Macintosh How To » advanced

How to run Windows on a Mac

admin — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:18:23 +0000

O dear, this is a tragic topic. Nevertheless, I just installed Windows XP on my Intel Macintosh and it was easy! Windows XP set me back $115, but innotek VirtualBox, the program that let me run windows, was free. It’s pretty fast – it takes about 20 seconds to start Windows (that’s faster than my OSX boots!) and about 6 seconds to turn it off.
Why would you ever want to run windows on a Macintosh? Well I can think of two reasons.

1. The Australia Tax office does not put out a version of their tax return software for Macintosh.

2. If you are a web developer, developing on a Macintosh, your sire will probably look great on every browser except for Windows Explorer. That’s because Windows Explorer has lots of bugs in it and doesn’t display things properly. For this reason, it is a must that you test your websites in Explorer. Seeing as Microsoft have stopped supporting Macintosh, the only way to run Explorer on a Mac is to install Windows. What a shame!

So with that by way of excuse, here’s how to do it…

There are a few options to run Windows on an Intel Macintosh. Boot Camp, Virtual Box, Parallels and VMware Fusion. The first two are free. If you just want to run Windows totally separately to OSX, turning off the computer between OSX and Windows, then go with Boot Camp, it works well and it’s free!

Parallels (click here to download) is better if you want Windows applications more integrated with mac – you can drag and drop between windows and OSX! There is also a program called VMWare Fusion (click here to download) which is like parallels but there doesn’t seem to be as much hype about it – I’m not sure why. It’s meant to be faster than Parallels. You can download both for a 30 day free trial and work out which one you like.

With Bootcamp, Microsoft Windows takes over the whole computer. With Parallels Windows runs inside a window. So Parallels is better for integration, (eg you want to run one or two windows programs easily) but Boot Camp better for performance (eg you want to play games).

I decided that I’m certainly not a serious Windows user, so I downloaded VirtualBox. (click here for download page and select binaries – OSX) It downloads and installs like a normal mac program. When you run it, it comes up with a menu, I selected new, and it asked what kind of machine I wanted to make:

I chose Windows XP. It tells you to put the install disk in your CDROM drive, it asks a few questions, like how much RAM and so-on. I just picked the default answer every time. Then before you know it Windows is up and running. It automatically worked out all the settings. I didn’t have to put in any network settings, or load any drivers or anything. It just worked! I clicked on Windows Explorer and it’s surfing the web.

And here it is, Windows running inside Mac OSX….

Here are some of the settings. As I said, I know nothing about windows so I just used all the ones it suggested.

Oh, and don’t go with Vista, reports are it’s a mess. You can buy Windows XP second hand off ebay. I got a Windows Professional Service Pack 2, whatever that means, for $115.

G4 logicboard fault model numbers

admin — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:02:06 +0000

This is the results of a survey I conducted over a year to see what different models of the G4 ibook are affected by the logicboard fault.

In this article I described the fix for the G4 motherboard fault, but it seems from the comments that more models are affected than what I described there.

SYMPTOMS:

After being on for a few minutes, your ibook gets a blank black screen, the fan turns on, and the computer freezes.
You can’t do anything at all except power down the computer by holding the power button.
You restart and it doesn’t boot up.
You squeeze the bottom of the computer tightly together just to the left of the trackpad, and it boots up.
It tends to boot up when it is cold, but then stops working when it warms up.

Still unsure? Read more about the symptoms here and here.

Here are the results of a survey regarding the affected models:

How to make your printer run cheaply

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:42:31 +0000

This hint is not strictly Macintosh, but it’s so good I have to write it up. Did you know you can get what they call a Continuous inking system (CIS) for most big name inkjet printers? It continually feeds the ink into the printer so you don’t have to change the cartridges! You can see the big containers of ink in the photo above – they sit next to the printer.

Here is a picture of the inkjet cartridges which replace the old inkjet cartridges. These new ones have little tubes running from the ink tans into them to deliver the ink.

I purchased mine from RIHAC in Melbourne, Australia. They have a good unit, with good instructions as well as good phone support, the sell the CIS system for about $150 and it comes with I think it was 100ml of ink per color. Installing the CIS system is about the same complexity as changing a pushbike tyre, or sewing a button on a shirt. If you can follow instructions, you should be able to install it OK. Mine’s been going about a month with no problems at all.

How to fix a loose hinge on an Aluminium Powerbook

admin — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:19:34 +0000

If you’ve got an Aluminium Powerbook, they are a great machine, my personal favourite laptop, but after a few years the hinge can get a little loose. Thankfully this is not like the old Titanium powerbooks where the hinge was broken, it is just a matter of a few screws that need to be tightened! Here’s how to do it.

1. First of course is power it down and remove the battery. Then you need to find two screws like this, one each side, and undo them with a torx size 6 screwdriver.

2. Now carefully prise the back of the lid apart like this. Be VERY CAREFULL when prising the back off the screen not to damage the plastic, or apply too much pressure, or force anything. There are little lugs, and you need to prise the plastic over those lugs and back to get it off. The plastic comes off the back with the case that has the apple logo on it, so you pry between the plastic and the aluminium surrounding the LCD screen like this.

When you have worked your way up the sites, and over the top, the lid will pretty much fall off like this.

These are the screws you need to tighten, there are 4, and the ones on the left are covered by a little piece of yellow sticky tape you need to remove and then replace after you are finished.

The tightening!

That’s it, now carefully put the sticky tape and lid back together, and replace the two screws. It should take about 1/2 hr to an hour.

Search problems in Mail application

admin — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 05:35:21 +0000

I’ve been having a problem with mail – I can’t do a search on ‘entire message’. It is greyed out. There are all kinds of ‘fixes’ available on the internet, but most of them didn’t work. Finally I fixed it and here’s a summary of the most useful advice, try it in this order:

1. Have a look in ~/Library/Spotlight and make sure there are no plugins that might be causing problems. For example, I had an old Mailtags Plugin that was 2 years old, so I deleted it.

2. Make sure you haven’t excluded your mail folder in the spotlight privacy tab (spotlight preferences)

3. Reset the entire spotlight database by opening a terminal window and typing

sudo mdutil -E -i on /Volumes/*

(It will ask for your password)

4. Open Mail and click on Mailboxes:Rebuild.

That resets spotlight and mailboxes, which I think just about covers all options.