The current Beta of the next version of Skype is particularly good:

Skype 2.8 Beta – now includes Screen Sharing, improved video and audio.

Applemacster

many thanks form all you help, had a great chat with Mrs ITI on Skype

Sliding Macbook screen!
 

Well not quite.

I have obviously disturbed something which has caused my screen to expand beyond the edges of my Macbook screen. A senior moments prevents me sorting it out!

If I move the mouse pointer to the screen slides to the right and vice versa.

Any top tips to revert to the status quo?

I am not computer bright!

Ta folks

FW

Try pressing alt, cmd and - (minus) to zoom out. Look in system preferences, Universal Access and see whether zoom is turned on - if so turn it off.

BRILL!!!!

Many many thanks:ok:

It was making me dizzy!

FW

Google cookies
 

I'm using Safari ( with cookies enabled ), even after deleting google cookies and not using google - a google cookie re appears !

Anyone have any ideas how to stop this happening ? ( i want to leave cookies enabled ).

I believe you cannot block the Google cookies as Google is the default search engine built into Safari.

There is a method of for changing the default search engine to Yahoo but I would then suppose that Yahoo cookies would automatically be installed.

If you really don't want to use google and really don't want its cookies, make an entry in your hosts file (I assume that Macs have on) with 127.0.0.1 for whatever the google URLs are.

SD

Yes, they do. I wouldn't recommend it, though; it could all go pear-shaped quite easily if you don't know what you're doing!

Edit Mac OS X Leopard Hosts File

Applemacster

I too need a bit of help if you gentlemen (and ladies) have a spare moment.

Mr ATS just bought me a Mac after getting fed up with hearing me moan and moan and moan about me old lappy.
Great little machine the Mac!
I use MSN Messenger very often and when i try to change the (my) display picture to one of the pictures i've got on iPhoto, a message along the lines of "the picture is too big please re-size it" comes up; i don't know how to re-size the pictures, although i had a look in iPhoto, i'm still clueless.
Any advice?

Ta
ATS

PS: Thank all of you who posted helpful links with free software, very much appreciated:ok:

Within iPhoto

Go to file>export>(resize manually)>share>msn messenger.

Hopefully that should do it, hopefully :) However, there might be a preferred size that you can always resize photos to for use on MSN etc. Hope that helps.


Regards


SHJ

In iphoto you can use file, export and save it somewhere in various sizes. Or open a picture with preview (just double clicking a jpg should open it with preview) and then resize it in preview under tools, adjust size. You might want to drag a picture from iphoto onto the desktop and then work on it from there.

Edit to say - timing!

Sorted!
Thank you gentlemen, much appreciated:ok:

Mac To PC File Transfer Problem
 

We take a lot of photos at work and burn them onto a DVD, using the PowerMac G5, 10.4.11, for the customer. Just a straight forward drag the files to a Burn Folder and burn.

On this occasion, the task covered four addresses. The photos for each address were put in individual folders. Each folder was then dragged to the Burn Folder.

Each folder/photo from the subsequent DVD could be read on the Mac. When inserted into the DVD drive on a PC, trying to open each folder resulted in the following message: "Not accessable. The folder has been removed or moved" Selecting the DVD in My Computer and looking at it's Properties gave a file size of 1Gb. Selecting the individual folders gave file sizes of 0 bytes.

Any ideas why this happens?

I can only think it's something to do with the burn process on the Mac. The solution we found was to create the Burn Folder, then create the individual address folders in the Burn Folder, and then drag over the photos to the repective folders.

Any ideas why the second method works but not the first?

Anyone able to recommend a good password manager for OSX?

Keychain. It's part of OS X & will store passwords, secure notes etc. & is likely to do everything that most people need.

Ideally (and this is not default OS X behaviour, but is what I do), make your keychain-unlock password different from your login password. You do need to remember two passwords, but it prevents anything (such as mail) from retrieving a password that is stored in keychain without you explicitly permitting it each time.

For enhanced security, don't use an admin account for your day to day operations (i.e. create a 'user' account & routinely use that one. Reserve the admin account for admin-things). Store applications which you install yourself in a local-to-your-account applications folder (which you can therefore write to as a non-admin user). That way, nothing you do can touch the system.

My leopard/imac has started some strange behaviour recently. I haven't identified anything specific that prompts it to happen (although it may be after it wakes from sleep?) but a lot of HDD activity occurs, programs are very slow or unresponsive often with the pinwheel, then it automatically restarts. Any ideas - web searches are proving fruitless so far.

Background Noise,

It could be a number of things, but there are a couple of things you can try straight away:

1. Check how much free space you have left on your hard drive. Ideally, you need around 4-5Gb of free space for OS X to work properly. Any less than this and there isn't enough room for virtual memory.

2. Have you repaired your permissions? Go to Applications>Utilities and open Disk Utility. Select the top disk in the column on the left hand side and select "Repair Disk Permissions". This is something you ought to do every few months, but especially when new software has been installed.

Applemacster.

Sounds if it is trying to install a major update and failing. 10.5.7 was released today and is over 450 MB.

Try downloading it manually.

Another useful little trick is to restart the machine and hold down the shift key. Hold it down until you see "safe boot" appear. Login then and then restart normally. During a safe boot, the machine carries out some repairs which quite often fixes problems.

Thanks chaps - no problem with space - 78 GB out of 250 free. Don't think it was the software update - it's happened a few times and no sign of any of the update checking routine running. I had done the disk permissions but I've done that again. Wasn't sure that the safe boot would work as I have a wireless keyboard but it did. (I assumed that the OS would have to be running before the keyboard was recognised/paired).

I've just done a manual update out of phase of the autoupdate and it's found the 10.5.7 - mine reports only 286 Mb. Downloading now.

Background Noise,

The updates vary according to your Mac. My Macbook update was 442Mb, yet on the iMac was only 280Mb.

There's another button in Disk Utility marked "Verify Disk". Try this. If it flags up anything, move onto the button beneath marked "Repair Disk". I've only had to use this once when an update went awry. It repairs the file structure of the disk itself, rather than "Repair Permissions" which deals with the applications themselves and associated files.

Applemacster.

For the past 2-3 weeks I've had a problem with steadily reducing disc space available on my MB Air, at one stage down to ~4GB :eek: I can restore the space available with a reboot, and it appears to me to be a caching issue, especially noticeable when using iPhoto. I upgraded to iLife 09 about the time this started, so I have my suspicions :hmm:

Any advice?

Any clues on where to find the mysteriously increasing cache? Nothing found with a search on the web, nor anything in Apple Help.

Could perhaps be swap files getting overly large. Does it get really slow? Try starting Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities, IIRC), and look at the memory tab. If the VM size is more than a 'few' dozen GB, then this might be the culprit. If any individual app is showing huge amounts of Virtual Memory, then it's a problem with that app.

see Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor for a brief intro. As Apple say, don't worry about the amout of 'free' memory.

Tim00,

Thanks: the VM useage is 1.4gb for both Firefox and iPhoto, but my problem is actually the amount of free space showing on the hard drive, in Finder. Normally around 9GB, it steadily decreases as the Air is left on for any length of time, and had got to ~4GB a couple of days ago. This was coupled with slow perforformance, all of which went with a reboot (after a massive Force Quit session!).

All of which leads me to think that some sort of cach/VM is eating into the free disc space, and it seems to be worst when iPhoto is syncronising with MobileMe. This didn't happen with iPhoto 07, so maybe the 09 upgrade is the culprit?

Re: installing Running Parallels 4.0
 

Hi There,


I am not sure if I am posting this in the right place. Apologies if I am, but I need some help from a Mac guru. I am flying somewhat off course into uncharted territory and was planning on on my Mac using Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 3, English, 1 pack DSP OEI.

Do I need a different version of XP or will this version suffice?

That should work - either under bootcamp or VM software (eg VM Fusion or Parallels). Using bootcamp, the mac is booted selectively into OSX or WIndows. The others allow you to run Windows from within a 'virtual machine' which itself is program running within OSX.

You might run into problems with registering the DSP OEI with MS - it's only supposed to be used by system builders on a new build PC.

SD

Thanks for the feedback guys. I presumed that they would compliment each other well as I was actually planning on buying them both on Amazon as they were being sold together.

Parallels Desktop 4.0 (Mac CD): Amazon.co.uk: Software

Do you still think that I am likely to have problems registering the XP with MS considering this point? And in regards to not being a system builder how would MS know that I have not put together my own Mac/PC from scratch? Also would you be able to suggest an alternative Windows XP OS that would not give me these probs?

Thanks again for the help.

:ok:

It's not the OS (XP) or edition (home) per se, it's the version (DSP OEI) that could be a problem.

DSP OEI I believe means “Delivery Service Partner Original Equipment Installer.” It is a version of OEM software used by smaller computer manufacturers and system builders. It is only supposed to be pre-installed on a new PC.

You probably won't have a problem installing it and registering for updates, but bear in mind that all OEM versions are tied to one system ( a one-shot deal), unlike the full retail versions, which can legitimately be moved off one system and installed onto another.

Anyone selling OEM software without an accompanying PC is technically in breach of MS licensing, although I think that they turn a blind eye on the basis that a sale is a sale and better than a totally pirated installation.

However, I'm sure that MS would be particularly sympathetic (should you ever need to contact them) when you explain that it's to install on a Mac! :D

SD

Senior Pilot:

This may be what you're seeing, perhaps?
Help Please

Quote: "I agree with the recommendations to have quite a bit of free space on the boot drive. 10 times the memory seems about right for a working minimum. Recently I've had several clients with only 1 or 2 GB free on the boot disk; they came to me because their Macs had drastically slowed down and they were concerned about a couple of files that could no longer be opened at all. In all cases, their iTunes & iPhoto libraries were enormous, and after we moved them to an external drive and deleted them from the boot drive every thing returned to normal (so far). The one client who had only 725 MB free had to be booted from an external disk so that the trimmimg actions could be accomplished in "real time.""

Two very useful utilities that show the disk space taken by applications and system files like caches, are WhatSize and GrandPerspective. WhatSize simply gives the sizes see below :-

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c2.../what_size.jpg

However, GrandPerspective give a graphical representation of the same, see below:-

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c2...erspective.jpg

The big brown "blob" in the middle is the Google Earth cache of 547 MB.

Priceless! In a Zaphod Beebblebrox way, like, cool. Only on a Mac!:D:D

Do they do a defragmentation utility? I would just love to watch that for a couple of hours! :ok:

SD

Fellow macsters!

One's reliable powerbook is in need of a few small repairs and after telephoning a few advertised repairers, I have been none too impressed with the service. This could well lie in the in the fact that the person answering the phone has little or no technical knowledge, but to entrust my faithful steed based on this (these) first impressions is not encouraging.

Do any of you have any personal experiences/recommendations within an hour of central London ? The repairs are nothing major, but necessary, so I need the repairs to be done quickly and for a reasonable price.

Any help appreciated.


Thanks


SHJ

Drifting slightly off-topic, but OS X doesn't really need much defragging. The OS itself will defrag an individual fragmented file whenever it's actually opened (subject to certain rules about its size, disk free space & file fragmentation). So a fragmented file that's never opened won't get defragged, but that's not important.

OS X doesn't however squash files up in order to optimise the free space into big chunks, so a 3rd party utility could be of benefit there, but it's only likely to be important if you do lots of video editing etc.

Unless things have changed with Windows7, Windows doesn't even do this much.

Going back to Background Noise's problem. You're not using iAnti-Virus are you BN? Sometimes something similar happens to my machine and I find that if I go into Activity Monitor and stop the IAVD process, my macbook returns to normal and the anti-virus resets itself.
If you're not using Ianti-virus - God knows!

Cheers
TN

Safari 4 Beta disk hog
 

I had been wondering for a while where 2Gb of disk space had disappeared, despite deleting lot of redundant files. The answer lies with Safari 4 Beta. I'm a big fan of Safari, especially now it works properly with AIMS. However, I've just deleted 2Gb of files stored by Safari, which are hidden. They are mainly jpeg page previews and ancient history files. The problem is that they are hidden in the Finder.

This article explains it: Safari 4’s Messy Trail - The Thrica Network

You'll need this to find the files: Reveal Hidden Files 1.2 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker

There were 36,000 files in there! :{

AM,

I can't locate the directory quoted in the article (private/etc). Which folder did you find it in?

TIA

Macintosh HD>var>folders>jw>jwHG3BlB2RWHxU+BYmsoq++++TI>-Caches->com.apple.Safari>

The "jw" & "jwHG3BlB2RWHxU+BYmsoq++++TI" bit are specific to my Mac - it will be a different set of letters on yours. However, just go into var>folders and locate the one which has an unlocked -Caches- folder, then the com.apple.Safari folder. It's a bit of a rummage, but worth it if you're limited in disk space.

Applemacster

Thanks: that's accounted for 1.2GB :ok:

I finally gave up and reinstalled OS: now a usable 13gb free, instead of a fluctuating 2 -6gb :(

I think I'll stick to Safari V3 for now, all my issues seem to have started with V4 Beta :hmm: Although I still can't get iWeb to start, even after reinstall, so that'll tie up a long call to Apple support later today ;)