Although I deal with The Chip Merchant (1-800-426-6375) for SIMMs, and in spite of the fact that Technology Works bad mouthed The Chip Merchant when I was chip-shopping, you should know that TechWorks will give you an upgradeable copy of FullWrite Professional if you buy 4 megs of SIMMs from them for $350.
At today’s prices, The Chip Merchant will charge you $252, and FullWrite Professional has been on sale for $59 from MacWarehouse, so I think The Chip Merchant is still the best way to go.
There is a Christian MUG now. It has several chapters. To learn more, call Steve Deyo, 612-457-5008.
When Sony, 3M or Maxell disks take a hike (hardly ever Sonys) you can get a free replacement disk.
• 3M Co., Magnetic Media Div., Weatherford Data Storage Division Plant, Service Road South I-40, P.O. Box 709, Weatherford, OK 73096-0709. (Is that an impossibly long address or what???)
• Maxell Corp., QC Dept., 1400 Parker Rd., Conyers, GA 30207. (There, that’s a lot better!)
• Sony Corp. of America, Customer Service, Disk Replacement (here we go again!!!), 1 Sony Dr., Mail Drop 3-1, Park Ridge, NJ 07656.
And for a free trial KAO disk, call 800-443-0100, ext. 947.
If you paid for MACazine before its demise, and didn’t “hear diddley” from MacWorld, which was supposed to send you MacUser to make up for the loss of MACazine, call Circulation Assistant Catherine Hutching at MacWorld with documentation on your payment to MACazine. Calling Cathy worked for Intelligent Mac. Do not write Circulation in Boulder, CO, since they cannot help.
One user group reprinted my tip that “you’re not in charge of your Mac unless you know how to use Font/DA Mover 3.8.” They added “or you use Master Juggler or Suitcase II.”
Sorry folks, but owning one of those two programs does not relieve you from learning Font/DA Mover. For example: Apple gives you Helvetica, Courier and Times in 10 and 12 point sizes in your System when you buy a Mac. If you load the rest of those fonts (14, 18 and 24 point sizes) into Suitcase or Master Juggler, your Mac will NEVER SEE THEM. It will look for the first place (System) it finds a font, assumes that is all there is of it, and NEVER looks into Suitcase or Master Juggler.
Example 2: If you don’t know how to use Font/DA Mover, your System will forever have Puzzle and other unwanted or unused DAs installed in it.
Take my word for it. Learn Font/DA Mover even if you have one of the font storing utilities. It does not take long! If it scares you, make copies of the fonts and the System and play with those—not your precious original fonts and System.
Hold down the Shift key in Word as you move a tab and all tabs to the right of that tab also move. With the column width markers in Word 4.0’s tables, holding down the Shift key makes sure that ONLY the selected tab will move—not all the others, too.
Mouse Droppings was “had” by the 256k chip repurchase hint. It seems that the 800 number was wrong, and Technology Works does not pay $80 a meg for 256k chips. We should have known better.
To sell 256k chips, seek out third party repair persons. I have known of some who pay $20 a meg. Perhaps there are those who will pay more.
Chalk up one more! The Sears/IBM Prodigy Board is not compatible with Pyro! and some other INITs.
Watch out! The company selling MacLite portables is said to be in bankruptcy. Check it out.
Should you sign up for America OnLine? Here are some things people are saying about them:
• real time conferencing
• instant mail to logged-on users
• real-time on-line help from real people
• nice sound effects
• lots of Mac software
• great Mac-like interface
• quicker connect procedures
• good message threading to follow a topic
• friendly people
• public and private chat zones
• lots of hackers have signed up
• only $5.95 a month with one free hour, $4.00 non-prime-time per hour.
• no extra download charges
There, is that enough for your buns?
If an Adobe font screws up while using ATM, try deleting and reinstalling the font. If you are using Suitcase, be sure you reharmonize the replacement font to eliminate id number conflicts.
LabelWriter from CoStar is a complete label printer. It works, but know that it needs a serial port and that the label stock is more than 5¢ per label.
Empower is reported to let guests use a QuicKey command to browse folders you didn’t intend them to be able to read.
The boards are full of praise for Retrospect, “…far superior to Fastback,” one informant notes.
Uptime is, as of this writing, in bankruptcy, so caveat emptor.
“Wait for 7.1, because 7.0 will be full of bugs,” according to Doug Houseman of Irwin Magnetics.
If you are having problems running MultiFinder, the number one cause is Pyro! Take it out and see if things get better.
An Ehman 20 meg is $329 to CMUG members. Call 800-448-8159 and talk to Susan Ivester. Other sizes are equally good bargains. And the Ehman warranty is respectable.(That means a lot more than 90 days, Apple!)
Warning. One more time. Don’t use those yellow plastic shipping disks in FDHD drives. It ruins the drive.
The WDEF virus is one of the most recent. Install Gatekeeper Aid to protect against it. You don't need Gatekeeper for Gatekeeper Aid to be effective. Disinfectant 1.5 or 1.6 will cure it if you have it. Also, remember that rebooting while holding down the Option and Command keys will clean WDEF out of your Desktop file. Since reinfection is too easy, be sure you install Gatekeeper Aid!
This virus is all over the place, so pay attention.
When you read that an INIT conflicts with something, look for the version number of the INIT. Good INIT developers fix those conflicts and issue new versions.
The April Repeat Hint: Option/Spacebar gives you a space between two words which forces the Mac to put both words on the same line. Option/Spacebar also locks in the size and style of text which will be used for the leader of a Tab immediately following your Option/ Spacebar keystroke.
You can get near-laser quality from your ImageWriter using MetaText and ImagePrint from Image Computer Systems, P.O. Box 647, Avon, CT 06001, $89.95. They get the quality with a six pass mode. It takes 7-8 minutes a page. There are also two faster, but still good, modes. It works in background to make up for slowness.
If you love Thunderscan, but it is now slipping on your old ImageWriter pinch rollers, causing distortion, Fred Showker of SMUG in Harrisonburg, VA says place a strip of Scotch Magic tape across the top of the sheet to be scanned.
Let 1/4" of it show beyond the top. Square the sheet in the printer and press the exposed top of the tape to the platen roller. That keeps the master rolling through straight.
If the paper out indicator is a problem once the sheet wraps the roller, tape a second strip of paper to trip it.
You can copy a HyperCard button or field by click-dragging with the Option key held down. You must be in the button or field tool, as appropriate, of course. (Thanks, MUDSlinger, Delaware.)
In PageMaker, you have a dot leader for a tab, but it reflects the style and size of the previous text, not the text following it. Place your cursor after the last character before the tab leader. Select the size and style of the tabbed material and type Option/Spacebar. This locks in that size and style. The leader will change to reflect that size and style.
How to save $100 on a great program: You can get Type Styler by buying PosterMaker Plus (about $35 mailorder). Then upgrade it for $50, and you have Type Styler! Of course you only save $44 compared to mailorder Type Styler prices. But $44 ain’t all that bad, either. (Thanks, MacNews, Eugene, OR MUG.)
Here’s how to paste text into a text block and retain the receiving block’s style in PageMaker. Leave one character in the receiving block. Place the cursor in front of it and Paste. Now remove the place-holding character. (Thanks in part to MacValley Voice, Burbank, CA MUG.)
There is a little utility out there called BeepShuffle. It randomly plays sounds from those you have installed whenever a Beep is called for by your Mac. I’m going to have fun with this when it shows up locally.
To define the area you want a graphic or piece of text to occupy in PageMaker, click/drag a box of the correct size with the loaded import tool. The imported material will size to the box you drew. If you don’t click/drag, the imported text will fill any column the cursor is within, or in the case of a graphic, it will spread out to it’s original size.
Here is a handy way to do initial caps in PageMaker. Type the capital letter in its own text block. Size and style it. Using the pointer (not the A), select it. Copy, Paste into Scrapbook. Close Scrapbook. Place the Scrapbook. Since the first item is the capital letter you just Pasted, it will Place first. Now click the loaded Scrapbook tool in the Toolbox to unload the rest of the Scrapbook items. This works perfectly because the capital letter was the last thing into the Scrapbook, and therefore is the first thing out.
Position the cap letter with the pointer tool. Resize as needed. You can do this because the letter is an object oriented graphic now. Use Text Wrap to repel text on the right side and bottom of the letter. (Thanks in part to MacValley Voice, Burbank CA MUG.)
Can you group in PageMaker, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Sure! Shift click to select the items for the group. Copy. Open Scrapbook. Paste. Close Scrapbook. Place Scrapbook. Once again, since the items you just Pasted were the last entry in the Scrapbook, all you have to do is click once to import the top page, then click in the Toolbox to unload the rest of the Scrapbook, which you won;t be needing right now.
The items you just Pasted are now grouped together.
I was going to say NEVER, but I have relaxed. Seldom should you place a graphic so that it splits a column in half. It is very hard to red text across a graphic. Place the graphic on a column gutter, so that text on the left flows around the left side, and text in the other column flows around the right side. Both sides are now easy to read.
Just because PageMaker lets you do it does not mean you should.
You know I am always looking for good labeling materials. Well, Apple Corps of Memphis discovered PostIt brand Hanging File Folder labels, #7777-6. Use them as temporary labels. They stick well and peel off easily. So they say. Haven’t tried them myself.
If you have a DeskWriter, UseNet hangers-on recommend Cascade OD/Xerographic, Eaton Private Stock archival quality, or any 25 to 100% cotton bond. Do not use every day Xerox paper.
LaserWriter Driver 6.0 needs Print Monitor 1.3, not 1.2.
If bitmaps won’t print, turn off Faster Bitmap Printing in Page Setup.
Freehand gives ATM “no respect” at sizes above 127 points. It bitmaps the fonts.
Nisus for $99? Yep! Photocopy your student ID and ask for the student price. For info, call 1-800-922-2993.
To open a second Word 4.0 dictionary, change its type from DIC5 to DICT. Now you can open it from within another dictionary by using the Open command.
The debate about using 800k floppies as 1.4 meg FDHD disks rages on. Biological Engineering sells a hole-poker to ready 800’s for 1.4 use, $39.95. If any such floppies fail as 1.4, they will replace it with a “real” 1.4 meg disk. So—anyone want to risk it?
Why do you want Royal font technology if you already have ATM? Amanda Walker on UseNet says because Adobe fonts can’t handle enough glyphs, has non-linear scaling and contextual forms, has poor ligature, poor kerning and is slow computing instructions.
Royal, she says, will fix all of this and more. Royal’s problem will be conversion to PostScript printout. Hope they make it!
If Command/Option/Reboot does not cure your problems on a damaged floppy, try Open ResEdit, delete the Desktop file on the damaged disk. Now the Mac (hopefully) can make you a new Desktop, which will be undamaged.
If the right half of your Control Panel disappears, you have been “had” by the cdev Nothing. Click it again and then select another cdev or INIT to get your Control Panel back. Now throw Nothing away, unless you enjoy that kind of crap.
Do you know how to “empty out” the Clipboard to recover the memory eaten up by a huge item there? Everyone knows half of the trick: you simply copy a single character, which replaces the giant thing you had on the Clipboard.
Aha! But that does not do it, because Clipboard keeps a copy to spare, in case you need an Undo! Sp now copy ANOTHER character to the Clipboard. Now the first character is in buffer and the second one is on the Clipboard. You are now operating with all the available memory from the Clipboard. (Thanks in part to MacUser.)
Another repeat hint—because you keep forgetting it. To get Apple’s Laser prep instead of the Aldus version in PageMaker, hold down the Option key while you select Print. Or, use the Change button in the Aldus Print Dialog box.
Be on the lookout for Oscar, which lets you transmit files to other Macs hooked up on almost any kind of network. It even cries “Moof!,” which is the sound of the Dogcow, when the file arrives. It’s free.
Do you have Type 3 fonts which you would like to use in Type I format? Evolution, $99, from Image Club Graphics will do it. It will also change Type I into Type 3, if that turns you on.
A new ImageWriter II/L will replace the plain vanilla II. You won’t even know unless you look for the /L. No enhancements—just easier to repair. You can’t buy one until all the vanilla II’s are sold.
DeltaGraph, which MacUser calls the best charting/graphing program out there, is now on sale for $99 instead of $195. Call 1-800-367-4334 to buy a copy.
To place tabs more precisely than 1/16th inch in Word, change Preferences to points, which will let you adjust tabs to 1/72nd inch precision.
You can add a vertical column of figures in Word. Hold down the Option key and drag/select the column. While the column remains selected, press Command/=. The addition total will appear in the lower left corner of the screen. Now place your cursor where the total should be reflected and hit Command/V. Boom, your total appears.
Reader Felix Marti says that his Write Impact printer screws up Word 4.0 margins and is a memory hog. Other than that, fine.
