mac diddy

Each time it dumps snow in Colorado (October?!) I find a certain request coming up more and more often… companies want remote access to their server so people can work from home. Can’t make it to school? Well the teacher can email you assignments. Can’t make it into work? A little SFTP magic and you’re working on that file from home.

While this is no doubt good for business productivity and similar technologies save me a lot of trips to clients, it seems the concept of the carefree snow day is a victim of improving technologies. Tunnel into work via the internet? The only tunneling you should be doing today is in real snow, not Snow Leopard!

So in the spirit of sledding and snow angels, I present to you an excuse which just might get you off the hook and into the cold powder and hot cocoa…

“Um, my internet is out. Comcast said something about the storm taking down my local node and they’re working on it.”

Did it work? OK, now get the sled dogs ready and for the love of consistency, don’t post to Facebook!

The Quick and Dirty: Some Snow Leopard users have reported losing their user data when logging into the Guest account on their system and then logging back into their own user accounts.

Who is affected: Apparently those who had a Guest account enabled in 10.5 and then upgraded their systems to 10.6 are potentially vulnerable.

How to avoid: Supposedly if you disable your Guest account and then reenable it, the bug gets ironed out as your system makes a new Guest account in 10.6. That said, it might be wise to simply turn off the Guest account and not use it until Apple releases a fix.

How to fix: If you’ve fallen victim, then you should look at the fix posted by Cnet.

Moral to the story: As I mentioned in a previous article, we early OS adopters are basically glorified beta testers. I’m always beating people over the head with the B word (backup) and early adopters especially have no excuses not to have their data well backed up.

As a support technician, I put my hands on a lot of computers and of course I’ve found that some people take care of their Macbooks better than others. After a couple of years of use they range from grungy and gunked-up to clean and pristine. I tend to fall on the anal-retentive side of the spectrum to the point where I’ll sometimes clean a computer which I am servicing only because touching that grimy keyboard makes me want to scrub the skin off of my hands.

Occasionally I’ll get questions from users about how to safely clean a Macbook. Others want to know how to get the most life from their battery. And so I present part one of a few observations and tips to keep your Macbook looking unsoiled and performing like a champ.

Part 1: Don’t pull the Magsafe adapter by its neck.

Let’s start with safety first. You know that innovative Magsafe power adapter which enthusiastically snaps into place on your Macbook with a satisfying click, yet comes off easily enough that you don’t hose your Macbook when you trip over the chord? Well they’re not invincible and this is a case where an ounce of prevention can save you copious pounds of cure. Prevention tip: when you remove the Magsafe adapter from your Macbook, grab it by the head, not the neck (chord).

It seems that when people repeatedly pull this adapted by its neck, the chord itself stretches and weakens in that area. Over time, this could lead to a broken adapter requiring an expensive replacement… if you’re lucky. In the worst cases, the frayed connectors can actually sizzle and catch fire! It’s all very avoidable by simply developing one good habit (grab it by the head always).

Coming soon, part deux: Cleaning your Macbook

Lots of people are having trouble getting the Lide 80 to work in 10.6 “Snow Leopard”. Well I was able to recreate the issue (application runs, but unexpectedly quits the second you try to perform a scan) and come up with a fix. Instructions:

1. Be sure you have installed Rosetta. It is an option when installing 10.6 Snow Leopard. It is not installed by default, so you will need to customize your install.
2. Be sure you have the latest version of the LIDE80_7275MXEN.dmg file. Even though it is the same old version number, Canon seems to have updated the installed to make it work in 10.5 and up.
3. Run the installer.
4. The problem is that the installer misses one item during the installation. Re-open the LIDE80_7275MXEN.dmg image. Inside you will see a folder titled “Into Users_Shared”. Inside that you will find a folder called CanoScanLIDE80. Copy this folder into Users->Shared on your hard drive.
5. If you’re using Photoshop, look in the disk image for a folder called “Into Plug-In” and copy its contents to Applications->Adobe Photoshop->Plug-Ins->Import/Export. You must run Photoshop in Rosetta in order for the plugin to work. To do so, go to the Photoshop app and click once on it to select it. Then press Command-i to bring up the Get Info window. Click the box which says Open Using Rosetta.
6. Restart your computer.
7. You’re done. Hope this works for you… please let me know!