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My main system is a 733 MHz PowerMac Digital Audio with a 22" ADC Cinema Display. I do not travel much at all these days and decided the a tower would serve me better. As it turns out, I notice verly little difference in performance for daily activites on the DI 733 PowerMac compared to the 1.25 Aluminum PowerBook I used heavily for more than 1 year.

I started out fiddling with PowerBooks (every Mac I've owned came from eBay) back in early 2002. First Pismo G3's, then a TiBook 667 (non-DVI), followed by a 667 DVI (higher screen resolution was worth it) followed by an 800, 1 GHz 15" Titanium (which the fans ran more often than not) and finally a 1.25 GHz AlumBook. The Aluminum PowerBooks are a bit heavier and offer less battery life than their TiBook cousins (and feel flimsy by comparison). I still decided having ports on the sides and AirPort Extreme outweighed the negatives.

1) The AlumBooks look great but feel more fragile than TiBooks. The front hinge clasp on mine did not close tightly and I was always concerned that the screen might get damaged on the Alumbook.
2) I like the feel of the TiBook keyboards better. The illuminated aluminum keys on the AlumBook are neat but overall the keypad feels less responsive to me.
3) The less than stellar battery power on the AlumBook still haunts me.

I put together a detailed comparison of Alumbooks vs. TiBooks based on my tests between a G4 800 TiBook and 1.25 GHz AlumBook. I like the AlumBook better in terms of overall features but prefer the look and feel of the TiBooks. Note: Apple posted a battery update ~12/17/03 for certain iBooks and PowerBooks (AlumBooks are included). After installing it, I ended up getting 3.5+ hours per charge instead of ~3 hours.

OS X memory requirements

Apple recommends a minmum of 128 MB RAM for Jaguar/Panther. 512-768MB is more than adequate for most purposes and I've even run 384 MB on some systems. I had a 1Ghz TiBook for ~3 months and ended up selling it because the cooling fans ran constantly.

I did not notice much differece in performance from 667 Mhz to 1 GHz! I had an earlier 667 TiBook for ~4 months a while back and would say that the 667 DVI is somewhere between 15-20% faster. The 800 Mhz system I had for a while definitely felt faster than my 667 DVI. I do not perform heavy graphics rendering or similar operations for which there is no doubt a dramatic performance differential would be more evident.

I've dabbled in G3 "Pismo" and G4 Titanium Powerbooks for a couple of years now. Here is a good comparison of the TiBook 500 vs Pismo 400. I find the Pismo 400 and 500's perform quite acceptably running OS X with anywhere from 192-768 MB of RAM.

Bye bye internet 'ploder

Here is my special farewell to Internet Explorer. You can download a larger version (that looks great as a desktop background) by clicking on the image.





After much debate, I finally plunked down for a new bag to carry my PowerBook. I opted for the Spire endo laptop bag. I travel frequently and needed a relatively thin bag with enough expansion capability to cram extra junk when returning home from trips. The Waterfield Designs Racer-X was on the top of my list except that I did not think it would hold enough gadgets and could not expand much.

I carry a lot of stuff like Cisco flash cards and console cables, Keyspan high speed serial - USB adapter, spare parts, telco stuff, two different CD cases (keep my Windows & OS X stuff separated hehehe), MessagePad 2100, a fair number of papers, etc. This bag comes with a removable sleeve case for carrying just the laptop itself.

I acquired an incase soft-tech laptop sleeve and use it along with the Endo bag since it has one outside pocket for CDs and the AC adapter plus an internal pocket for papers. The sleeve that came with the Endo bag has no pockets.

Apple OS X is the best UNIX-like desktop OS the I've ever seen and I am a total "switcher". Here's my InfoWorld letter to the editor printed back in the October 4, 2002 issue. The OS X interoperability with the Windows 2000 Active Directory based LAN/WAN I deal with at work is "insanely great" not to mention all the BSD UNIX fun stuff that compiles like butter.

Hints and tips

If you are having trouble with your AlumBook latch staying closed, here is what some on the Apple discussuion forums recommended: Pull the LCD screen down as if you were going to close the PowerBook. Just before the lid meets the base of the PowerBook a small magnetic mechanism "pulls" out the metal latch. When it does, grab it and very slightly push it in towards the rear of the PowerBook. This will correctly line up the latch with the receiver and your issue will now be resolved. This was a common issue among new 15" AL books.

Apple Discussions thread to fix it.

There was an excellent hint on MacOSXhints.com about easy access to .term files. You can drop a shortcut on the dock so that when you CTRL-click on it, you can select which terminal session to use. Works great for ssh and telnet sessions! The hint was not terribly intuitive for me so I've created step by step instructions for creating terminal shortcuts.

Are you a SWITCHER having trouble setting up you OS X system to print to a Windows printer you are sharing (or have setup on a Windows domain)? On your Mac, open System Preferences, Print & Fax, Setup Printers, Add, click on the top drop down box and select Windows printing. In the next dropdown box select Network Neighborhood or Workgroup depending on your Windows setup.

A Half-Dozen Essential Open Source Network Administration Tools

If you too are frustrated trying to identify G4 PowerBook part numbers, check out my part number list.

Looking for a color ls version like you had in Linux?

Create Separate OS X and Windows firewire partitions (if you use both PCs and Macs and have a spare firewire drive handy (preferably one with oodles of storage).

Desktop Manager excellent applet that gives your four virtual desktops to switch between. I generally setup mail and IM in one, Safari in another, security tools in a 3rd and then use the 4th one for whatever else I am fiddling with. It was the one thing I sorely missed from Linux! Check here for the latest version.

Here's a link that explains how to compile Ethereal for OS X using Darwin Ports instead of the blind Fink way.

IPGadget is a nice IPv4 subnet calculator.

Geekmonster has a couple of interesting applets: ipinfo (for slicing and dicing TCP/IP addresses) and portfinderv2 (for looking up well known ports).

InterMapper is an excellent network monitoring and alerting package (for OS X and Windows platforms). For home use, they offer a 5 devices for FREE version.

How to force Windows systems to let OS X be the browse master

Magical Macintosh Key Sequences great resouce for the documented and not so well known keyboard shortcuts (including during boot, in applications etc.)

Kevin's Mac Mini page has excellent information if you are considering taking the Mini plunge. I am still partial to Mac Cubes myself...

Migrating Netscape data to OS X from a Windows based system.

If you use Norton Internet Security, there is an Uninstall Utility for version 3.0. It gives you the ability to uninstall individual components such as Privacy Control. Note: Symantec posted a new uninstaller 2005-02-14 which can be obtained here.

Having trouble with winfile.dat attachments? 0utl00k and 0utl00k Express create them when users specify they want fancy colors and fonts (RTF format). TNEF's Enough can get the attachments out of there for you.

Planning a Windows 2003 enterprise with Macs? Read this Mac OS X Hints post beforehand or your OS 9 friends trying to hit the Exchange mail server will be very unhappy.

Setting up MySQL on OS X

SideTrack is an interesting mouse driver replacement for PowerBooks and iBooks that gives you more functionality such as vertical and horizontal scrolling.

Troubleshooting OS X boot problems

Having issues using Cisco's VPN client with OS X Panther? Check out this hint from MacOSXHints.com

You can also view my Microsoft rant

Here's a great article comparing OS X/UNIX vs. Windows OS security.

The Ubuntu Linux distribution looks to be a nice distribution if you want to run Linux on your Mac.

Apple OS X WWW Links

A visit from the FBI interesting article that mentions some interesting information about OS X.

AccelerateYourMac!

Apple Mac OS X v10.3x "Panther" Security Configuration Guide is document created by the NSA and full of useful tidbits for security aware OS X users.

AFP548.com great OS X articles

MacDailyNews has a nice summary of current trade publication news about Apple products.

All OS X Macintosh OS X News and Products

Apache Web-Serving with OSX

Apple's Troubleshooting Mac OS X Web page

Aqua files Nice summary of available OS X Aqua applications with user ratings

Brian Hill's Downloads Excellent freeware / shareware OS X applications!

Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent donationware utility for backing up and restoring OS X hard drives.

Haxial TextEdit For those who are looking for a free editor that you can drag and drop text files on and see the source (for example: drop an .html file on it and you can view and edit the source) this is for you.

Hyper Jeff OS X links

Mac OS X Hints

MacSecurity.org Resources

MCE Technologies has excellent prices on Apple accessories if you are on the hunt for them.

Microsoft's mactopia www page Of particular interest for those who administer Windows boxen is the Remote Desktop Connnection Client for Mac. It allows you connect to a Windows based system running Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services.

Panther: A switcher's guide to what's new in Mac OS X 10.3

Sbook 5 excellent artificial intelligence (AI) based personal information manager that synchronizes contacts with the OS X address book. I use it to keep notes in AND have access to contacts. Hint: if you set notes to "private" they will not end up cluttering your OS X address book when you synchronize.

Speeding... Up! MacOS X

O'Reilly has a nice article for Configuring sendmail on Jaguar

Open source HPIJS for Mac OS X provides high quality printing capabilites for many HP printers via the CUPS spooler which allows printing over any cable connection such as USB, AppleTalk, TCP/IP (LPD and IPP), HP JetDirect and shared MS Windows printers via SAMBA.

MacFixIt OS X Utilties

the PowerBook zone

Search ZDNet OS X downloads

The Practical Mac Configuring Your OS X Firewall also discusses how to block Microsoft anti-pirating "feature" which can pose a significant security threat to your network

Ronald Sandler's Apple OS X great www page that is a good place to start for someone new to OS X.

Running Apple's Backup without a .Mac Account

LaCie's SilverKeeper free and simple backup program. Works like a champ for backing up entire directory structures under OS X.

sunShield preference pane that manages the built-in OS X firewall

CNET Networks ZDNet for the latest OS X shareware/freeware applications.

WhatSize is a wondeful and simple tool (currently in beta) to display the byte sizes of all file in a specified folder and all of its subfolders.

David Alverson's ZTerm serial port terminal emulator. I use it with a Keyspan high speed USB serial adapter so I can plug into LAN/WAN gear and manage it out of band. If you like text mode, instead of ZTerm, you can download minicom 2.1 compile the source and use it instead. Note: you'll need to find the appropriate device name for your Keyspan adapter (ls /dev/cu*), execute minicom -s, and define the proper device name there.

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