New PCs from manufacturers like Compaq, Sony, and Gateway have gained some stylish design elements. Even the horrid eOne, with its copycat design and limited upgradeability (limited by how big a sledgehammer you have), looks better than a beige metal box.
You are not in the world all alone. Your friends are here, too. – Albert Schweitzer, upon winning the Nobel Prize
Apple released its 1999 10-K form, which provides an overview of the past fiscal year as well as a look ahead. 1999 was a very impressive year.
1999: One of the greatest programs developed for the Windows platform is Voice Dictation. Voice Dictation is a program that types what you’re saying when you talk into a microphone attached to your computer. There were many programs on the market that do this: Dragon Naturally Speaking, ViaVoice, and many others. However, none of these […]
1999: Dan Knight has already weighed in on this issue with The Next PowerBooks. I guess great minds think alike. I enjoyed reading Dan’s article, and I agree with most of what he said, finding his speculation about a possible thin and compact “MyBook” Apple portable (personally, I prefer the name “eBook” – for “executive” […]
1999 – Early last Monday, the teacher across the hall poked her head into my classroom and said, “Last Monday to teach of this millennium,” and closed the door before I could begin chuckling. We get two weeks off for Christmas vacation. There are some advantages to being an educator.
The Apple USB Mouse has been criticized for its diminutive size and hockey-puck shape. Numerous reviewers have rated the pointing device unfavorably stating to the tune of: “it is too small to be comfortable” or “it’s too easy to unknowingly turn it sideways.” However, I believe that the Apple design team did an excellent job.
Every version of the Mac OS is ready for Y2K, but some programs for the Mac suffer from Y2K problems.
1999: The latest news from Microsoft headquarters is that they will be delaying the final release of Windows 2000 (Win2K) until the later half of 1900. Nope, this isn’t true; it’s just a joke (in fact, I didn’t even make it up). But, this joke does have some truth.* Many Windows users will be hit […]
The Umax SuperMac C500 and C600 were the first “Power Macs” to have their CPU in a ZIF socket, making upgrades very easy. Having a C500/200 at work and finding an incredible garage sale special on upgrades from Small Dog Electronics, I decided to test the 240 MHz upgrade and the CacheDoubler.
I couldn’t believe it – a US$19 USB extended keyboard! At that price, it was worth a try. From the photo (below), it looked like a match for the Apple Extended Keyboard layout, or at least very close.
1999 – How did System 6 and its features work with 2-8 MB “high end” Macs like the Mac II?
1999 – In the dark days when we had practically no budget and seemingly unlimited kids in our special education classroom, we saw the need for a “sure thing” self-image builder to get the kids to believe in themselves again and give us a good effort. Most of our students had extremely limited reading skills […]
1999: A topic of enduring fascination for me is trying to analyze why people form polarized opinions and affinities about things. Why are some people liberals and others conservative? Why do some people like Chevies and others prefer Fords? Why do some like the toilet paper to unroll from the top while others adamantly insist […]
1999: I watched my first DVD, Blade Runner: Director’s Cut, on a 300 MHz Blue and White Power Mac G3 with a 20″ monitor. It worked, but I get a smoother picture with my DVD player and TV at home.
1999: In my previous article I stated that I would use a Macintosh full time for my day-to-day tasks. One thing that is preventing me from doing so is that my Quadra 605 just doesn’t give me the power that I need.
I’ve been using a different mouse and keyboard this week. I didn’t have to, but I wanted the full USB experience.
Michael Faraday, a pioneer in the field of electricity, was demonstrating the tremendous potential of his new invention, the dynamo, to the British Royal Scientific Society. A young politician in the audience, William Gladstone, grew bored, finally saying, “I’m sure this is all very interesting, Mr. Faraday, but what in God’s earth good is it?” […]
1999.12: 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.
MacUnderground has announced that its new Mac USB Wireless Keyboard and USB/ADB Wireless Mice will be available after Dec. 15, 1999 and may be pre-ordered now from the MacUnderground.
Monday, November 29, 1999, 7:15 a.m. – Despite my turkey hangover, I eagerly enter my classroom early, ready to face a challenging week of last minute placement conferences scheduled to beat some state or federal cutoff date. I tap the space bar of the 8550 file and print server to wake it from its peaceful […]
1999 – From the day Steve Jobs announced the Power Mac G4, we’ve all known the Yikes! model was temporary. We pretty much expected it to be discontinued before Macworld Expo at the end of January – and probably before the end of 1999. Well, Apple quietly did it. If you go to the Apple […]
This page covers G3 upgrades that fit in the Level 2 cache socket of the Power Macintosh 4400, 5400, 5500, 6400, 6500, 7220; Performa 54xx, 6360, and 64xx; Twentieth Anniversary Mac; StarMax 3000, 4000; Power Computing PowerBase; Umax SuperMac C500, and C600. Check with the manufacturer of the upgrade to see which models are compatible.
For those of us who cut our teeth with 8-bit computers in the late 1970s, dot pitch wasn’t an issue. A monitor might display 320 dots horizontally by 200 vertically. On a 13″ monitor (the norm back then) with 12″ viewable, you’d have about 9.5″ horizontally. That’s 0.75 mm per pixel, so a horizontal dot […]
1999: As the Mac specialist at a university-affiliated biological research facility in Philadelphia, I do my fair share of resolving computer problems, and therefore I know my way around the Mac quite well. Recently, though, I was faced with what initially seemed to be a PC problem – a request from a woman who wanted […]
1999 – The old saying “You get what you pay for” – besides being an excellent example of a dangling preposition – is usually pretty good advice. In the area of educational software for the Mac, there are some notable exceptions to the adage. My recent experience setting up a lab with just a few […]
1999 – I enjoyed your article, Is It Time to Buy an iMac? Personally, I’m still using my 6-1/2 year old Quadra 800 quite successfully. I know that $5,500 was a lot of money back in Spring ’93, and I’m squeezing every last bit of power out of it. For most tasks, it seems about […]
1999 – What is System 6, and why is it the preferred system for 8 MHz compact Macs?
Rodney O. Lain Thanks, many thanks…. – Shakespeare You are not in the world all alone. Your friends are here, too. – Albert Schweitzer, upon winning the Nobel Prize
I was in college when the Mac first came out, and it was about six months or so when I was able to afford one. I went to my local electronics superstore and got my Macintosh 512Ke. The “e” stood for “enhanced,” which meant it could read both sides of a floppy.
1999: The biggest excuse for a PC user to avoid the Macintosh is, “Mac’s are for desktop publishing, and I don’t do that.” The real reason your average PC user doesn’t use a Macintosh is that it isn’t all around them. People adapt to and accept what they are surrounded by. Sadly, that is Microsoft […]
1999: The iBook is the number-one selling notebook, and it has helped push Apple’s notebook market share to 11%. The new iMac is the evolutionary and ridiculously popular redesigned version of the revolutionary and ridiculously popular iMac. Why would Paulo Rodrigues (that’s me!) choose the Tangerine iMac DV over the Tangerine iBook?
1999 – I have been hearing a lot about USB products lately. I do not have a Mac with built-in USB and was wondering if I should upgrade to take advantage of this new technology?
1999 – Every six to nine weeks, teachers face one of their less favorite tasks – grades. If they’re the diligent sort, they’ve spent every evening of the grading period carefully recording and averaging their students’ scores. For the rest of us party animals, grades mean at least a near “all-nighter” of entering scores and […]
I have yet to see a 15″ CRT monitor that looks crisp at 1024 x 768, or even a 19″ one that does justice to 1280 x 960 or 1280 x 1024 resolution. Yet these monitors are often rated for these settings, and often even higher ones.
