Welcome to the latest edition of Medicine Man. I am your virtual on-call Macdoctor.
To ask a question (sorry, no house calls), just pop by the Apple Wizards website at http://applewizards.net/ and click on any of the links for the "Special Area" — you should see "Medicine Man" as a choice. Drop us a line with your question. The website is open 24 hours a day, 8 days a week.
This won't hurt a bit… I promise!
 
OUCH! # 1
I remember hearing rumors that Apple was going to make a future edition of Rhapsody cross-platform (before the OS X strategy was unveiled). Is that still being considered?
- Matthew Gallegos
 
Pain-Killer #1
When Apple first announced Rhapsody (now
called OS X Server), it also announced a
version of the server part of the OS (the
"yellow box") for the Intel platform.
Speculations were wild. Was Apple going
to port the Mac OS to the Intel platform? Is
Apple going to abandon its hardware
business? These were all questions being asked
when Apple's stock was down around 12 and
Gil Amelio was still at the helm. Ever since
Apple's self-proclaimed iCEO Steve Jobs
took over, Apple has been very quiet
about Rhapsody for Intel. When Apple
announced the Mac OS X strategy, not one word about the product (for Intel) was mentioned. A recent Apple developer press release stated that they are not developing the product for Intel any longer. Gotta get yourself a new G3!
 
Owwy! #2
I have a UMAX Astra 610S scanner running Presto! PageManager 2.31.01 for OCR. When I try to scan in documents even at high DPI I don't get very good results. What would you suggest? Am I having pilot error or do I just have bad OCR software?
- Randy Wiggingtin
 
Antiseptic #2
Ouch! I find Presto PageManager to be an absolutely
terrible program on the Macintosh platform. For
reasons I don't understand, Presto did not bother to
create a new interface for the Macintosh. All the
company did was simply port over the Windows code,
and it shows. The 610S is a fantastic scanner that came
with some not-so-great OCR (optical character
recognition) software. If you really want OCR, I would go with Caere's OmniPage Pro 8.0 . The program works astoundingly well compared to PageManager. At $499 it is rather expensive, but the convenience that it provides could be worth every dollar.
 
WAHHH!!! #3
How can I keep the volume at the level I set it. I set it but when I turn the computer back on it blasts me again.
- Candace
 
First-Aid #3
Well Candace, this one is a simple
one to fix. All you need to do is zap
your PRAM (Perameter Random
Access Memory). The PRAM holds
settings for basic system settings, such as mouse speed. Sometimes the settings can get corrupted, and resetting the PRAM can solve the problems this creates. To do the zapping, simply restart your computer and hold the command, option, p, and r keys at startup. Wait for the second startup chime and then let go. Alternatively, find TechTool at http://www.macdownload.com/ to zap your PRAM. Now, when you set your volume setting, it should stick!
Editor's Note: I had this problem on my G3 with Mac OS 8.5. I was forced to write an AppleScript that set my volume (I placed it in my Startup Items folder), but Mac OS 8.5.1 fixed the problem. Furthermore, if you use Location Manager, you can set your volume there and not worry too much about being blasted every time you restart.
 
ARGH!!! #4
I'm thinking about buying a cool new PowerMac G3, and I also want to run a program like (blech!) Virtual PC or SoftWindows, mostly for games. Which do you recommend, and how fast should the processor be, 300 MHz, 350 MHz, or 400 MHz?
- Melissa Jenoff
Splint #4
Way to go! The new G3s are fantastic! They are blazingly fast and are great to look at. However, no matter how fast they are, Virtual PC and SoftWindows will still be somewhat slow. I have not seen any exact benchmarks yet but even on the 400 MHz machine, under emulation, I wouldn't expect that it performs much more than a 233 MHz equivalent.
 
This is probably enough to run most older and less graphically intensive games, but it will be hardly enough to run Tomb Raider III. New versions of these emulation products could introduce faster performance, but for now the only way to run the latest Wintel games on your Mac is to buy a hardware solution. Orange Micro, which can be found on the Internet at http://www.orangemicro.com/ , currently offers several PCI cards for this purpose. The 62x series is the low-cost solution and starts at $399. The 66x series is the professional, processor-upgradable solution and offers the best performance. Finally, the PCfx is designed with gaming in mind and includes a 2D/3D accelerator. To be honest, I would go with the 66x series if you have the budget. The PCfx card has gotten some lousy reviews!
For fairness' sake, our copy editor Morgan has something to add: My personal feeling is that there are enough fantastic games available or coming for the Mac — Myth2, Quake3, Unreal, Oni, Civ2, and Carmageddon2, to name just a few of the best — that one could theoretically waste all of one's available free time, without so much as dipping a toe in the Wintel waters. The Connectix Virtual Gamestation (see the review in this issue) only further tips the scales.
