Mac: How to protect your investment

As mac computers are expensive and they do look nice. you may want to protect your investment as much as possible. Its worth paying a little bit extra to keep it in top condition.

KEYBOARD PROTECTERS

You can get keyboard protectors such as the moshi ones. click here. they provide a great protection from dust, oil from your fingers and liquid spills. A good way incase something may happen.

WARNING: I was going to get a keyboard protector  till I heard someone say DON”T GET ONE. the reason being that.

• keyboard skins raise internal temperatures by as much as 20 degrees C.
• With only one thin slit serving as both inlet and exhaust (it runs along the hinge) and no other holes in the case, ventilation is *vital*. heat does escape from under the keyboard.
• A keyboard protector will bake it into an early grave.
• A better way to keep the Keyboard clean. There isn’t one, unfortunately, short of operating with clean fingers, and perhaps running a little keyboard vacuum cleaner around the edges now and then.

With the expense of mac computers anything that will cause the computer to raise the internal temperature and ware out faster is not an option. I hope this bit of information will help you making a decision weather its worth using a protector or not.

Still if you feel its worth getting one by all means its your choice.

CASE PROTECTORS

these are a great investment

• Mac official store products: c;ick here
• Hard covers: click here
• Skins:  removable, easy to reposition skins GelaSkins click here
• Sleeves: click here
• Bags: Any laptop bag will do. I prefer backpack style as I dont drive, catch public transport and walk allot.

CONCLUSION

Whatever you decide best suits your needs when it comes to protection, it is ok to pay for something quality your macbook investment is worth it.

Finally a great computer experience.

Well on friday the 14th September I finally received my macbook Pro. It came within 2 days of ordering it from mac online store. wow.

So far i have activated the free upgrade to OSX 10.8.1  ”Mountain Lion”

To install apps first. 

• Go to Launchpad>System Preferences>Security & Privacy.
• unlock the app.  click on the padlock on the bottom left corner and supply your password.
• under allow applications downloaded from make sure you select anywhere

Now you are ready to install all apps my usual applications.

1. chrome browser
2. Thunderbird email
3. Adium instant messaging (suggested by pidgin messing site for mac),
4. Songbird media centre
5. Avast antivirus
6. Dropbox
7. VLC media player
8. Skype
9. Libre Office
10. Picasa photo manager 

I found a link detailing some of the better alternative apps for mac OSX. click here it mentions soem of the above apps I had already setup.

More tutorials on how to setup these apps and other things i find out will come.

Keep save file small. for better running.

As Saluki Linux is one of the many unique and varied Puppylinux operating systems. After using puppylinux myself over a few years, I notice, some people Find having a small save file, apart from taking up less space, helps to make it faster and more stable.

1. first save all you document, music, and other personal files outside the save file.
2. use sfs files instead of installing pets. sfs files are great for saving space and on smaller flashdrives, they may take up more ram to run so consider wisely which apps to install and which to run as sfs.

Another good way is to have some of the bigger apps outside the save file if possible. The following works for Thunderbird, and firefox. and maybe other applications to.

1. first download the latest Firefox (ff) tar.gz file from click here
2. extract it to the folder /mnt/home/apps folder. (/mnt/home is the drive, where the puppy setup files are. (You will need to make the folder called apps, to put all applications outside of save file)
3. once extracted, open it and click on the firefox-bin file and ff should run.
4. next you will need to create a desktop file. create the folder /mnt/home/apps/desktop-files
5. go to menu>office>geany and copy the following.

   [Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox
Icon=/mnt/home/Apps/Icons/firefox.png
Comment=Email
Exec=/mnt/home/Apps/firefox/firefox-bin
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=internet
Comment=A full featured Web Browser
GenericName=Firefox

6. save this file to /mnt/home/apps/desktop-files
7. next you will want to make a folder /mnt/home/apps/icons
8. go to google images and type firefox icon, choose an icon and download it. then move it to the new icons folder you made
9. go to /mnt/home/apps/desktop-files right click the file and go to create symlink. A new linked app will popup.
10. right click on the new linked file and select cut.
11. next open /use/share/applications right click on an empty space and select paste. Now restart x. the desktop file will put firefox in your puppy menu.

This works for other apps as long as the source file tar.gz has a app bin file. some do others don´t trial and error is the best thing.
With this setup I run Firefox and Thunderbird in several different puppy os, saluki, wary, slacko, lupu528.

Puppylinux boot options and setup modes.

If you have been using puppy linux for a while you should be familiar with the 2 main ways of installing puppy full and frugal click here. The recommended way that puppy is designed to run at its best is frugal install.

Basic Options: There are some options with the frugal install. these options can be found if you press f1 when booting from the puppy live cd. there is a good explanation for them click here and click here

Advanced Options: (behind the scene, options when running puppy). There are several other ways you can run a puppy frugal install, called the PUPMODEs.  There is some good information about the different PUPMIODES click here. What pupmode you need depends on the computer specks., how you intend to run puppy and what you want to achieve. Take a look and see what is the best option for you.

Puppylinux boot options and setup modes.

If you have been using puppy linux for a while you should be familiar with the 2 main ways of installing puppy full and frugal click here. The recommended way that puppy is designed to run at its best is frugal install.

Basic Options: There are some options with the frugal install. these options can be found if you press f1 when booting from the puppy live cd. there is a good explanation for them click here and click here

Advanced Options: (behind the scene, options when running puppy). There are several other ways you can run a puppy frugal install, called the PUPMODEs.  There is some good information about the different PUPMIODES click here. What pupmode you need depends on the computer specks., how you intend to run puppy and what you want to achieve. Take a look and see what is the best option for you.

Using one set of apps across many puppy linux operating systems.

Puppy linux is a great operating system in all its many forms., as you well know if you use it.

Today we are going to look at how to set up applications to be used in more than one puppy os. (I have a usb hdd with several puppy versions on it and I was wanting to save space).

Option 1 is to try running an sfs file in different puppy os, even if the sfs file is built for one version of puppy it might work in others.

Option 2 This works only with apps that pre-compilied with all libs needed to run in them. such as  firefox (ff) and thunderbird (tb). Lets use ff here.

1. Download the latest ff tar.gz file from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
2. extract, or unpack, it to the usb drive(or where ever your puppy files are.
3. then click on the bin file called firefox or firefox-bin and it should run.

Now you are probably going to want firefox to come up in the puppy menu so you will need to create a desktop file called firefox. To do this

open a blank txt tile and copy the following

[Desktop Entry]

Encoding=UTF-8

Name=Firefox

Icon=/mnt/home/Apps/Icons/firefox.png

Comment=Email

Exec=/mnt/home/Apps/firefox/firefox-bin

Terminal=false

Type=Application

Categories=X-Internet;

Comment=A full featured Web Browser

GenericName=Firefox

(you will need to change the 2 lines Icon=/mnt/home/Apps/Icons/firefox.png and exec=/mnt/home/Apps/firefox/firefox-bin to where the files are setup on your computer) then copy this file to /usr/share/applications

also edit the file /usr/local/bin/defaultbrowser and change the exe line to

 exec /mnt/home/Apps/firefox/firefox-bin “$@”

(again changing the path to where you have put your firefox file).

Option 3 using Portable applications from click here This option works very well in puppy linux but it is not native, it uss wine (Windows environment emulator). To run the windows portable files

1. install the wine app for your puppy version from the ppm (puppy package manager) or the wine sfs.
2. next download the portable apps suite from click here make sure you put this on your puppy flashdrive or of you don’t have much space on a separate flashdrive will do..once you have this setup you will notice you have a set of apps already built in,
3. then you can download apps here click here or search the site for others.
4. Then click them and wine will start to install them. Choose your flashdrive with portable apps on it and install there.

(these portable windows apps will work in puppy or any other linux os, and mac using wine windows emulator)

What does the term Modem mean these days ???

What is the term Modem mean in todays  computer terms.

The general overall meaning of Modem is a device that connects your computer to the internet.   Some people use the term Modem meaning Dial-up modem. but i found a great list explaining the different modems here.

Different types of modem? – Yahoo! Answers.