Well my MacBook Pro reached the 2-year-old mark and it was starting to show its age a bit, I use it near 24 hours a day, it’s always doing something… downloading, ripping, encoding, you name it! I have it set to never go to sleep.

In all that time it has never had a hiccup. The battery is in need of a replacement, it’s at about half of it’s original capacity which is not bad for a machine that has seen as much run-time as this one has.

I would actually still be using it but lately my trusty MacBook Pro has been letting me know to ease up a bit, I have been experiencing some annoying video card artifacts when I push it to the limit graphically speaking that is. This seems to only happen when I do my Screen Cast recording or other heavy duty video related work. I get these periodic and random horizontal lines in the video and as you can imagine this is not good when I am trying to record to print for my new Mac Video Training videos. It only happens when things heat up, if I start on a fairly cold Mac I can work for a while with no problems but as I said my MacBook Pro is usually working away so it stays pretty warm most of the time… Worst of all I didn’t get Apple Care which would have covered the battery and screen issue so for now resolving this issue would not be economically viable.

My previous MacBook Pro was the last generation Intel Core Duo (Not the Core 2 Duo) running at 2GHz. I had maxed it out to the 2GB of RAM limit and also upgraded the internal 80GB hard drive to a 160GB drive. The video card was an ATI Radeon with 128MB  of VRAM. My older MacBook Pro did not have a FireWire 800 port, the Dual Layer DVD burner or the 802.11n capabilities. (but rather a 1 FireWire 400, Single Layer Super Drive and 802.11b,g) Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a common and very good question, which contact management suite should I use? Well if you haven’t purchased Office for Mac 2008 then the answer is pretty obvious, you are going to be using the Mac included contact management solution that consists of three separate programs: Mail, Address Book and iCal.

Now if you purchased Office for Mac 2008 you may just be thinking to yourself, I want to get my monies worth so I may as well use the included MS Entourage Contact management program that seems very “Outlook” like. I’d say the best thing Entourage has going for it is it’s resemblance to Outlook so it may feel a bit more comfortable to some Switchers. There in lies the trap, “Familiarity”… If “comfort or familiarity  is the main reason you are considering going with Entourage you may want to think again.

Now I don’t want to seem like an MS basher but there are some things that you will need to consider before committing to using Entourage, and by committing I mean committing because once all your email, contact lists and calendar events are imported into Entourage it’s not going to be fun having to move them over to Apple’s Mail, Address Book and iCal.

So what about getting your Outlook data over to the Mac, wouldn’t it be easier to move Outlook data into Entourage rather then Apple’s contact management solution? The short answer is it’s the same solution for both, I strongly suggest you pay the $10 to Simple Machines and use (O2M) Outlook to Mac for the heavy lifting. You will shave off hours of your time and the end result will be all your contacts, email and calendar info transferred into either Entourage or Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal - your choice.

Both the Apple and Microsoft solutions will work well and will do most of the same things so what do I suggest, I never thought you would ask? I say go with Apple all the way and here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

I had decided to volunteer to review the Audioengine AW1 Wireless Adapter for switchingtomac.com forums. Therefore, this review encompasses using a Mac with this product, and PC was not tested. In short, this device is meant as a means to wirelessly transfer your music from your PC or nearly any device, such as iPod and Game Consoles, to speakers or a Stereo receiver (through RCA inputs).

First, I must admit, I am not a huge audio guy with stereo surround sound or even a really nice stereo system. I do have a Sony 5 CD changer, but could not get the wireless devices to work with that Sony unit and speakers. I don’t believe this device is exactly meant to work with these types of “bookshelf” components, but I tried. It works mainly with stereo receivers, subwoofers, and powered speakers. However, I was able to get the wireless devices to work with my GE speakers that were connected to my PC. I disconnected the speakers from the PC and set them up next to a power source and connected the wireless receiver device to the speakers and connected the sender device to my Apple MacBook.

Once I was able to successfully connect all the devices to speakers, the rest was incredibly easy. For Mac OS X Leopard, you will need to change the sound settings found in “System Preferences/Sound” and change from Internal Speakers (for MacBook) to Audioengine AW1 for output source. In my case, I was roughly 20-25 feet away from the wireless receiver device to give you an indication of space from MacBook to wireless receiver. Read the rest of this entry »

Review by wraith2021

This is the first game review I have ever done, that is not to say I don’t play games, I have for many years, but this is one of note because this is a Mac game.

Shock! Horror! Macs don’t have games! I hear you cry. Well, they do now, and they are identical to their PC counterpart with exactly the same graphics.

I will start by saying that Macs do not have as good of a reputation when it comes to games, this is because of the minimal market share the Mac had in the past, and the limited capabilities of some of the older Macs. Since the switch to Intel however things have been looking up for the Mac; market share is ever increasing, Macs are on par with PC’s hardware wise, and Macs are now picking up on the game front too.

After playing the demo I found myself wanting to get this game, this is not to say that the Mac had any real impact over say playing the demo on the PC, but the game is identical in every way to its PC counterpart.

I will start by saying I am running this game on a 24″ iMac, 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme, 2GB Ram, ATI 2600HD 256MB. Basically a gaming Mac with a big glossy screen.

The first thing I did when I installed the game (When I say installed, I mean I dragged the Icon from the DVD to the Applications folder.) was to set all the settings to Maximum to see how it performed. I must admit the graphics are smooth and amazing My Mac had no trouble running this game with all the bells a whistles turned on. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of you are probably aware of my recent decision to get an iPod Touch instead of waiting for an iPhone to come to Canada. Previously, I was using an O2 Xda mini Pocket PC based phone but unfortunately Leopard and my Pocket Mac software where not cooperating and I really wanted a phone that just worked without too much monkeying around…

I retired my O2 the day I got my iPod Touch and recycled an older Sony Ericsson T616 into use again that had played well with my Mac over Bluetooth using iSync. The T616 was OK but had always been a bit flaky signal wise and it seems like the Bluetooth headset pairing was not up to par with some of the newer phones. Stuff just gets better, what can I say! Read the rest of this entry »

I love my solitaire and I know I’m not alone on this one! I stumbled on this little gem of a free solitaire program for Mac that works great and has lots of eye candy to boot.

Get Solitaire XL for Mac here

I got a really pleasant surprise today, I went outside to take some garbage out and low and behold there it was, a rather small box with what I later realized contained my Give-One-Get-One XO Laptop.

I brought it upstairs and opened it, it’s really small! I have heard that the keyboard is unusable for adults but I am actually using it to type up this post and I am surprised at how well it works. It is no MacBook Pro but I can see myself taking this with me when I don’t want to take a bulky laptop. It surfs the web just fine and even works with WordPress so I can post some updates if I need to.

I did have one very catastrophic event with it, I had to do a hard restart (Held the power button down to shut it off) and the result was an XO Laptop with a corrupt system, it just wouldn’t boot up, I tried all sorts of things and ended up erasing and reinstalling the entire Sugar system. So now I actually have a newer OS version (G1G1 XO’s come with version 650 and now I have version 653) . It was actually a very easy install, download a couple of files to a USB flash drive and then reboot while holding down the 4 keys on the right side of the screen, XO just does the rest, erases and loads the new OS.

I will talk some more about it later but I wanted to send out a quick post about my first day XO Laptop ˜experiences.

The Mac Book Pro is the clear choice for the professionals and recreational users with a
penchant for top-end applications. Sure enough, programs like Apple’s Final Cut, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe After Effects can all run without breaking a sweat regardless of the size of the project. They are as fast, powerful, and internally customizable for the needs and requirements of any job – of course this luxury does bring with it a hefty price tag.

So why then has a student, who is not yet at a professional standard, and has only just made the
switch to Apple Mac bought a Mac Book Pro as one of two of his first machines? I have been using a PC since I was 8 years old. Initially I had no problems with them mainly because an 8 year old didn’t want anything from a PC apart from paint and something that could play the latest games.

Another thing that allowed me to believe the ideal that their weren’t any “PC problems” was that I didn’t know what they where, anything that came up was dealt with by my parents and I would remain shadowed in ignorance. In 2004 and two PC’s later I finally had my own computer. The car ride home from its purchase was magical – I had my very own PC. My first experience with it wasn’t as awe-inspiring as I believed it would be; there were problems within the first hour. Read the rest of this entry »

Avenir is a new kind of software for writers. Part word processor, part database, completely focused on the creative process. Whether you are brainstorming for your first short story or putting the finishing touches on your latest best-seller Avenir provides the tools you need to manage the creative process from inception to publication.

At the end of October my wife decided she was going to joint in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which was from the start to the end of November. This contest required you to write a 50,000 word Novel in just 30 days, so that is roughly 1,666 words a day minimum. My wife did 2000 words a day as there were some days where she would not have the time to do any writing. Needless to say she passed the challenge and received her certificate a few hours before midnight on the 30th of November.

Now my wife was stuck with a 50,000 word fantasy novel, which was quite good, but was only half way through the story, so it would take another 50,000 words or there about to finish. The problem we were seeing was the effects of if you just write, no editing, no turning back, just get the story out, seems to bring out the inner creativeness, with this in mind my wife carried on writing, no looking back, no editing, but at a much slower pace as there were no longer a time limit, no longer a goal to race for. This is when she got interested in getting some books on how to write novels, she was doing research and toning her writing ability. Read the rest of this entry »

For those who are regulars on the Switching to Mac Forum, you already know that I have been putting off Switching my main Mac to Leopard. The reason being - it’s my main work machine, combined with starting my S2M Computer Consulting business and needing as few distractions as possible, some compatibility issues with my productivity software and syncing programs and the potential for some other Leopard bugs to get in the way of me actually getting stuff done.

I have installed Leopard on several machines, two other Macs in my home (iBook G4 & MacBook) but both of these machines where not mission critical being they belong to my Wife and Mother-in-law. I also installed Leopard on a few Customer machines. In most cases I simply used the Upgrade option but all the Macs in these situations had very basic software configuration unlike my main work Mac.

I really needed to get Leopard on my MacBook Pro, there simply is no better way to get to know an OS other than using it day to day. Kind of like when you get married, All that really good stuff from when you where dating is still good but now you get to see a bit more of the darker side… Read the rest of this entry »