MAMA's Techno-Geek Thread

[m2smith]

You can always put your MOT raffle tickets into the bucket for the Cambridge Soundworks 740 radio/CD. It has dual alarms (in case he doesn't wake up the first time ?1?) and two AUX inputs - and a mixing input (allows your computer to be playing at the same time as something else - mixed together - my son liked to game to different tunes than the game, but would still need to hear the various burps and beeps...) It sounds great, but Josh is right - nothing beats a real stereo for sound. Depending on the floor he gets in a dorm though sometimes it might not be worth hualing it all up

[GadgetGav]

We tried the JBL round thing (is it the On Stage?) and it sounded really bad turned up. We switched to the JBL 'Creature' sub + satellites which are much better, but I'd still say an amp and bookshelf speakers would sound better. Plus it would have radio too... I understand that is still broadcast

[GadgetGav]

If anyone cares, I'm not sending back my HDV camcorder and upgrading - the Ikelite underwater housing has figured out a way to operate the touch screen through the housing, so I can still set white balance. The cost saving goes at least half way to buying said housing even including the rebate that was available!

[Pamlico]

Installed Parallels on our daughters MacBook this evening. It creates a virtual machine running under OS X onto which any number of different OSs can be installed - can actually create a number of VMs and have a different OS running in each one and switch between them. I installed WinXP on this system. Using purely default settings things were set up perfectly, - sound, graphics, networking, mouse, USB, CD drive, etc - all appear to be working fine. No need to reboot to switch between OS X and XP as with Boot Camp, just click on the activate button in Parallels and XP starts up in a window, but can also run in full screen mode.

The one thing I did notice is that things (especially graphics) seem somewhat laggy as compared to XP installed on a partition created using Boot Camp. This isn't surprising as the MacBook has only 512 MB of RAM, some of which is shared for graphics. Also, while it's a virtual machine, and the MAC OS is essentially shut down while XP is running, some resources have to be hanging around somewhere to manage things.

Overall, Parallels is quite impressive, but would greatly benefit from having more RAM on the host system. At this point my recommendation to our daughter will be to use Boot Camp as lets the MacBook boot directly into Windows with no need for a VM. There is also software available for use with Boot Camp (MacDrive6) which can mount the Mac partition on the Windows desktop and allows files to be copied directly from XP to the Mac side of the house.

[benzamg]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pamlico

]The one thing I did notice is that things (especially graphics) seem somewhat laggy as compared to XP installed on a partition created using Boot Camp. This isn't surprising as the MacBook has only 512 MB of RAM, some of which is shared for graphics. Also, while it's a virtual machine, and the MAC OS is essentially shut down while XP is running, some resources have to be hanging around somewhere to manage things.

yup.. definitely could use more ram.. i noticed a huge speed improvement while running parallels after upgrading from 512 to 1.25gb.. like night and day... And now apps that run inside rosetta feel pretty zippy.. similar in speed to my G5 1.6ghz..

[jwardell]

(speaking from experience) running parallels with only 512MB means only about 128 MB is given to windows. $158 later for 2 GB of ram and it runs blazing fast.

[Pamlico]

Quote: Originally Posted by jwardell

(speaking from experience) running parallels with only 512MB means only about 128 MB is given to windows. $158 later for 2 GB of ram and it runs blazing fast.

XP no like 128 MB RAM. Since it's our daughter's system and things run nicely with Boot Camp, the decision is made.

[Aqualung]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pamlico

XP no like 128 MB RAM. Since it's our daughter's system and things run nicely with Boot Camp, the decision is made.

The site Josh mentioned http://ramseeker.com/scripts/sortPri...hipping =true has better prices than Crucial, I'm going that route....

hey, how many of you have just ordered the 60 and gotten a compatible drive 3rd party instead, for a higher capacity/performance (7200rpm vs 5400 w/ on board mem) for a lower price? how to you transfer the OS? Does the MacBook come w/ MacOS X and all the utils on CD?

I don't have access to a disk duplicator.

[GadgetGav]

The laptops come with restore CDs / DVDs but you can also use utilities like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to copy entire (bootable) drives.

[Aqualung]

Quote: Originally Posted by GadgetGav

The laptops come with restore CDs / DVDs but you can also use utilities like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to copy entire (bootable) drives.

Thanks, I've been away from the Mac world for a loooong time. Oh for the days of Dark Castle on the MacSE

[Pamlico]

Remember the Christmas Day easter egg in Dark Castle?

[jwardell]

Remember level 18 of Crystal Quest?

[Pamlico]

Quote: Originally Posted by jwardell

Remember level 18 of Crystal Quest?

I hated that game (probably because I stank up the room when I played).

[m2smith]

OK I'm stuck - Anyone know a way to record something onto my Mac from it's own mic?
I have Garage Band or Audio Hijack - Garage band is easy enough if I had an external mixer and Audio Hijack will record anything that passes sounds my Mac makes, but I can't seem to find an app it can hijack it from...
Idaes - solutions - help!!!!

[snid]

If you have quicktime pro, I think there's a "new audio recording" item in the file menu.

Or, go to control panels -> sound -> input and I think that will "activate" the mic, but I don't know if that passes the sound back out through the speaker... if it does, perhaps you can hijack the sound from the control panel application?