Anyone fitted non Apple SSDs into their bit of kit? I have a 2010 27" iMac i7 core and I have an OWC kit to replace the optical drive with an SSD. I am aiming at 256GB Crucial 300 but could be persuaded otherwise. Prices are beginning to drop a little.

Update....

Settled for an OWC 240GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. It arrived from the USA in 48 hours via FedEx at shipping cost of £12.00 [with discount]. SSD itself was £337.00

Now all I have to do is unzip my 27" iMac and remove the 5" Optical drive and ........

Anyone know of a good Mac engineer in the Farnham/Basingstoke/Reading triangle?

Found a really helpful place - Irepair - Apple Repairs - Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey, Wiltshire, London, Kent and South in Basingstoke, :)

My HP Photosmart C7200 does that when I highlight the text and select the button: "Print Selection".

Wirelessly, duplex, etc etc. Much as I hate HP, it does actually work ;)

I have a new 11' Mac Air.
Snow leopard OS.
1.6G chip
4Gb ram
160 Gb memory.

Only a few weeks old and been working fine.

While it was asleep, I plugged in a USB rechargable battery + the cable LAN dongle and then woke the machine up.

All was fine for 30 seconds or so. I went to switch off the wifi when that top right part of the screen's icons disappeared. ie wifi, time etc.

I thought I'd restart it.

It shut down (after telling cyberduck to shut up) and then it "hung" at the white screen, Apple symbol and the little bars in a circle going around.

Tried shutting it down and leaving it for a bit and restarting it.

I have done the Hardware diagnostics check, all ok.
I have tried the repair diagnostics (looks like a "DOS" (I know!!) screen)
and tried rebooting from there, didn't work. Back to the "hung" start screen.

I don't have the rescue USB with me, I am not at home. Any other thoughts?

ta
:ugh: :{ :mad:

Start in 'safe' mode: Hold down the Shift key when booting. It will do a number of checks while starting up so it takes longer than usual. You should see a progress bar (boring grey on grey) though.

redsnail, try

MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

Is usually on top of most mac problems and is bang up to date on new model troubles.

ExXB, tried that, same result, as in, it didn't go further than the grey screen with the progress bars.

Aviate1138, thanks, will have a look.

So far it's all looking like I will need to have the OS USB stick that came with the computer to sort it out. That's at home. I am a couple of thousand miles away...

Thanks again. :)

redsnail - you have zapped the PRAM?

When to reset the PRAM and SMC/PMU | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews


I have now fitted a 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme SSD drive. The iMac boots up in about 12 seconds and a programme that usually takes a good minute or so comes up in around 18 seconds. No whirring sounds and less heat. Took an hour to fit and set up. I am a happy bunny. Will run my Optical Drive externally - when I need it.

Aviate!!!! *MWAH*

That worked!!!!!!!!!!
I had tried that previously but hadn't let it cycle through several "chimes".

YESSSS so pleased!

Ahhh all is now right with the world. :ok:

Never thought I would post in this division of PPRuNe......

I am a died in the wool PC man of many many years. Very happy to tinker and do my thing in Windows and the PC. Just like a comfortable habit.

I am about to embark on a career change and that change will require me to use the Apple Mac. In the classroom, 25 of them all lined up. So I have no option but come to terms with the beast.

The Apple will be used for photography. Running Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc etc. Looking at the Apple store, apart from recoiling in horror at the cost, I was a little confused. It did seem to me that the Laptops are very overpriced, and as you move up the scale, the value element improves. The Mac Pro is fairly equivalent to a PC of similar spec.

The iMac looks to me like a large laptop mounted on a plinth... However it is very pretty, and will it get the job done? Quickly and efficiently?

If I go for the Mac Pro, do I have to buy a monitor from Mac, or will any monitor do?

.. all that a a billion other questions that I do not even yet know that I need to ask.

L337,

The Mac vs PC debate has being going on for decades. The main difference is that Apple produce both hardware and software, whereas Microsoft try to cover all the bases in terms of hardware and have ended up with a (still) DOS-based system which essentially has to be all things to all men; it will always be a compromise as a result. Apple have complete control over the hardware-software combination and can ensure operability in a way that Microsoft continues to find a challenge. Add to this the fact that the software is more intuitive to use, there's no need for antivirus software, and that Apple system updates actually become leaner and faster through its development, and you have a computer which is made as much as possible to have the maximum resources available to the user.

The iMac will more than do the job you describe. iMacs are used all the way from simple word processing to architectural 3D design. The Mac Pro is really more specialist for those who need ultra-fast rendering for their video projects, for example, where uber-performance really matters. However, in 9/10 cases, the iMac will be more than capable. Many web design businesses use iMacs because they are very powerful and look great at the same time. They will be running Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Xpress, Final Cut Studio, Logic.

If you get a Mac Pro, you don't need to use an Apple monitor.

Applemacster.

This may have been true 10 years ago, but is certainly no longer the case! Not since Win 2K (some might argue since Win 95, but that was still 16-bit at heart). Just because there is a command line available doesn't mean that it is DOS-based.

SD

Saab,

Of course, you're right. I'll be more circumspect with my DOS abuse.:O

Any advice please?

I have a MacbookPro less than a year old and have been very pleased with it. Last week however it suddenly decided to act like a PC and slow up. Every web page or app I open I have to wait and wait for.
I have run 2 virus detectors through it and nothing found. Also done a big clean up and deleted many unwanteds but it has made no difference.

Any suggestions?

Kelly Hopper,

If you have any antivirus software on your MacBook, I would strongly recommend that you remove it. There is no need for it, and it might itself be causing the problems.

If that doesn't work, try repairing your permissions. Open Disk Utility, select your Hard Drive on the top left and click "Repair Disk Permissions".

Check that all your system is up-to-date using Software Update in the Apple menu, too.

Applemacster

Thanks for the advice Applemacster but the virus software was installed AFTER the problem arose in order to check if I had been infected. It was then removed. Disc repair has also been affected with no appreciable improvement.
Plenty of disc space available too so it's not a case of being too full.
All updates have been done.
?????

Google in Saudi
 

Hi All

sorry if this has been posted before, I prefer google to any other search engine, however when in arabic countries the search results end up on the right side of the screen, anyone know how to stop this from happening. I have posted in mac stuff because i have one.
regards

I have a bookmark saved for UK Google "http://www.google.co.uk"

When down route I click on the link, and the local Google page is avoided...

Kelly Hopper, you need to allow the Mac to do some routine cleanup operations every now and then. For some reason these "CRON" jobs are scheduled to run by default at between 3am and 5am. Some every day, some once and week and others once a month. You can download free utilities to schedule these jobs to run manually when you want to, just in case the jobs haven't had a chance to run for a while. I use MacJanitor.

Or simply leave the machine on over night every now and then.

Another thing that can help sometimes is to run the built in program called "Disk Utility" and run "Repair Disk Permissions". You should really do this before and after installing new software, apparently, but I tend to just run it once a month or so. It can take a while though, so why not set it running on one of the nights you going to leave the machine on to run the cron jobs, it'll be done by morning.

Occasionally it is a good idea to run the "Verify Disk" option in the disk utility. This also takes a while, and if it does find something, you'll need to boot the machine from the Mac OS X install disk in order to enable the "Repair Disk" option.

Migration assistant from hard disk
 

My 13" white Macbook gave up the ghost on me this week, the motherboard was faulty according to the chaps at two computer shops. I am the proud owner of a new Macbook Pro.

The HD is still intact on the old machine and I would like to use the Migration assistant application to bring over all the data as my time machine back up was a very out of date. The old machine powers up, is that enough to connect it to the new machine for a transfer of data? If I need to take the hard disk out what equipment cables do I need? Thanks.

I would think a cheap hard drive caddy would be the easiest option.

Plug it into the USB port of your new machine and it should recognise it straight away.

Depends how dead the 13" is. If it can boot then do so in Target mode [Cmd + T] having connected via Firewire to the new m/c. Old m/c will be seen as an external drive. A mother board fail makes this unlikely but I will do anything!


All comments are purely personal and generally based on my experience.
What I state is an opinion; I may well be wrong.

Versions10.6 and later this does not apply. Tasks run automatically when waking from sleep mode. I believe there isa Dashboard widget that keeps track of them if you need confirmation that they have run.

It would be nice if you could still use the old machine, however as MM suggests, it would seem that if the mother board no longer wants to co-operate, then it probably won't be able to provide you with the data path to the new 'puter.

Vulcanised's advice seems to be the good option. An external HDD caddy or docking device should do all you require.

However it needs to be able to work with the data port used by your old HDD (SATA, IDE - or something else perhaps), and of course it needs to be able to operate with the Mac operating system in use in the new machine. Such devices seem to be readily available in Australia (at least with SATA connections), so I'm sure you would be able to source them elsewhere.

Good luck,
FoR

I have a couple of these - your old hard disk should be SATA and this works with just a usb lead, no external power required:

Extra Value USB2.0 Caddy for upto 2.5" 500GB SATA.. | Ebuyer.com

Pop the old hard disk in it, then you can either migrate things or just copy them across to the new machine. Once you have retrieved everything you want, you will have a handy external hard drive.

Virtual Windows for OS X
 

Don't know if it has been mentioned before but as an alternative to BootCamp, there are virtual solutions (VM Ware and Parallels) but there is a free open source program called VirtualBox. With it you can have Windows XP and/or 7 or even Linux machines running in the Mac environment. It is easy to setup but you will need the Windows installation media. Here is the URL:-

Downloads - VirtualBox

I have just installed the snow leopard upgrade operating system on my i Mac which had tiger OSX originally but now it seems to be very slow.

Any hints?

Do you have much free capacity on the HD ? How much RAM do you have ? Also if the CPU is an older version it 'might' struggle with the processing compared with Tiger. More knowledgeable answers will be along shortly :8



SHJ

You need approx 10-15GB of space for Virtual Memory Paging, Systems Files, things that get "wired" at start. If you have less than this, the Mac slows down. Lots of I/O operations to/from disk to keep Virtual Memory going. You can see this with the performance manager in utilities.

Spotify on I-Pad
 

Santa brought me an I Pad
Can anyone explain how/if I can get the free version of Spotify onto I Pad ?
I've had the free version on my PC [Windows XP] for well over a year and can download it on to another computer but not the I Pad
[I know Google's my friend but it's not been friendly enough so far]

I've never used Spotify - However, for any App you wish to install on your Ipad, you tap the Apple App Store Icon and do a search for Spotify, or whatever app you are interested in. Some apps are free and some you need to pay for via an Apple Itunes Account. There is a Free Spotify App. You tap on install and the ipad will download the app after you tap in the Itunes Account Name and Password.

It would appear that you also need to have a spotify subscription to use it though!

Hope this helps

OOT.

The iPad will use the iOS application which is the same as that for the iPhone. The app whilst free to download, will only work with paid subscription accounts for Spotify. Only the desktop OS versions of Spotify have the free advert supported mode of operation.

OOT & MacB
Many thanks
NRU

Apple - App Store - Buy, download, and install apps made for Mac. might be of interest to some...... its appears that they are now bringing the ease of Iphone/Ipad purchasing to the Mac.

Mutt

Yes.......But


If you buy through the itunes store then your consumer rights are severely curtailed, part of the T&C's make Apple not responsible for the software they sell so if you have any problem you end up arguing with a company who you have no direct relationship with. This is just an irritation for apps that cost $10 but if you are going to spend hundreds I would be inclined to deal direct.

Problem with Mail on my Mac computers
 

Strange problem being unable to send to some gmail and hotmail addresses. Also on occasion Mail arrives without its subject showing. All works perfectly through mobile me online site so problem is with Mail App.:confused:

use macfixit to seek a solution.

MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

It has answers to most Mac problems

Thanks, I've put the problem there.

Alternatives to iTunes ?
 

I was wondering if any of the mac users here had switched to other music players after getting fed up with the very bloated iTunes these days ? It used to be simple, yet every upgrade makes it more 'whistles and bells' than ever before and i've decided that i want to go back to a player that.....just plays music. So, any user experiences from the panel ? Thanks.



SHJ

MacBook Pro Airport weird symptom
 

Anyone else seen this: using (one year old) MacBook Pro on home wifi (Virgin). Airport shows max strength connection. Family all round me happily using PCs on same connection. But even with Airport still showing max strength the web connection keeps dropping out. Firefox browser.

(Not yet tried any other wifis, but on the road today and will see how it goes.)

Any thoughts???

Algy

do you have
DECT house phones?
Baby Monitor?
Wireless transmitter for AV?
Bluetooth devices?
Garage Door Openers?

To a greater or lesser extent all supposedly interfere with signal. I have had wifi drop out with Wireless AV transmitter and Baby Monitor.