Mac Myths

Mac Advantages

India is slowly, but certainly, turning into a country of Mac-heads. Lending a huge helping hand in this is Microsoft’s Vista with complaints of slow performance and refusal to do even the simplest of tusks.

So what is the choice for new computer buyers? You have two options. Either move to Linux or stay with Windows XP. Linux is not that easy to use and getting a genuine copy of Windows XP is getting more difficult by the day.

There is a third option. It is no coincidence that Apple launched its new range of MacBooks in India just 10 days after the company’s CEO Steve Jobs showed off its best-ever laptops in the US. After all, India is Apple’s fastest growing market.

There was a time not very long ago when a MacBook or an iMac cost almost Rs 1 lakh. Now the very basic MacBook costs just Rs 56,580. And the entry level iMac comes for Rs 57,600. The machine comes loaded with the operating system OS X Leopard and a host of software for which you pay nothing. Support used to be an issue, but that is no longer the case. Apple trained engineers are present in all major cities. If a fault is found with your computer it is either replaced or repaired within 3 to 5 days.

For all those hesitant to leave Windows let me dispel a few myths.

Myth: Apple’s iPods are fantastic, but its computers are not

Truth: Once you see an Apple computer, its ease of use and sheer speed will impress you.

Myth: I will lose all my windows files.

Truth: You can run almost anything on Macs. With Boot Camp from Apple, you can dual boot your system into either Mac OS X or Windows XP. You can also use virtualization software such as Parallels with which you can run Windows XP, Linux or any other operating system simultaneously with Mac OS X.

Myth: Microsoft Office especially Word, PowerPoint and Excel will not run on a Mac.

Truth: Did you know that there is a whole Microsoft division in Apple’s Office in Cupertino? There work is to ensure that all Microsoft products work on a Mac. Thus Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X gives you Word, PowerPoint and Excel with the same familiar interfaces. If you write your copy on a Mac it will open seamlessly on a PC. Not only that, it will also warn you if the version you are saving will have any compatibility issues. The same goes for PowerPoint and Excel.

Myth: I cannot play games on a Mac.

Truth: The new metal MacBook Pro is now the best gaming machine available in the market. It has stunning display with 3d graphics processor. The revolutionary processor, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M is integrated into the motherboard. In addition, there is a separate and more powerful NVIDIA GeForce 9600M processor with 512 DDR3 Video Memory to provide robust support for 3d games and even faster performance.

For those who want a bigger screen for games, Apple provides a stunning 24-inch LED Backlit widescreen display. MacBook users can connect to this easily. This Cinema display includes a video camera, microphone and speakers.

Myth: Macs are expensive.

Truth: Yes, of course, they are. But Apple hardware and software offer value for money. Steve Jobs was asked whether he would make a cheaper Netbook, a laptop with fewer features, given the gloom all around. He answered: “We don’t make junk.” So it is better to save up and go in for a machine that will not drain your money every other month.

Myth: Macs are proprietary.

Truth: Mac OS X is an open architecture, based on industry standards. It is an open source variant of FreeBSD Unix and developed entirely with openness and interoperability in mind.

Myth: Macs are susceptible to virus, spyware and malware.

Truth: You don’t need any anti-virus software for Macs. Hackers don’t even try to implant viruses because the underlying Unix is tough to crack and there are fewer Macs in the world than Windows. They would rather attack Windows because of its inherent weaknesses.

Myth: Macs won’t fit into my existing network.

Truth: Mac OS X can talk to every major file server protocol on every major server platform on the market today. Leopard includes the major networking protocols for accessing Windows, Linux and Unix. You can wirelessly connect your Mac to any computer in your existing network using Airport Express or Airport Extreme. Both are Wi-Fi routers that give you a speed of 130Mbps.

Vista Alternative

Top Vista and XP Wallpapers

Hot Wallpapers

Hot Wallpapers

Pen Drive Wonder

Thumb drive, pen drive, flash drive — call it what you will, but beyond doubt, the diminutive device has come a long way from being an expensive alternative to floppy disks. Today, they’re much more than NAND-type flash memory encased in a plastic shell with a USB (universal serial bus) interface, they’re part of our lives, the modern day file folder, holding inside them our data (and our livelihood)!


Did you know then that your thumb drive can do much more than ferry data from Point A to Point B? Here’s our pick of the top five things (you probably didn’t know) your thumb drive can do:



Portable applications: Can’t install Firefox at work? Do you pine for your programmes, set up your own way, everywhere you go? Software gurus have reworked versions of assorted applications so that they run directly off your thumb drive. Among my favourites — portable editions of the Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail programme, and OpenOffice suite. Preferences, data files, an d the like all stay on the portable device, so you don’t leave any traces of your browsing history or passwords on the host computer. A one-stop shop for portable applications is at Portable Applications (http://portableapps.com/), which includes a freeware portable application launcher that offers a ton of portable applications, ranging from Office software to web browsers, even music players. This site also offers the Portable Apps Suite, which includes a web browser, e-mail client, web editor, office suite, word processor, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client and FTP client and weighs in at a mere 117 megabytes (44MB for the Lite version).


Of course, armed with the right software, you can be the neighbourhood Dr Fix-It too — load up the AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic (http://www.free-av.com/) and rid the locality of viruses of the electronic kind. It’s free, runs off a thumb drive, and can be loaded on the PC after it’s cleaned, too.



Carry Data Securely: If thumb drives are easy to carry, they’re also easy to misplace. Built-in tools on drives like the Lexar JumpDrive Secure II drives and the Kingston DataTraveler Elite drives let you protect your files with 256-bit AES encryption. In fact, you can even create a partition on the drive that encrypts any file dropped into it and that appears onscreen under a different drive letter. Of course, if security is really that important to you, pick up a thumb drive with a built-in fingerprint scanner, which will secure your data until you swipe the appropriate finger against it.



Experiment with Linux: Most engineering students want to tinker with the popular open-source operating system, but many stay away for fear of modifying their hard drives. An easy option is to download Damn Small Linux, which installs the basic operating system and a bevy of productivity applications — for free of course, in as little as 256MB — that’s the smallest flash drive I’ve got, and it’s been with me for the past seven years!



Carry Windows with you: If you’re paranoid (or ultra-finicky), you can even carry an entire installation of Windows with you. Yes, Windows! It takes a little while to set up, but it’s mostly just moving files around, and you need the original Windows XP install CD, and easy to follow instructions are available at http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176. Of course, your computer must have the ability to boot from USB, which is usually not a problem if you’ve bought it within the past three to four years.



Speed up Windows Vista: If you’ve got a spare USB drive laying around with some free space, you could use it to make Windows Vista work a little bit faster. Using a little-known feature called ReadyBoost, a spare USB 2.0 thumb drive with enough space can speed up the OS performance. Just plug in your drive and choose “Speed up my system” from the AutoPlay menu to enable ReadyBoost, which uses some fancy disk-caching to make Windows a bit snappier. Just keep in mind that for the drive to be ReadyBoost ready, it needs to be over 256MB, have an access time faster than 1ms, be capable of 2.5 MB/s reads and 1.75 MB/s writes — all the stuff you can find on the thumb drive manual.



Automatic back-ups: Yes, we promised five tips, but one more (for free) couldn’t hurt in these times, could it? Make your drive do more as well — if you use your USB thumb drive as a back-up device to hold your important documents, why not make the process easier? Install Allway Sync(http:// allwaysync.com/) or Microsoft SyncToy (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx). Both can let you sync files on your computer with your USB pen drive with ease. You don’t have to do manual copy and paste files — just insert, click and you’re done!

Hard Disc Scavenger

What is your worse digital nightmare? Without doubt it is a hard disk crash that can completely disrupt your life, financial records, and even your entertainment in the form of songs and movies.

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So how does one deal with this potentially dreaded disaster? There are two possible ways a hard drive can become corrupt. One is a hardware failure-when something mechanically goes wrong within the drive. The other is a logical failure- the drive physically works, but data on the drive are corrupted (this can be caused by viruses or a corrupt file)

Hardware drive failures are by far more difficult to retrieve data form, but logical failures, while not easy, are recoverable through third-party software, or costly services that specialize in data recovery. Either way, there is no guarantee that you can get your data back completely.

Here I should warn you that if the data are extremely important to you do not attempt to recover them yourself. You might end up damaging the drive further. You need to take your hard drive to experts and, believe me, it will be a very costly affair.

However, I discovered something free that Windows users cannot do without. Knoppix is a Free and Open Source Live Linux CD. Knoppix is a Linux distribution that boots and run completely from CD. It concludes recent Linux software and desktop environments, with programs such as OpenOffice.org, Abiword, The GimpKonqueror, Mozilla, Apache, PHP, MySQL and hundreds of other quality open source programs.

Knoppix allows you to restore corrupted system files.Using this I was able to instruct someone on how to replace a deleted explore.exe on a Windows XP installation which was preventing Windows from booting. One of the most useful aspects is the ability to boot Knoppix and access a Windows hard drive to back up or retrieve important data. This is useful when you can not boot into Windows because a virus , malware, or user mistake has rendered the hard drive inaccessible. This is by far the best way to get data back from a crashed hard drive. By using Knoppix you can safely back up your data before your disk blows everything away.

With the Resize Windows Partitions there is no need to purchase a third party tool like Partition Magic if you need to reconfigure your hard drive partitions. Likewise, the Clone Hard Drives makes it easy for the users to back up an entire hard drive, or migrate to a new larger one without the use of third party software that needs to be paid for.

Windows users can also scan their machine for viruses offline (with Linux running from the CD), without fear of infecting the machine further, infecting other machines on network, or sending keystrokes(and passwords) to someone else. You can also download patches from Microsoft’s website and put them on the Windows partition so that you can apply them from within Windows when you are not connected on the network. This is useful because a freshly installed Windows XP machine, on an unprotected network-like those that exist in most users homes-can be infected in a few minutes.

There are also some very unconventional methods to get your data back.

Freezing the drive: You can place the hard drive in a sealed bag and leave it in the freezer for a few hours. This can work for some types of problems, but I would only perform this as the last resort.

Positional change: Placing the drive in different positions can also help. Some drives read only when placed upside down or placed on their side. If you get the drive to read , but it begins to overheat while recovering the data, it can be very helpful to cool it down. You could use an ice pack or a fan as long as you are extremely careful not to introduce any moisture, condensation or water which can destroy the drive.

If you get the drive working but start running into errors while copying the data, you might want to try a free program call “Unstoppable Copy” which will continue copying files even when it encounters a bad file. This can be really helpful especially for copying large picture or music folders that have a few corrupted files in them.

Seagate Hard Disc

Good Computer Configuration

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