From: Willis Kieninger:
Charles: Thanks for the upgrading article. I want to add more
storage capacity to my 3000. Can I daisy
chain the OEM hard drive with another, or do I need to replace the
internal drive? Any suggestions/cautionary notes would be appreciated.
Thanks, Willis Kieninger
Hi Willis,
If you have an empty drive bay, you can add another
internal drive and retain the original as well. You have two 3.5" drive
bays, and I infer that one is empty.
One of the 3000's strong points is that it has a
factory IDE internal bus that allows you to use inexpensive internal
IDE hard drives.
From Jim Spitler:
Subject: Loved the winter musings
article!
Thanks for a very poetic moment in my otherwise chaotic,
multi-tasked work-inferno!
I paid to have my hard drive upgraded quite some time ago (long
enough that I lost the paperwork on the drive installed - oops). My
system profiler says it finds a 2 GB Conner HD. Do you know who makes
Conners now? I believe the company was sold, but am having trouble
finding more information. This is an annoyingly noisy HD.
Sincerely,
Jim Spitler
Hi Jim,
Glad you enjoyed the winter vignette.
I have never heard of a Conner HD. Checked with my
tech guru, and he hadn't either. The only real cure for a noisy PB
drive is to replace it.
From: Alex Mathew
Subject: Silence: and Hard Drive Whines...
Hi Charles,
An excellent article... I value silence but also value the little
sounds that keep us from going crazy.
Here is a thread I started on MacFixIt that discusses the horrible
whine problems with hard drives.
http://www.macfixit.com/ultimate/Forum19/HTML/001137.html
There are links to discussions on Apple's support boards also. The
statistics are not valid based on the sample size - but suffice to say
that almost ALL major brands of hard drives have a noise problem. Some
show up right away but most show up 4 to 6 months after install.
Hitachi and Fujitsu 20 GB drives are the only ones reported so far
without whines.
High pitched sound drives me nuts - I used to hate the dragging of
chalk on blackboards. Now my PowerBook G3 Pismo keeps me
insane!
I have finally resorted (thanks to the generosity of a friend) to
the
Bose noise cancellation headsets when I cannot stand it
anymore.
Thanks again for good "ramble".
Bye
Alex M.
From Kevin:
Subject: Silence is Golden article
Hi,
I was glad to read your article, as I also
value silence in computing and lament the new noisy CD drives. Just
today I was thinking it would be nice to have a preference setting for
the CD drive speed. For playing CDs any speed is OK, but for installing
software I can put up with the high speed whine.
Also, I just bought a new hard drive for my WallStreet, not because
the old was full or inadequate, but because it was too darn noisy. But
I fear the quiet will not last.
Anyway, it seems silence is a goal of Apple's, too, so folks like us
should be well served in the future.
cheers,
Kevin
From Doug Semark:
Subject: ColorIt!
Your thorough review of ColorIt! 4.0
replicates my own lengthy experience and great satisfaction with the
program. While I was futzing with Photoshop 2.5.1 lo those many years
ago, I lucked into an ad from MicroFrontier offering ColorIt! (2.3?)
for free on a single floppy. I think their stated goal was to be "the
#1 image manipulation program" on the Mac or something like that.
I've subsequently upgraded both Photoshop and ColorIt! over the
years, and I'd have to say that ColorIt! is number one on my hard
drive, if not in the Mac universe itself. I probably use it five times
for every single time I use Photoshop. As you say, it's quicker,
leaner, kinder (I make enough bad choices that multiple undos are a
blessing!), and, might I add, "funner."
I'm concerned about its apparent "end of the road" status. No more
upgrades? Is there anything we can do?
Doug Semark
San Pedro, CA
From Frances and Mitchell Harris:
Subject: ColorIt! for Mac OS X
Dear Mr. Moore:
Thank you for your recent column about
ColorIt! In your column you said that you didn't see much hope for
ColorIt! being a Carbonized version of ColorIt! For your information, I
pasted below an email I received from MicroFrontier in response to an
inquiry about the future of ColorIt! The response was not exactly
positive and does not contradict what you said, but perhaps there is
hope?
Mitchell Harris
ColorIt! for Mac OS X
2/27/01
Yes, we are in the process of investigating what's involved to
produce a "Carbonized" version of ColorIt! and our other products to
run native under Mac OS X. At this time, however, there is not a
schedule as to when it would be completed; final work on this can't
even begin until the release version is out on March 24th.
Wayne Davis
MicroFrontier, Inc.
wayne.davis@microfrontier.com
Perhaps some expressions of interest to Mr. Davis would be
helpful.
Charles
From Tim Robertson
Charles,
While I agree with you that the cheaper ColorIt! 4 does many of the
things Photoshop does, it has around 1,000 features less, most notably
layers. As such, when you write "ColorIt! also supports Photoshop
plug-ins, which work exactly the same in both programs," that is not
true. Many PS plug-ins use layers, so these will not work at all with
ColorIt!.
Also, when you note it will run with only 2,048 KB of memory, that
is ONLY if the image your manipulated is very small. It won't work with
that little amount of memory with a larger graphic.
But I agree. For a "graphics dabbler" it is a very cool program. I
use it for simple things as well.
Tim
Hi Tim,
As I said in the article:
"If you're a graphics professional, or an amateur with
serious aspirations, you need Photoshop. The vast majority of Mac
users, particularly ones without fast G3 or G4 Macs do not...
"ColorIt! will do almost anything I would ever do in
Photoshop, and considerably more besides, and it does it at little more
than the price of average shareware....
"There are distinctions and differences of course, but
not ones so radical that you have to climb a steep learning curve when
switching."
- The operative qualification is "will do almost anything I would
ever do in Photoshop." Obviously, plug-ins that relate to features
ColorIt! doesn't have won't work, but where supported, the Photoshop
plug-ins work the same. My scanner software, for instance works,
exactly the same in other programs.
From Mike Cohen:
My favorite free email service is MailAndNews.com. They provide IMAP as
well as POP3 and SMTP, plus they offer 10 MB of space, rather than 3-5
MB like most of the others.
They're very reliable, although they had some down time last
week.
I also use several email forwarding services including mail.com & pobox.com (onepost.net is one of the domains
offered by pobox.com) - I have about 5 different addresses forwarded to
my adelphia.net POP3 mailbox. I've never given out my actual ISP email
address, since I've changed ISPs several times when I've moved and
switched from dialup to cable modem.
For my real, personal mail, pobox.com is by far my favorite service.
They provide only forwarding for up to $35/year depending on the
service options. I use lots of filters as well as their standard spam
filter to keep my email spam free. You can get up to three aliases (all
forwarded to the same mailbox), or add additional ones at extra cost,
and if one of them gets too much spam, you can easily change or cancel
it.
From: Kit Fitzpatrick
Subject: Farallon SkyLine card
I was searching the web and came across your article (17 Sept. 1999) about the Farallon SkyLine card. I
have been using one of their cards in my PowerBook for several months
now, and it works well, all except one annoyance. I have a wireless
network both at home and in the office. I use the Location Manager to
set up all of the network settings in the two places - all except for
the Farallon card :-(
I have written tech support about how nice it would be for them to
properly support the Macintosh and use the Location Manager. Their
reply was that nobody has ever requested that feature and they can't
see incorporating it in their product. As a Macintosh developer, I even
offered to write it for them. They didn't even respond. As someone who
is in touch with a wide audience of Macintosh users, I'd like to know
if I'm really out to lunch, or is this a really good feature for
Farallon to add to their product? I wonder if you agree that it is and
know of a way to build some sort of demand for the feature.
Thanks,
Kit
From Blair Wilson:
Subject: A minor item
Hi Charles.
I read the Low End Mac page regularly. I like the vast majority of
what you write. (You and I differ in opinion on the active vs. passive
screen issue. :-) ).
In your "'Book Review" column, http://www.lowendmac.com/ibook/010302.html
you use the phrase "Without further adieu." I think you mean "Without
further ado." I only noticed it because such things are so rare in your
columns.
Keep up the good work!
Blair
Gak! That was a boner. :-(
I can't blame that one on the dictation software!
PS: I still like passive screens well enough, but I
would never choose one over an active by preference. My point is that I
could live quite happily with a passive screen.
