About a month or so ago, Curt forwarded an email to me from a college who was looking to upgrade to Intel-powered Macs. The only problem was that certain members of the Science department make extensive use of a program that was made for System 7, and hasn't been updated since. With no Classic support on the Intel machines, there didn't seem to be any options.

Today, I came across an article at LowEndMac that deals with this exact issue. Options described include accessing the old machine from the new using VNC, or a variety of emulation programs that can run the old software in a window in OSX, kind of like Parallels can run Windows or Linux in a window in OSX (as was demonstrated at a recent meeting).

You can find the article at this link. Hopefully, this will be of use to some of you folks looking to upgrade.

Get it while it's hot. To see what's new, check out the updated release notes. There's been some unhappiness with the theme. Kevin Gerich has done a fantastic job with a visual refresh of his classic Pinstripe theme, with special attention paid to tabs. It really looks great (I use it here!), and you can get it from his website. If you're into more of a Safari-like look, look no further than Aronnax's Firefox Themes available from Takebacktheweb.org. Lastly, if you're looking for that little extra edge in speed you might get from a build optimized for your processor, Neil Lee's Beatnik Pad is the place to be. But please, be nice to Neil and read his site. He gets a little temperamental when asked the same questions over and over again. Just use and enjoy. Some of these site may offer suggestions for extension; I'll give you 3. Nightly Tester Tool is a must-have. This little guy prevents version upgrades from horking your extensions. Ad-block Plus with Rick's filter (now included as easy-filter), don't surf without it. Fasterfox makes some tweaks to some hidden preferences to optimize Firefox for speed. Does it work? Try it and see.

Try not to use too many extensions. An overabundance of these helpful little tools tends to slow down the browser and sometimes cause conflicts. If you start to see funky behavior from your Fox, start by removing extensions to see if you can nail down the problem. Oh, and one more for those IE only sites, pick up User Agent Switcher, it works (sometimes).

Recently, Dan Counsell of RealMac Software donated some product keys for Rapidweaver, the easy to use site building program, to our group. A recipient of one of these keys, IMUG member and webmaster for suburban radio station WJJG-AM Mike Baker, sent me a note of thanks and wanted me to share his experience with the rest of the group. Here's what Mike had to say:

Again thanks for giving me the opportunity to use RapidWeaver. My website started on AOL using AppleWorks. At the time (1997), it was easy and quick. Later, mac.com offered templates to enhance the non-html user's experience creating a website. Now, RapidWeaver 3.5 offers the user an easy and quick way combined with "themes" and to advance, a little or a lot, to html.

Surf to my website, to check out the theme TIGER POP.
http://homepage.mac.com/mikebaker/

Thanks,
Mike Baker

P.S.
Please share this information with fellow member of IMUG, either on the IMUG website and/or the next meeting. This is a fine example of how the user's group benefitted a member and how others can inquire about education and knowledge to aid in their own creativity.

Get yours today via Microsoft AutoUpdate.

Here's something that's intrigued me since I came across it recently. Think of it like open source DNS service, and that's kind of what it is.

Your ISP, whoever it may be, has servers set aside somewhere (usually locally, but like we found out with Comcast, maybe nationally). Domain Name Servers, DNS of short, translate URLs into IP addresses so requests can be routed quickly, efficiently, and correctly. AS new web addresses are added, it may take a couple of days for an old site at a certain URL or IP to be cleared from, or added to, the DNS cache. Having this info cached is what makes the process of surfing, especially on broadband, almost instantaneous. But what happens when your ISPs DNS goes down for whatever reason? Surfing either becomes unbelievably slow, or non existant. A solution is to use alternative DNS servers. There are many who will tell you to just use 4.2.2.2 or 4.2.2.3 and so on. The problem is, these are not public access DNS servers, they're owned by a company called Level3. This would be like you having the only working phone in town, so all your neighbors just start using it without your permission. This is where Open DNS comes in.

Kyle Monson of PC World Magazine had this to say about Open DNS: "It's fast, free, and secure. This DNS service offers speedier browsing and protection from phishing sites. The service will even correct typos that you punch into your browser." Using Open DNS is fast and easy, should only take a couple of minutes. If you have a router, you'll enter the info in the router's config page. Otherwise, you'll just go into the Network area of System Preferences.
Replace the current entries or add these to the empty text areas:

* 208.67.222.222
* 208.67.220.220

Be sure you visit the site: http://www.opendns.com/ . Read the information on the site. Make an informed decision. If your current DNS servers are doing their job, there's no need to make the move now, but bookmark this page for future reference should an emergency arise. Geeks and tweakers who are always looking for an edge when it comes to speed will probably want to at least try OpenDNS to see what it's got. But like I said, please read all the info on the site. It's not a big site, but know what DNS is, what name servers do, and why they are so important to the internets functionality. And if you're up for it, give their servers a try, and be sure to give us some feedback on the mailing list.