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The Low End Mac Link Archive, December 2000
Low End Mac Reader Specials
Memory To Go Special: MacPro 8 Core 8GB kit $232 / 4GB kit $116 / 2GB kit $72. New Macbook 2GB DDR3-$65. HARD DRIVES available -- Free shipping / LIfetime warranty.
LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, Apple Batteries and Apple A/C Adapters. Also Great prices on Used Apple Computers. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.
External news links are listed below by the date of publication
with the most recent articles listed at the top, older ones below
them. Other monthly archive indexes are linked on the right. Links
were correct when originally posted. However, we cannot guarantee
that these links are still active.
Opinion: Why
Newer failed and how Apple may follow, Bob Moriarty, MacCPU
Café, 12/29. "You can have truly superior products and
unlimited demand and still fail. All you have to do is consider
your customers the enemy."
Opinion: Step backward to go
forward, John Holmes, osOpinion, 12/29. "...Apple's only hope
for survival is to get OS X on as many boxes as they can, as
quickly as they can."
News: Newer
Technology closes doors, MacNN, 12/28. A real loss to the Mac
community, since Newer made some of the finest accelerators on the
market. Also see article on MacCentral.
Analysis:
Slower than its predecessor: Pentium 4, David Pogue, NY Times
(registration required), 12/28. Unthinkable? Not to Intel, whose
1.5 GHz P4 is slower than a 1 GHz PIII.
Analysis: Pentium 4: In depth,
Emulators, Inc., 12/27 [
Slashdot]. "...Intel's new flagship Pentium 4 processor turns
out to be an engineering disaster...."
Humor: Zap the PRAM,
Macboy.com. This week, an animated cartoon.
Opinion: Ode on a Blue G3 (dead link), Niko Coucouvanis,
MacAddict, 12/26. "That's right- I use a machine that's nearly two
years old, and I love it, Moore's law be damned. "
Benchmarks: Dual G4/500 smokes 1.4 GHz
P4, Bare Feats, 12/22. Power Mac G4/500MP beats 1.4 GHz P4
machine in Photoshop, Cinema, Bryce, and Quake III Arena tests.
Just wait until we close that MHz gap. ;-)
Analysis: The LCD update: Still
no headaches, Gene Steinberg, Mac Night Owl. After several
months with LCD monitors, headaches remain at bay. Also, prices
should drop in the coming year.
Tech: Table
of RAM compatibility for 68k Macs, Jag's House. Almost
everything you'd want to know about memory upgrades for Macs
(except what capacity SIMMs each model supports).
MacInSchool: A gaggle of
LC IIIs, part 2, Steve Wood, View From the Classroom, 12/21.
Ongoing project to provide special ed students with take-home
computers.
SETI@home breaks 500,000 years, Slashdot, 12/20. No sign of ET,
but 2.6 million users have completed over 2.5 billion work units.
(See SETIonMac for more
info.)
Virus:
Kriz virus makes return appearance, ZDNet/Yahoo, 12/20. Virus
piggybacks on other viruses, strikes on Dec. 25, wipes hard drive
and BIOS on PCs, currently ranked #8 infector by Trend Micro.
Tech:
Can disk drives keep up with faster PCs?, c|net, 12/19. Serial
ATA designed to replace parallel ATA for drive, compete with
FireWire, improve performance, and reduce cost.
Science: Time for
change, Fox News, 12/18 [
Slashdot]. Proposal for "human calendar" with 13 months of
28 days seems sensible, but we're such a change-resistant
species.
Review:
Three photo printers, Digital Camera Resource Page, 12/17.
Quality, speed, consumables, and more.
Tech:
What is an HFS Wrapper?, Ask Al, Alsoft, 12/19. "Only the Mac
OS 9.0.x System file contains the errant wrapper System file
startup code."
Tech: Multiprocessing
in Mac OS X, David Read, MacWeek, 12/19. Good explanation of
cooperative vs. preemptive multiprocessing and support for multiple
CPUs.
Analysis:
Macintosh fellowship, David Schultz, Applelust.com, 12/18.
"This is the best argument I know that Apple needs its own retail
stores: Only a Mac lover can sell Macs- one cannot fake it."
AAPL: Apple's
K-10 and Apple's future, Wes George, Apple Trader, Mac
Observer, 12/18. "...complex systems never fail for simple
reasons."
Technology: Ten passed
technologies, Nick Montfort, Technology Review [Slashdot]. Elegant technologies that are
disappearing.
Opinion: Corporate
arrogance and fan websites, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks,
12/18. "Warner Bros has . . . provided Apple with an object lesson
in how to address the issue of fan support websites...."
Humor: Zap the PRAM,
Macboy.com, 12/18. Today, a look at mammals.org.
Opinion:
Rid thyself of angst concerning OS X on pre-G3 Macs, Bryan
Chaffin, Back Page, Mac Observer, 12/15. "...if you are doing the
things you do today two years from now, your Mac will still be
performing just as well then as it does today"
Hack: Wrappers
for your G4 Cube, Patrick O'Kelly, ResExcellence, 12/15. How to
change the appearance of the Cube- the computer itself, not the
desktop.
News: Flat-panels
prices "set to halve," Macworld UK, 12/15. By next Christmas,
flat panel displays may cost half as much. $2,000 Cinema Display
anyone?
Software: Apple Disk First
Aid v8.6 covered at Macs Only!, 12/15. Among other things, this
fixes a "Wrapper System file error." It has found this error on
almost every partition we've run it on- and fixed it.
Opinion: Should
OS X be dumbed down?, Rodney O. Lain, iBrotha, Mac Observer,
12/15. "...the computer needs to take on a level of complexity that
would never have been accepted by the masses of old."
Opinion: Why
Apple didn't die, Marc Zeedar, Mac Opinion, 12/14. "No ordinary
PC company could have survived the mistakes Apple made."
Opinion: It's like a little
office, John Holmes, osOpinion, 12/13. "Wasn't the whole reason
for the Mac's creation, to allow all of us to feel comfortable in
front of our machines?"
2000. Year
in review, MacFixIt, 12/13. Well, someone had to be first.
AAPL: One for
the money, Andrew Shalat, MacWeek, 12/12. "Back in September,
when Apple's stock dropped to 20, I bought about 50 shares."
Opinion: The
best Mac OS ever?, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks, 12/12.
"...crashes of any sort, were virtually nonexistent running this
setup, and it was speedy, even with the puny 8 MHz 68000 processor,
and a paltry 2.5 megabytes of RAM."
Opinion: Dueling
email client proponents, John H. Farr, Applelinks, 12/12.
Emailer vs. Eudora vs. Outlook Express. Hint on speeding up
OE.
Opinion: Microsoft
& bloatware revisited, Michel Munger, On the Flip Side, Mac
Observer, 12/12. "The dirt: quite a few applications that people
describe as bloatware are actually full of the types of features
that are far ahead of everybody's needs."
Opinion: The many flavors of
spam, Mike, osOpinion, 12/12. "The spambots have been working
overtime...." As if we didn't already know that. ;-)
Opnion: One step forward,
none back, John Holmes, osOpinion, 12/12. "'...what was so
great about the SE/30, that a PC machine of the same generation
couldn't do.' I told him, evolve."
Opinion:
Moore's pretty good law, David Coursey, ZDNet, 12/11. "Most
people already have more megahertz on their desktops than they can
really use."
Oops: Mac USB not 1.2
Mbps, MacFixIt, 12/11. Quoting from the Roxio/Adaptec
newsletter: "Apple's USB device driver . . . has a maximum data
transfer rate of 680 KB/sec." and is therefor unsuitable for 4x CD
burns.
News: Verizon clears
backlog of spam, Webmaster Inc., 12/10 [Slashdot]. Some email delayed for hours
by tens of millions of junk emails flooding mail servers.
Low end: System 6
Heaven, Marten van de Kraats. "System 6 will make any vintage
Macintosh computer as fast as a G3."
Opinion:
Apple's pain is your gain, Bryan Chaffin, Back Page, Mac
Observer, 12/8. The best time to buy a new Mac may be before
Macworld Expo, not after.
Review: Ecrix VXA-1
tape drive, Paul Shields, Business Mac, 12/8. This is the drive
we use for backup at Low End Mac- recommended!
Review: iListen,
Charles W. Moore, Moore's Views and Reviews, Applelinks, 12/8.
"...iListen offers functionality that has never before being
available on the Macintosh."
Analysis: Reasons to keep your old
Mac, Gene Steinberg, Mac Night Owl, 12/8. Some things a lot of
low-end Mac users already know.
Dark side: Microsoft's Y2K
security holes: 93 and counting, The Register, 12/8. "The trend
in security breaches, particularly with respect to any software
package carrying the popular Microsoft brand name, is clearly
up.
Analysis: Why aren't more
Macs being sold?, Gene Steinberg, Arizona Central, 12/7. it's
our fault - we hold onto our Macs too long. :-)
Mac-N-DOS: SoftMac 2000, Emulators,
Inc. Stuck working on a PC at work, home, or school? SoftMac
emulates a 68k Mac, runs Mac OS 8.1, and reads Mac floppies.
Reap what you sow:
Californians told to cut power use, AOL/AP, 12/7 [Slashdot]. 2,500 megawatts due to from
plants closed because they reached the state's annual limit for
pollution.
Opinion: Down
with TLDs!, Marc Zeedar, Mac Opinion, 12/6. "What matters is
your actual domain name, not the extension. What good is getting a
.net version of your domain name when someone else owns the
dot-com?"
Analysis: AAPL: How
low can it go?, Wes George, Mac Observer, 12/6. Apple stock
below $15 after news of anticipated quarterly loss.
Analysis: Apple's
CD-RD strategy, xYankee, AppleInsider, 12/5. Jobs notes Apple
"totally missed the boat" on recordable CD. Sources expect Apple to
address this soon.
Software: Connectix
unveils Virtual PC 4.0, MacCentral, 12/4. Faster, more space
and memory efficient, allows multiple concurrent Windows sessions.
Requires G3 or G4.
News: G3
available at 700 MHz, IBM [Accelerate Your Mac]. "Models
include the new 350-700 MHz PowerPC 750CX and 750CXe."
Humor: Zap the PRAM,
Macboy.com, 12/4. Latest cartoon from William Levin.
Virus: Virus
writers send Christmas gifts, Yahoo/Reuters, 12/4. "...the
first two Christmas viruses already spreading fast." In the Windows
world, of course.
Analysis: Upgrades
in store for the Cube?, MacWeek, 12/1. Faster CPUs, better
video cards, larger hard drives, and higher capacity DIMMs all
possible.
Virus: "Creative"
virus spreading quickly, c|net, 12/1. "The virus, dubbed
'Creative,' carries no destructive payload, but automatically
emails itself to a victim's entire email address book." Windows and
Outlook Express; user must run file "creative.exe".
Digicam list,
Leben Lists. General discussion about digital cameras.
Benchmarks: FireWire vs. SCSI Orb
drives, Bare Feats, 12/1. Compares SCSI drive with three
different FireWire solutions.
Opinion: Video CDs: Movie viewing on non-DVD PowerBooks, John
C. Chen, PowerBook Source, 12/1. Video CD also works on many Power
Macs and clones.
News: 
News: