it in the first place was that I thought it was the exact model of the one that I already had and I simply wanted a backup unit in case the one I was using died. When the answering system arrived I immediately realized that it was not the same model. I went back to look at the auction and it was then I realized that the answering system described in the auction was the exact same one that I received. It was I who made the mistake. I didn’t check the model number closely enough. I went by the brand name and glanced at the picture and thought, “that’s the one”. Obviously it was not the sellers fault and I was stuck with it. Although I could have put it back up on eBay and sold it again, I just never got around to it. Maybe I will now that I’m thinking about it. The only other incident that I had was that I bought an extra memory card for a digital camera and decided I didn’t need it and to sell it on eBay. It was new in the � box and not opened. I posted it on eBay and I was quite pleased that it sold for $5 more than I paid for it! However, two weeks went by and no response from the winning bidder. I ended up having to relist it and it sold the following week for a little less money, but the buyer came through and paid immediately. That’s it! Those are my only “horror” stories in selling on eBay since 1998. Recipe for a successful auction Whether you’re a buyer or seller, the same rules apply. Do your homework! If you are a seller, take good pictures of your item from multiple angles. Sometimes sellers take the lazy route and post pictures from the manufacturer’s website. I’m leery of those auctions. I want to see the actual item that I’m buying even if it’s boxed up and factory sealed, show me a picture of the box. When writing your description, be as descriptive as possible. Give all the details you can. Give the purchase date and warranty information if you can. Also it makes potential buyers feel a little more in touch with the seller if you put the reason down that you’re selling it. If you upgraded to a newer model, let the bidders know. That lets the buyers know that you’re probably not dumping the eBay continued on page 4 MacNews - June 2004 3 Welcome to MacGroup-Detroit™ Metro Detroit’s Largest Apple® Macintosh® User’s Group MacGroup-Detroit PO Box 760399 Lathrup Village MI 48076-0399 248-569-4933 FAX 248-557-9403 http://www.macgroup.org email: [email protected] Officers & Volunteers President ....................................Terry L. White MacNews Editor ............................Orie Carter Meeting Coordinator .................. Carla White Special Interest Group (SIG) Leaders Genius Table (Q&A SIG) .......... Phyllis Evans Beginner’s SIG ................. Loretta Sangeorsen Education SIG ..........................Jamie Feldman Internet SIG ...........................Howard Parsons Digital Video Detroit ....... Michele Kotlarsky PDA/PowerBook ......................... Terry White Webmaster & BBS Sysop Webmaster .................................... Terry White Sys Op .........................................Allen Herman © 1986-2004 MacGroup-Detroit. All rights reserved. MacNews is published by MacGroupDetroit. Excerpts may be reprinted by user groups and other non-profit media. Credit must be given to MacGroup-Detroit and the author. In addition, a copy of all reprinted materials must be sent to us at the address listed above. MacNews is an independent publication not affiliated or otherwise associated with or sponsored or sanctioned by Apple Computer, Inc. The opinions, statements, positions and views stated herein are those of the author(s) or publisher and are not intended to be the opinions, statements, positions or views of Apple Computer, Inc. You and your friends are invited to attend our next meeting. Our membership is only $40 per year, entitling you to this newsletter each month and many more benefits. If you would like to become a member or get more info on MacGroup, feel free to check out our web site at www.macgroup. org. Also see the membership form on page 14. Meetings are held at the Bloomfield Township Public Library 1099 Lone Pine Rd. Bloomfield Hills MI Welcome New Members Jo Ann Braxton* Donald Clark* Doreen Dickerson John Dickerson* Lawrence Elkus* Joseph Escribano* Yvonne Evans* Jay Gersabeck* Kathy Grove* Virginia Hunt* L Jubomir Jojich Edward Kangas* Phyllis Langley Valle Ernest Loizon* Gloria Maire What’s Inside... Ivan Marshall* Theresa Odtohan Donna Pointer* Susan Redge, MD* Ken & Ilene Rehse* Brian Romanchuk* Sophie Skoney Bill and Doris Stewart* Daniel Stewart David Syme* Gavin Waldman Parker Woo* Muriel Zweigel* * = Renewals Sell it on eBay....................................................... 2 Welcome New Members ...................................... 3 Boyfriends are expensive ........................................ 8 My quest for One Terabyte ................................... 9 Tips and Tricks ...................................................... 11 Freeware ............................................................. 12 MacGroup-Detroit Volunteer Help Lines ................ 13 Apple Events....................................................... 13 4 MacNews - June 2004 eBay continued from page 2 item because there was something wrong with it. Think of yourself as the buyer and all the questions you would have. Try to put all those answers in your description. Now for the price, what do you really want for that item? There are two tactics for getting the price that you want. One is setting a reserve price. So let’s say you’re selling your old 5GB iPod and you want at least $100 for it. Well you can start the bidding at $5 and have a reserve price of $100. The reserve price is hidden from the bidders. They won’t know what it is while bidding. Once the bidding hits $100 your auction will say “Reserve price met.” While this guarantees that you will not have to sell your item for less money than you wanted, it is often a turn off to bidders. After placing a couple of bids and still being told that the reserve price has not been met usually translates into “no bargain here”. Another way to get your price is to start the bidding at your minimum price. You start the bidding at any price you want. However, the higher the opening bid the less likely you have people jumping in to bid. I never set a Reserve Price. Instead I do my homework and find out how much similar items are going for. That usually sets my expectations as to what I can expect to get and I take the chance by setting a reasonable opening bid and I have always gotten what I wanted for my items. If your item is unique and you have to have a certain amount, consider setting a reserve price to protect yourself, but then putting that reserve price in the description so that bidders know how much you really want minimally. Charge a reasonable shipping charge. Some eBayers charge outrageous shipping fees to try to make an extra buck. I get turned off by this and look for the same item elsewhere on eBay with a more reasonable shipping cost. Build a good reputation When you complete a successful transaction on eBay as either the buyer or the seller it’s customary to leave “positive feedback” to the buyer and the seller. For each positive feedback rating you get from a unique eBayer your rating number increases. Think of your eBay rating as your “Credit Score.” No one wants to deal with someone with bad credit. For each negative feedback rating you get, your number obviously decreases. The higher your rating and having no negative feedback, the more comfortable buyers and sellers will be with doing business with you. Currently my eBay rating is 53. There are some eBayers out there that have ratings in the thousands. The problem with starting out on eBay is that you MacNews - June 2004 5 have no rating. Having a zero rating can be a showstopper for some eBayers. You are new! You may be a scammer. You may not be who you say you are. The only way around this is to make some purchases and get some positive feedback. You may also consider selling some of your smaller items lower priced to build a reputation first. Pay on time and ship your items in a timely manner. One sure fire way of getting negative feedback is lack of communication. Respond to emails immediately. Let the buyer/seller know exactly what’s going on. Keep your buyer updated as to the status of the item they bought. When will it ship? It has shipped and here is your tracking number. Paying and being paid One word comes to mind, “PayPal”! PayPal used to be an independent service for paying people online. They were so successful and popular with eBay, that eBay recently acquired them. Think of PayPal as an online checking account. It’s very easy to set up a PayPal (www. paypal.com) account and you can tie it to your bank account(s) and/or credit cards for funding. Now PayPal even offers an ATM Debit Master Card making it extremely convenient to access your funds. The biggest advantage to PayPal is that it allows individuals to accept credit card payments. That’s right! You can sell something on eBay and the buyer can pay you via a credit card. You get this benefit without the typical credit card merchant hassles. It’s also secure in that you never actually get the person’s credit card number. PayPal handles the transaction completely and deposits the funds (minus their fee) into your account. From there you can either transfer the money to your bank account for free, let it sit in your PayPal account (it can even collect interest), or you can withdraw it via the ATM card. If you make a purchase via PayPal and you don’t have enough funds to cover the transaction PayPal will automatically transfer the money from the bank account or credit card of your choice. It’s pretty slick! You can use PayPal for more than just eBay auctions. MacGroup has a business account with PayPal and we use their technology on our website to allow members to join/renew their memberships as well as buy our Meeting DVDs. Shipping When you have sold something on eBay, ship it as fast as you can once you’ve been paid. Use a method of shipping that can be tracked and insured. I usually prefer to ship via the US Postal service. They are pretty easy to work with. Rates are reasonable. They can deliver to any address including PO Boxes and your shipments can be insured. My secret to saving thousands via eBay Like I said earlier, I have saved thousands of dollars on eBay when buying consumer electronics. There are some items I buy on eBay in a heartbeat and others that I would probably never buy on eBay. For example, there have been numerous scams concerning PowerBooks on eBay. Therefore, I would probably never think to shop on eBay for a PowerBook. However, Bill Carver bought one on eBay with no problem. What I look for are items 6 MacNews - June 2004 described as “NEW in the box” or “Fac- about what kinds of items to buy or not tory Sealed.” If it’s new then I’m less likely buy on eBay or any other way without to be buying someone else’s problem. In being able to see them first. One of my many cases regular resellers who simply best eBay purchases was for a Siemens want to clear out inventory are selling multi-handset Phone system. I wanted the the items. For example, two the last three newer model of the one I already had. I Epson projectors we use at MacGroup didn’t want to pay full price for it again. I were eBay purchases from Epson resell- found one on eBay and as it turns out it ers. The first one was a demo unit that was being sold by an ABC Warehouse had only been used once. The last two located in Utica MI. After I won the bid, were new in the box and never used. In I was able to drive over and pick the item all three cases the projectors were pur- up. I even ended up buying a couple chased for at least $1,000 less than the of additional handsets at a great price. going rate. I have found that the bigger Once again this was NEW in the Box the item is pricewise, the more money and they were discounting selling phones there is to save. Of course this also means and used eBay as a way of closing them the greater the financial risk. In these kinds out. I saved hundreds on this purchase of purchases I look for a high number of and made a new friend. Another great positive feedback and for a seller to have purchase was for a Bluetooth headset for been selling on eBay for a while (years). I my Sony Ericsson cell phone. I wanted read the feedback posted by others and a specific model and locally they were look for any negatives. I look to see what going for about $180. On eBay they kinds of items this seller has sold in the were going for $90-$100 all day long. past. If it is a regular store front merchant Lastly, I wanted to upgrade to the newer I verify the phone number and address. I model of my Sony Universal Remote. I also ask at least one question via email to needed two of these and again, didn’t make sure the email address is legit and want to pay the list price of $199 each. to see if they respond. Again, there is Let’s go to no perfect way to find out if something eBay! I found is legit or not. These tips can make it a a merchant in little safer though. I would probably not NY that had 5 feel comfortable buying a used computer of these NEW on eBay. The reason is that computers in the Box are so complex that if it had a intermit- for $99 each. tent problem, you may not discover it SOLD! In this till weeks or months after the purchase last example has been made. I did once buy a used the Seller had Apple monitor. It was very OLD and used a fairly it was only $100. Two problems with new feature this one: one, was that it was so heavy of eBay called that the shipping cost was very high. The “Buy it Now!” other problem was that since it was so Buy it Now old (bought it to be compatible with an enables a seller old Mac), that most of its life had gone to set a price out of it and it was very dim. It did work, for an item so so there was nothing that I could really that a buyer complain about. It just taught me a lesson doesn’t have to go through the bidding process or wait for the auction to end. Basically it turned his auction into a classified ad. Instead of waiting a week to possibly be outbid, I was happy with the “buy it now” price of $99.85 and I was able to buy two on the spot. Whether you have something to sell or buy today or not, I encourage you to set up both your eBay and PayPal accounts today! There is no cost in setting them up and when you are ready to make a transaction you’ll be all set. Also as far as eBay is concerned it shows your member date. In other words “John Smith member since Dec 2002.” The older your date, the more stable it makes you look. The best resource that I have found for learning the ends and outs of eBay is: Sell it on eBay: TechTV’s Guide to Creating Successful eBay Auctions by Jim Heid, Toby Malina. This PeachPit Press book is available at Amazon.com as well as traditional book stores. ■ © Maxtor Corporation 2004. Maxtor, What drives you and the Maxtor styliized logo are registered trademarks and Maxtor OneTouch is a trademark of Maxtor Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. GB means 1 billion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. Maxtor OneTouch is an appropriate part of your overall data protection plan. MacNews - June 2004 7 PUSH THE BUTTON. BACK UP YOUR MONSTER HIT. how you push it is up to you XTERNAL Maxtor OneTouch EHARD DRIVE ™ PUSH-BUTTON BACKUP! UP TO 250GB 7200 RPM FireWire USB 2.0 ® w w w. m a x t o r. c o m Available at CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, MicroCenter, BestBuy, J&R Computerworld and online at MacConnection.com, MacMall.com and MacWarehouse.com. It’s your passion. Your rough cuts. The next indie sensation. Save it. Store it. Back it up with a push of the button. 8 MacNews - June 2004 Boyfriends are expensive By Dave Birdsong B oy meets girl. Girl falls for boy. Boy gets cut from the hockey team he plays for and goes home to Manitoba. Phone bills go through the roof! My daughter Sarah started dating one of the goaltenders from the Michigan Stars Jr. hockey team in February. Nice kid (other than being a Canadian, but that is another story.) When Joey was cut at the end of the month, he headed home to Gimli Manitoba. Now kids these days love to talk and don’t even think about what it is really costing to talk. When we got that first Nextel bill, we just about had a heart attack. $500! Sarah had spent $400 on her cell phone talking to the boy! Then we got land line bill, $125 to the boy! Love is rather expensive these days! The next month after we really yelled at her, the cell bill was $325! The land line had $60 more. Those charges are at our end, My guess is that Joey’s parents have had some huge bills too. I can’t remember where I first saw the ad, but last week I saw an ad for Vonage.com. $35 a month for unlimited calls to anywhere in the USA or Canada! I was off to find out more. Vonage is a internet company that uses your broadband internet connection as a phone line. Once you sign up for the service they UPS a Motorola Voice Terminal VT1005V that you plug in between your cable or DSL modem and your computer or router. You plug in a phone and wait a few minutes for the Voice Terminal to update and you have your new phone line. One of the cool features the Vonage service is the virtual phone line. This allows you to have extra phone numbers that are local for your friends or family to dial you without having long distant charges on there end. This service runs $4.95 a month per virtual phone line. If Grandma lives in Lakeland, FL and your in Troy, the virtual phone line can be set up as a Lakeland number so Grandma call to check up on the grandkids without running up her phone bill. This for only $5 a month. I signed up for the service on a Monday night and received the Motorola Voice Terminal VT1005V on Friday. It took about 10 minutes to read the quick reference instructions and connect everything up. After waiting the 5 minutes I picked up the phone, there was a dial tone, I dialed our home number and it rang. Once up and running you can log into the vonage.com site to something they call the dashboard. From the dashboard you can see your incoming and outgoing phones. Access your voice mail, adjust the amount of bandwidth, plus refer a friend and get credit for the referral for both you and your friend. (If your interested in the service please email me and I will refer you and we both save. [email protected]) The service includes voicemail or call forwarding and other than $29.95 activation fee and the $9.95 for to activate the virtual phone I am very please with the service so far. Update, since I wrote this, Vonage has lowered the price to $29.99 a month, so the deal has gotten even better. ■ MacNews - June 2004 9 My quest for One Terabyte by Terry White A s the saying goes, “you can never have too much storage space!”. I’m a firm believer in this one. So much so that when I find a good deal on large hard drives, I buy them whether I need them right then and there or not. CompUSA had a web only special on a Maxtor 250GB 7200 RPM internal drive. I can’t remember the price, but I do remember that it was the best price I had seen in a long time. So I ordered it and when it came, I just put it away as I didn’t have an immediate need for it. One day while looking through my favorite websites I discovered that LaCie had come out with a 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) External Hard Drive. Now technically there is no single hard drive that is that large. What they did was basically put 4 250GB hard drives in an external case and then striped them together in a RAID so that they would appear as one big drive on your desktop. As many of you know I do dabble in video and I thought to myself that this drive would be PERFECT for video as it has a FireWire 800 port to operate at full speed when connected to a Power Mac G5. Alas the price of this dream was $1,199. While it is an excellent price for what you get, I just couldn’t justify it right away. Yet it kept taunting me every time I saw it in a catalog. Then I started thinking about it more and more. I started picking it apart and I kept telling myself that there must be another way to do this. I started looking for an External case that could hold four drives. I started with Otherworld Computing (one of my favorite online shops- http://macsales.com), but they only had cases that held two drives. Then I remembered a little site called FireWire Depot - http://fwdepot.com. I figured if anyone was going to have a case like this it was them. I was right, they had what they called a “3.5 inch DO 1394b FOUR drive FireWire800 enclosure” - http://fwdepot.com/thestore/ product_info.php/products_id/630 The cost of this enclosure is $285 which I kinda think is a little steep, but in my opinion ALL FireWire enclosures are overpriced and it was cheaper than buying four separate FireWire 800 enclosures. Now keep in mind I already had one internal 250GB drive sitting in a closet. I just needed three more. I found a deal on the same drive at dealmac.com. Dealmac.com and Micro Center in Troy had the 250GB Maxtor 7200 RPM drives on sale for about $159 each. So let’s do the math We know the LaCie 1TB drive goes for $1,199 at most places. Add shipping and the total price is $1,208.99 The enclosure was $285 plus $8.37 ground shipping (I chose a faster more expensive option, but anyway...). That’s $293.37 so far. Now if you were to go to Micro Center and buy four of the Maxtor drives at $159.99 each, it would be $639.96, plus MI sales tax - $678.36 for the drives. Total out the door price for ONE TERABYTE (that’s one thousand Gigabytes) is $971.73! That’s a savings of $237.26. With that much cash left over you could buy MORE Hard Drive space! Installation was OK I was surprised that the enclosure didn’t come with any instructions whatsoever for installing the drives. They did have a quickstart guide on their website, however it was for a Dual Drive Enclosure, 10 MacNews - June 2004 not the Quad Drive Enclosure that I had. I was able to figure out how it worked. Basically the enclosure comes with two bridge boards to connect two drives each. The bridge board requires that you set one drive to the MASTER and one to the SLAVE (are these terms politically correct?) You do that for each board and each set of drives. Once you screw the boards in to the housing. You attach the bridge boards and cables. It was interesting that the bridge boards connect internally via short FireWire 800 cables. So you basically daisy chain from the back of the enclosure, to the first board, then from the first board to the second board, then from the second board to the other port on the enclosure. Once I got it all connected and powered it up. I used the Disk Utility in Panther (Mac OS X 10.3.x) to not only format the drives, but to also “stripe” them together as a RAID. This allowed me to have a ONE TERABYTE icon on my desktop! Woohooo! I was amazed at how quiet the drive is considering it has four drives in it and two fans. It’s no louder than a single drive external drive. Should you do what I did? Yes and know. If you want to build your own drive and by the way you can use any size hard drives you want in this enclosure. They don’t have to be 250GB drives. They just have to be IDE drives. If you feel technically inclined and can use a screw driver, then it’s no big deal. Also keep in mind that this enclosure only has two FireWire 800 ports on the back. The LaCie drive has FireWire 800, 400 and USB 2.0. So it’s more versatile for connecting to a variety of different computers. The LaCie enclosure is also more stylish. This one from FireWire Depot is very plain and very generic. However, to save over $200, I’ll take it! Now to start building the Backup drive :) There you have it! ■ MacNews - June 2004 11 Tips and Tricks By Phyllis Evans [email protected] L ast month saw lots of storms in our area. One in particular brought home the need for a good surge suppressor, and not just to protect the power supply of your computer. The network in question consists of a 17” iMac, an older G3 iMac, a G4 tower and an upgraded 6300 spread across three buildings. All computers are plugged into APC units. The DSL modem, router and hub are also connected to those APC units. What we didn’t think about until it was too late was the DSL line. Big mistake. Very big mistake! To make a long story short, there was a lightning strike somewhere nearby. The strike went through the phone line and wiped out the modem. It then took out the router and the ethernet on the 17” iMac which was, fortunately, the only computer running at the time. From the router, the surge traveled over the wiring to the hub in the building next to the house and also wiped out the hub. After lots of troubleshooting, the modem, router and hub all had to be replaced. The biggie was the iMac which required a new logic board — expensive repair. The moral of the story — don’t just plug your computer into a surge suppressor. Plug your phone or DSL line into it as well. Cable modem? The newer power backup/surge suppressor units have ports for your cable line, too. The really frustrating aspect of this entire disaster was that all of the blinking idiot lights on modem, router and hub all appeared to be as they should. Our initial thought was that we either managed to lose settings or there were problems in the entire area. The first round of troubleshooting with Earthlink and Apple had each one blaming the other. Second round showed the motherboard and modem. While the iMac was in for repairs, Earthlink sent a replacement modem which also turned out to be defective. Fortunately, we had dialup backup, but boy, do you miss that highspeed connection! So before the next round of storms (this is Michigan, after all), check to be sure that your computers and/or networks are completely protected. iGetMovies Ever want to save a Quicktime movie from a website but the “Save” has been disabled? Or save a music video from iTunes? Grab a copy of iGetMovies from http://www.versiontracker. com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21533 and start saving without having to dig through multiple folders to find them. Just wait until the movie has finished downloading, then launch this mini application. One word of warning — rename the file before saving a second one or it will be overridden. Neat piece of freeware. Speed up Safari The following comes from Peter Chin, LIMac Forum, Long Island, NY: “Sometimes while surfi ng with Safari, my CPU usage jumps to and sustains 100% (even when idle!) and scrolling is sluggish. I also noticed that entering text in forums and in Web-based email pages was painfully slow. I did a “Get Info” on Safari and went to the Languages window and found all of the languages enabled. I unchecked all languages except English, closed the Get Info window, and launched Safari. Now scrolling seems back to what it was; CPU usage idles back to the usual 15–20% when idle in Safari.” I tried this, and it really seems to help. Every website and forum that I checked after disabling the extra languages seemed to load much faster. Guess I’ll start looking at other applications. Mail.appetizer One of the things that I really like about Entourage 2004 is its ability to show a small popup window with a teaser of incoming messages. If you are in the middle of something, you can tell at a glance if that message you’ve been waiting for has arrived or if it’s something that can wait. You can even send it to the trash with a click of the mouse without ever opening the main window. Now there is a plug-in for Mail that does the same thing. Mail.appetizer is still in beta testing, but seems pretty stable. You can find more information and download it at: http://www.bronsonbeta.com/ mailappetizer/. Mail.appetizer is donationware. If you like it, consider sending the author a donation. ■ 12 MacNews - June 2004 Freeware by Chita Hunter T here are many developers on the Web that create valuable freeware just for the love of the Mac. Depending on who you are and what you do, some may fall under your own heading of useable or not for you. I wandered into the site of developer Amar Sagoo and left with a few freeware apps that will aide in my daily computer experience. http://homepage.mac.com/asagoo/ Prefling In those ever fantastic tips on how to work faster I ran across a tip awhile ago on how to access the System Preferences panels. That tip was to open the System Prefs app and hide it (Command - H) instead of closing the window (which turns the application off completely). This way, from the Dock, with the application still running only hidden, all of the System Preferences Panels were accessible. Well, as handy as this tip is, I discovered that I didn’t always like having the Systems Preferences application running or preferred it not running when I would do video intensive work. There’s a freeware application that does what I feel the original System Pref- erences app should do. Let you access all the panels, from the Dock, even if the System Prefs app isn’t already running. Simply drop into the Applications folder and from there drag it to the Dock. It works immediately, giving access to all the System Preference Panels and Preferences with less effort than before. Tofu When I don’t have the need to use a large overly robust text-based program that takes over a large part of my computer screen, TextEdit fits the bill. It’s used often for e-note-keeping and relatively undaunting text-based tasks, particularly when many programs are running at one time. ReadMe files open with TextEdit and it’s handy when working through a process outlined in the ReadMe. But, resizing the window causes a bit of a dilemma, especially if I resize the window horizontally. The text will string-out, flowing just as long as the window is wide. Meaning, the text will not break itself into visually readable “chunks.” Enter Tofu. This program turned out to be quite amusing. It is used specifically to read documents, not create text in it. No matter what text document you open with Tofu, the application will divide the text file into columns. As the window is resized horizontally, no matter how far the window is dragged out, the column dividing continues, for easy readability. If desired, you can even set the widths of the columns. OK, say, you don’t need to resize the window horizontally, the single column-sized window works for you. How is it different from opening this document in TextEdit? How do you see the rest of the text if the window is only one column wide? Well, second question answered first. You can go the oldfashioned way and use the lower scroll or you can go to Tofu’s Preferences, enable Speech Recognition and then verbalize to the application to scroll the document for you so you can continue reading the next column of text. Different from TextEdit? Yes. Tofu has incorporated it’s own OS Speech commands to instruct the application to navigate through the document. Speech commands also direct Tofu to make the text larger or smaller. Another added visual aide is the ability to change the background color. This makes reading any long text document easy on the ole eyes. As a reading tool and for a person who does a lot of reading on their computer, I enjoy this application, it’s fun. For me it continues the “Mac Way”, making ■ visually rich and fun experiences. MacNews - June 2004 13 MacGroup-Detroit Volunteer Help Lines For Members ONLY! Name Loretta Sangeorzan Can Help With Clarisworks, MS Word 5.1, Beginnersgraphics Adobe FrameMaker, Photoshop, General Ralph Marontate Mary Grey Contact via 810-225-9820 Hours Available Tue., Fri., Sat., Sun. 248-354-3252 248-645-9740 Mon., Tue., Wed. evenings Mon.-Fri. 10 am - 7 pm Chita Hunter Illustrator, MS Excel, PageMaker, Freehand, chita_hunter@macgroup. anytime QuarkXPress org Chuck Freedman Mac hardware and OS thru OSX, Gen- [email protected] eral Mac support, General DTP, DVD Authoring, Cross Platform connectivity. Jerry McBride Mon.-Sat. 4-9pm Utilities, MS Word 5, PageMaker 6, [email protected] 810-887-3330 Illustrator 6, Freehand 5.5, Clarisworks 4, Painter 3.1, many other graphic programs OS X, iPhoto, iTunes, Golive, Photoshop 7 [email protected] e-mail checked daily. by tele(photo editing only) 248-435-7438 phone most evenings before 9pm or weekends Howard Parsons Terry White anytime Mac questions in general, Adobe Prod- http://ibbs.macgroup.org anytime ucts, Digital Video, Networking ����������� ���������� ������������������ �������������� ������������ ������������� ����������������� ������������� ����������� � ���� ���� ������������ ����������� � ������������� ���������������� � ������������� ������������� � ����������������� � � � Apple Events �������� ������ �������� ��������� ������� ������ ������ ���������������� � ���������������� ��������� � ��������������� ��������� ����������� �� ���������� ������������ ����������������� �������������������� �� �������������� �������������� ����������� �� �������������� ������������ �� ��������� ������� ������������������� ���������������� �������������� �� �� ���������� ��������������� ������������� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ������������� ��������������� �� ������������ ����������������� ������������������ �������������� �������������� ���������������� �� �� Check out and subscribe to our iCal - http://ical.macgroup.org 14 MacNews - June 2004 This may be your LAST issue! Renewal Time is approaching for some of you. Please take the time to fill out the form below to avoid expiration of your membership privileges. We value your membership and the membership of your friends Membership Form Date: ___________________ Name: __________________________________________ Company: _______________________________________ Address: _________________________________________ ________________________________________________ City State Zip Work Phone: _____________________________________ Home Phone:_____________________________________ FAX Phone: _____________________________________ Birth Date: _______________________ Special Computer Interest: _________________________ Model of Macintosh You Use Most: _________________ Email Address: ___________________________________ Do you have Internet Access? .❏ Yes ❏ No ❏ Cable Modem ❏ DSL ❏ Dial-up ❏ Other How did you hear about MacGroup?_______________ Annual Membership ❏ New Individual Membership __________$40 ❏ Family Membership _________________ $50 ❏ Corporation Membership____________ $60 ❏ Renewal—Member ID#: _______ _____ $35 ❏ Electronic Membership _____________ $25 (❏ $25 NON Reg., Fam. or Corp. Members) ❏ Public Domain Disk of the Month Subscription $36 __________________________________ _______________ Total Enclosed ______ ❏ Cash ❏ Check ❏ Visa ❏ MasterCard Credit Card #: ___________________________________ Expiration Date: ____ Signature: __________________________________________________________________ Return this form and check payable to: MacGroup-Detroit PO Box 760399 • Lathrup Village MI 48076-0399 www.macgroup.org Tired of Waiting for your copy of MacNews to arrive? Check out MacNews on line. Each month there is an electronic version of MacNews published in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. You can get your copy of Mac News a week before the meeting at http://www.macgroup.org/ macnews.html or on the MacGroup BBS MacNews - June 2004 15 MacNews Commercial Advertising Dealers, hardware/software vendors, and businesses involved in computer-related services are invited to advertise in MacNews! Ad Rates Full Page $75 7.25" x 10" Half Page $50 7.25" x 3.5" 4.25" x 10" Quarter Page $20 4.25" x 5.5" 7.25" x 2.25" Business Card $5 3.5" x 2" Deadline for Ad & Payment 1st Sunday of the month Submission Info Because MacNews is 100% electronically produced, please follow these guidelines: • Convert all type fonts to paths/outlines to avoid font substitution problems. • Line screens should be 85 lpi. Halftone scans should be 200 dpi or less. • Submit your ad as a Macintosh electronic file in one of the following formats: Adobe PDF, Adobe Illustrator, EPS, or TIFF. • Submit your file on disk or email it to [email protected] Also, please submit a hardcopy printout (not Classified Ads Translator Needed Translate our current and future web sites into Spanish and Chinese www.toilets.com www.janitorialsupplier.com We would need ongoing translation of e-mail enquires. All of our pages are on the Mac OS Platform (GoLive and FileMaker Pro) Please send me any pertinent information that you may have and for technical discussions you should contact Bill Carver. Earl Braxton Phone: 800-521-6310 E-Mail: [email protected] FOR SALE 5GB iPod Good condition Abdul Aquil email - [email protected] $130 or Best Offer - 313-865-8111 Newgen Laser Printer Turbo PS/1200B AppleTalk PostScript Laser Printer. Level 2 Image Enhancement technology. Abdul Aquil email - [email protected] $100 or Best Offer - 313-865-8111 Are You Prepared for Brownouts or Blackouts? Do you need battery backup power for your Mac or entire data center? Lorn and JoAnn Olsen can help you find the right product (or trade-up) for your personal or business needs. We are local APC (American Power Conversion) resellers and can be reached via email: [email protected] or fax: 248-478-4302 or by phone 248-4784301. camera-ready). For any additional info, please email us at [email protected]. Please submit all copy, files, and payment to: MacGroup-Detroit PO Box 760399 Lathrup Village MI 48076-0399 The makings of MacNews This publication was created entirely with Macintosh technology using the following products: Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesignCS, Photoshop; Apple’s LaserWriter 360, and the Nikon Coolpix 880 and Olympus E20; CE Software’s CalendarMaker; Microsoft Office X; various electronic clip art collections; and of course, Mac OS X (PowerMac G4 and Cinema Display) Apple and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Bring a friend to the next meeting! Larger Room Available on Sundays Ample Free Parking Better Chairs Upcoming MacGroup Meetings: June 20, 2004 July 25, 2004 August 15, 2004 Handicap Accessible High Speed Internet Good Location Integrated PA System Large Projection Screen Low Cost We meet every 3rd or 4th Sunday of the Month.... Don’t miss our next Meeting! June • Buying & Selling on eBay July • Going Digital - Converting tapes & LPs to CDs and iTunes August • MacGroup Anniversary - Beginner Tips & Tricks 3-–5 PM at the Bloomfield Township Public Library 1099 Lone Pine Road, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Lone Pine and Telegraph Rd. MacGroup-Detroit PO Box 760399 Lathrup Village MI 48076-0399 www.macgroup.org Best In Show Electronic Newsletter Most Popular User Group Web Site & Special Judges Citation for MacNews www.user-groups.net PRESORTED STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID SOUTHFIELD, MI PERMIT NO. 87 Think Different