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You decorate your home for the holidays, so why not decorate
your Mac, too? No, I'm not suggesting you put Christmas lights all
over your computer, but instead use software to do it.
First, Tiger Software
has a program called Holiday Lights 5.0. It
lets you put virtual Christmas lights (or Menorahs, or Turkeys, or
little happy faces) around your monitor.
Also, it lets you create a screen saver that you can customize
to fit almost any holiday (like Hanukkah, Christmas, or my
birthday!). And, as an added bonus, it lets you pick a
holiday-oriented song to play in the background - and it will
display a text message.
A quick tip for users of the unregistered version of Holiday
lights: This program will only let you use five of the songs that
comes with the program in the screen saver. However, you can work
around this by deleting all of the music you don't want to use.
(You can delete them in the "Music Files" folder.) This way you can
play a grayed-out song.
Another nice program is called Snow made by Dave Warker. I bet you can guess what
it does. Yep, it puts snow on your desktop. Also, it has a rather
large collection of music files you can play along with the snow
flakes.
Lastly, no computer is completely decorated for the holiday
without desktop pictures. So, of course, there are plenty of
desktop pics on the net. The Holiday Spot has all of
the desktop pictures you'll need, for both Christmas and Hanukkah,
plus other holidays.
Now, these tips might make your co-workers and family members
think you're a little too obsessed with the holidays or your Mac,
but at least you'll be ready for the holidays.
Recent Mac Happens Columns
MP3 Forever!, 6/26/00. Closing down
Napster will not help already rich artists, but may prevent new
ones from being discovered.
Internet radio, 6/9/00. Internet
radio solves problems with poor radio reception, but also lets you
listen to radio from around the world.
Modding Your Old Mac to Make It More Useful, Phil Herlihy, The Usefulness Equation, 10.09.
If your old Mac is too slow, too noisy, too plain looking, or has too little room for expansion, you might want to mod it.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 10.09.
Used 1.83 GHz Core Duo, $995; 2.16, $1,125; new, 2.2, $1,400 after rebate; refurb 2.4, $1,699; 2.5, $1,999; 2.6, $2,299; rebates on new.
Best Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' Deals, 10.09.
DVD upgrade from 10.3, $75; upgrade bundle with 10.3, $118; full version, $129; family pack, $200; 10-user Server, $350; unlimited, $400.
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