On Aug 11, 2005, at 3:15 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
BTW, if you are going to be using an external monitor, keyboard and
mouse on your desktop anyway, you might consider the PowerBook 12"
instead of the 15" as it is much smaller and easier for mobility.
Besides the smaller, non-widescreen display and the non-backlit
keyboard the Powerbook 12" has some key differences from its 15" and
17" brethren:
- best processor is slightly slower on the 12" (1.5GHz vs 1.67GHz)
- no S-video output
- no Firewire 800 port
If that's not an issue, and if you don't need the mobility of a
laptop, the Mac mini offers much better value for money.
Also, for Photoshop, I recommend buying the system configured with
as large and fast a hard drive as possible as well as 512-768M RAM
as a minimum (I normally want 1G nowadays). Saves the hassle of
doing it later, you will want it anyway.
These tips might be helpful:
http://www.barefeats.com/cscs2.html
I don't know about MS Works 2004 or the current bundle deals.
I think currently, the Macs ship with a 30-day trail of Microsoft
Office X and a 30-day trial of iWorks '05.
The schema is that you connect the base station to your WAN
connection, whether that be a phone line connection for dial up or
a DSL/cable modem for broadband connection. You run the Airport
Admin utility application and configure it for whatever your
required connection parameters are (there's an automated assistant
for first timers... ;-) and what level of security you want to do
(ALWAYS turn on 128bit WEP encryption). Then you load that
configuration into the base station and you're done.
In this day and age, better use WPA or WPA2 if possible.
It's actually much simpler to do this than it sounds. Setting up a
small business network with base station and 50-10 Mac OS X systems
normally takes me about 20 minutes, max, if you're using the
Airport Base Station. Using a Netgear or Linksys base station has
sometimes taken 2-3 days of fussing over parameters to get working
cleanly, that's why I recommend the Apple Airport Base Station so
strongly.
I don't think it really takes that long with a well-behaved router. I
can usually get a 3Com or LinkSys router configured to talk to my
Powerbook in 15-30 minutes. The bigger problem is that certain
applications might not work. e.g. I can't get iChat AV to do audio/
video chats with my unmodified LinkSys router if I use NAT on the
router. There is a list of "tested-and-works" third-party routers on
the Apple support web site.
--jc
