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Wednesday, 24 December 2008

Boot Camp Beta 1.4 Expires on OSx Tiger

Yes, it is an old articles that bOOtcamp no longer support OSx Tiger started this year. The best options and solutions from apple is to upgrade it to Leopard which came along bOOtcamp 2.0

Earlier this year, I had this problems when I sold my previous macbOOk. Was thinking to format the hard drive and restore back software before the hand over.

“Boot Camp Assistant Beta has expired.”

This was the result shown when attempt to partition the hard drive and install XP. Numbers of service case being done this year, and today to share how I manage to do so with the error msg.

Basically quite simple, old days there's an old trick to update some expired anti virus program is to back date the system clock. So does the bOOtcamp ^_^

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

iBackup for my new macbOOK

Finally. Finally got my new macbOOk on saturday. I guess i can just skip those good saying of this product as it has been mention so much out there ^_^

Well, with new improved hardware and its OSx 10.5.5 that came along, so far so smooth. The most I like is its incredible Glass Trackpad functions. 1,2,3 & 4 fingers all counts!

Most concern me was the data, as many of us do when getting new machine, don't we? Beside using the Time Machine came along, here I'd like to share something that can also does the same thing when migrating. iBackup

Has been sharing this software with some clients and friends a year ago with the older version. It does pretty good job. I can choose what to backup start from installed applications, mail, desktop items, keychains, safari bookmarks and cache, customize folder, printers drivers and of cause importantly iTunes and iPhoto.

It can scheduled backups daily or weekly of the selected (created) profiles.

The most I like from it was the one click restoring. Not much to worry, it put back everything to the original folder where was created.

Here's the Download and Help & FAQ. Enjoy!

Saturday, 8 November 2008

RESET PROM

Today I had an interesting service case to share, Intel Duo Core MacbookPro. The problem was the display and it looks like the picture shown. The screen display looks like photonegative. The same result even the moment it was power on while showing the apple logo. At first I thought it was the driver issue, as this unit originally came with Tiger OS and the lady owner upgraded it to Leopard and also install XP to boot dual OS.

When first time this problem came, she said it was diagnose by local apple reseller technician and they claim there were no problem and just restore it to original OS. What grabbed my attention was she claims that whenever she make it into dual OS (OSx10 and XP) it became like this.

Well, standard procedure to diagnose from zero is always majority the best place to start with. The moment when booting up from the DVD already gave the same error display. At this point I strongly believe high possibilities is a hardware issue. I just carry on the installation till end to monitor, same result.

After googlering around hopefully to find any update drivers for the display, none found. Since there are no bios (like any others IBM compatible base pc) for apple machine, here I got a big help from local apple centre tech.

First to cross check the display setting from System Preferences/Universal Access/Display. Check the display is it set to Black on White (This is the correct seeting) and it was. So we process to the next step, RESET PROM.

Here’s the step. Restart (Reboot) the machine, immediately press and hold these 4 keys together when hear the boot tone.

Alt+Command+R+P

After a sec or two it will reboot again by itself and do not let go your finger yet! You can only release those keys when come to the 4th reboot and each reboot you’ll notice the booting tone is louder then the previous one. Wah lah!  

But I was too happy so soon, after finished install dual OS and software, the same problem came again. So I repeat the RESET PROM and surprisingly it was recover! Then after couple of hours of using, I have to reset it again. Total of four times this afternoon.

A conclusion here, I’ll have to go back the original OS that came along to monitor. Will update this paragraph soon.

Monday, 3 November 2008

docx files for Office 2004

Problems with opening or accessing office 2007 or 2008 files, beside iWorks 08' that support, these are the links recommended to download and install if you wish to stick with Ms Office.


Monday, 27 October 2008

Security or Convenience?

Today I replace a Hard Drive for NEC Versa series model E600 notebook. It took me half an hour to replace it because it was design beneath the touch pad (mouse). I had to remove the up cover to do it.

There are 3 replacement or upgrade items very often for notebook. Battery, RAM (Memory) and HDD (Hard Drive). Usually there’s no issue for battery because the break down rates are quite high after a year or two of usage (or even less) and it can be easily replaced by user.

Ram and HDD would not be that user friendly, best to handle by a technician not only because of the skill for time saving or not to “short circuit” to our self but sometimes incompatible pieces may damage the notebook.

Sunday, 12 October 2008

Useful Widgets

Useful Language Translator Widget for poor gramma and spelling like me @_@

About Language Translator Translates

 any text between different 22 different languages using Googles language translation service. It can even detect the source language. What’s New in this Version - added support for Korean more...


and also About iStat pro

A highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your system. It features 9 sections that monitor everything from cpu, memory and disk usage to which processes are using the most cpu. You have complete control over which sections you want to monitor and even the detail level in some cases.

Sections:CPU, Memory, Disks, Network, Battery, Load & Uptime, Temperatures, Fans, Processes…. iStat pro can do it all. Don’t want to monitor them all? Simply disable the sections you don’t want from the back of the widget. more...

Friday, 3 October 2008

Fantastic Battery Performance


Super busy September, A to Z busy…

Here’s my new SE k550i phone but this time in white color after the Laksa Black… ^_^

Few reasons drive me back to this model, 2.0 MP Cyber Shot, 85gram weight, 14mm thick and it’s 6 to 7 hours talk time battery with just standard 950mAh battery!

In my work, I talk a lot on phone. Sales, Complains, Boy friend Girls friend calls, Customer support, guiding them how to “right click”……  *_*

It came with a standard total of 30 received, dialed and missed calls records. This is very useful. Every morning or the night before, one of my habits is to trace back these records for any miss out so that I can prepare my daily jobs schedule.

Averagely the first number shown was between 3 to 4pm. This means there’s an average of 60 to 70 incoming and outgoing per day and also says averagely I’m taking a call in 10 minutes.

If I spend about 5 minutes for each calls, every alternate minutes I’m on the phone! Not to mention plus the usage of Bluetooth. 

Good job SE!

Sunday, 31 August 2008

Laksa Sony Ericsson K550i

About a week ago, I drop my 2 months old Sony Ericsson k550i phone into my lunch "Penang Assam Laksa" :(

One hand with phone another with chop stick, mouth busy eating and talking. The moment just to hang up, the phone..... aiyo.....

After a quick wash, I put it on top of a monitor, using the heat to try it out. Well, the phone still works but the bluetooth seems to be out of order. A bit trouble in transferring files now.

Anyway, today point is not about the laksa. When received the phone, I'v problem synchronizes it with isync, there's no plug-in to support nor from apple download website.

After searching around, found these wsonic and Howard Forums link with edited files ready for download. Millions thanks to above mention link for sharing.

After download, unzip the files and put the "Sony Ericsson-k550" under this root. 

Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/PhonePlugins

You may find there's no "PhonePlugins" folder, create one and put it in.

Respect human intellectual but help those who couldn't afford :)

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Migrating Ms Outlook mail or contacts to Mac


Days earlier a friend asked about this questions just after he got his new Mac machine. Once I did this when I started using Mac years ago, I wanted all my contact in Ms Outlook transferred to Mac mail. It really digs out memories pieces by pieces. :O Some mistake steps and experience to share today.

At first I export Ms Outlook “contact” to CSV (Comma Separated Value) file then import them into Mac mail as text file. All contacts were imported but later I found those email addresses were not at default address in “work” field. Which this also causes new issue if some contacts have more than one email addresses.

Second try out, I export them to CSV as well but this time I transferred (import) it to Yahoo mail. Later then export to Netscape “ldif” format. This is on of the format Mac mail can accept beside vCards or CSV text file.

Works!

Today, I learn new technic from a business partner, he did it using Thunderbird mail and this time more it can transferred including calendar and note too.

Thanks to this link, to share with you his steps. First install Thunderbird in to your PC then import from Outlook. Later copy the Thunderbird profile folder to Mac platform Thunderbird. Lastly import them in to Mac mail. 

But if you Thunderbird layout, just stick to it :)

 

Tuesday, 15 July 2008

PC Base Leopard and Drivers

Finally! 

Finally I get my 1st assembly PC base system to run OSx 10.5
Here I must thanks to INSANELYMAC.COM  providing the sound driver to complete job.

Have been trying to do this long long time, machine in and out so fast and hardly get a touch to install the OSx.

Wish to share this today, these are the specification I used to install and up running OSx 10.5.2

Intel C2D 2.4GHz E4600 Processor
Gigabyte 945GCM-S2L Mainboard
Display Intel GMA950, Realtek 8111C LAN and Realtek ALC662 Codec
2GB PC 667 DDR2 Ram
Standard 160GB SATA HDD / IDE DVDRom / P4 ATX 450W Switching Power Supply

Sunday, 13 July 2008

Macbook Battery Charge only 97% and Calibrating


This morning when I power up my macbook the system just shut down when it reaches the user log in screen. I tough my wife was using it with just battery last night. So I plug in the charger and start up the system again.

Weird thing, the battery life shown 97% when reached desktop. Then I said 'shXt!' Is the battery dead or what?

I restart it and went in to Windows (Dual OS Im running) to check whether it give the same result. Surprisingly it show the same 97% but works differently and I manage to finish a level of my favorite game C&C General. An old game for old man like me :O

Then I decided to continue use, browsing the web for some experiences since it has about 10 minutes left.

Some useful link and appreciate you guys out there for sharing ^_^






A conclude, these are what I did. I continue to use it until it went to sleep mode then charge it without turning it on for about 2 1/2 hours. Usually this is the charging time for battery without the system power on.

Unplug the charger then power on and this time it show 99%. I repeatedly doing this used till battery low in to sleep mode and charge it for about 2 hours plus.

And now it shown 100% :)


Tuesday, 8 April 2008

Birthday

Chinese count the age starting from the birth is because Chinese lunar year. A baby born on 8th April 2008 for example, will be 2 years old on 8th April, 2009.

Sun Yat Fai Lok!

Vsechno nejlepsi k Tvym narozeninam!!

Tillykke med fodselsdagen!

Happy Birthday!

Joyeux Anniversaire!

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

Eytyxismena Genethlia! or Chronia Pola!

Janam Din ki badhai! or Janam Din ki shubkamnaayein!

Selamat Ulang Tahun!

Buon Compleanno!

Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Saeng il chuk ha ham ni da!

Feliz Aniversario! or Parabens!

La Multi Ani!

Feliz Cumplea–os!

Piranda naal vaazhthukkal!

生日快乐 to me Sam. age of 35 lol

Sunday, 6 April 2008

My New iMac!

Days back, a good friend came in my shop and asked me what to do with this 16kg piece of machine. When I look at it, WOW! It was one of my dream machine and it is still. iMac 2000 summer model! 

No question ask, quickly stop all my jobs and phone call. Power it up...well, my wife nearly going to use her "rotan" on me  :p

500MHz processor, 578mb SDRam, 30GB Hard Drive, OS9 and front loading DVDRom Drive. Top of the spec at that time I said.

Spending the whole afternoon, beside the front loading ODD having problem with ejecting disc, the rest works fine. Then I found myself had difficulty in using OS9 since OSx. ^_^ so much to learn since Tiger. Anyway, I decided to upgrade it to OSx since it can support up to 10.39


While ejecting disc, it can only reach behind the front panel, so I had to remove the cover to do OS upgrade. And I had some big help from people who share their experiences from the web, especially thanks to r3uk.com with very complete guide how to do this.

Sunday, 30 March 2008

An unexpected error occurred while opening office 2004


When starting Microsoft Word X for Mac, Microsoft Excel X for Mac, or Microsoft PowerPoint X for Mac, we may receive the following error message:

An unexpected error occurred while trying to load the Microsoft Framework X library.


All because of this folder  :(  "Office X Identities"

We may move the folder call "Microsoft User Data" (just drag it out to your desktop) to desktop to resolve this issue. 

Hard disk:Users:User_Name:Documents:Microsoft User Data



Similar articles

Microsoft Support - KB890889

Microsoft Support - KB321386

Other help

Update Office 2004 Service Pack 2

Restart the computer.

Download and install the updated Office 2004 for Mac SP2.

To obtain the latest updated Microsoft for Mac product, Click Me!


STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the initial release of Office 2004 for Mac SP2. This bug was corrected in the updated release of Office 2004 for Mac SP2.

Thursday, 6 March 2008

ASUS EEE-PC Linux XP

Welcome EEE-PC!
What I like most is the weight at around 900g even 
with a built in webcam and about the speed I may say Linux did a wonderful job with just 512MB while it need 2GB for XP to run the show.

Two small problems that bother me are the 7" screen size (can't be help where the bigger screen the heavy we get) and secondly is the internal 4GB storage. 
After installed XP and some software mention above, it only left us about 500MB of storage. The best to insert (install) a memory card for more software to be installed.
Concluded; it is not a good desktop replacement where the maximum storage are limited to 20GB and the 7" screen may make "4 eyes" people like us becoming "8 eyes" :P But, it is a very good mobile device for presentations and PDA replacement for more features.

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

iPod as external HDD with Windows & Mac

Time past so fast and yet still in CNY holiday mood :P even now almost reach month end of February.

Just before the holiday, some friends came and asked wonder their iPod can be an external Hard Drive for storage beside in use with just iTunes for music and video and I told them YES, in fact it was design to do so.

But a good question follow, whereby how I configure my iPod (iPod Classic 160GB) to sync with iTunes from Mac and also work as an external Hard Drive in both PC and Mac environments. (where I though not many end user would want it to be this way beside some technical person like us)

From the manual, most of us plug in the iPod for the very first time either in PC or Mac then configure it using iTunes, name the drive and also click on the box next to "enable disk use" to make the iPod as an external Hard Drive. But this only allowed the iPod to work with one environment.

Here are some experiences and steps I would like to share how I did it. Firstly by knowing there are deference formats for a drive between Apple in Mac OS extended where PC (XP/Vista) are either FAT or NTFS is very important because is the format that reason our iPod can only work under one environment but not two. 
Mac OS can read and write in all Mac OS extended, FAT but only read NTFS format where-else XP or even newly Vista can't recognize Mac OS extended. A little bit of computer terms here where NTFS recognize FAT but not another round for FAT to read NTFS system.

It looks like this: Mac > NTFS > FAT

I exit iTunes then I runs Disk Utility where you can find it under Application\Utilities and erase (you may want to know in PC base we call it FORMAT) the iPod I name by choosing "MS-DOS File System" in the Volume Format selection and also give a name to it.

BUT unfortunately I found my iPod did not work out correctly after working within XP and Mac for a week later. So I follow the formula above, I configure it another way round.

I reset (you can download this tools here) my iPod using iTunes in XP and re-do the step by step as same as iTunes under Mac. When finished I exit iTunes then look into My Computer and right click on my iPod drive then chose "format" by choosing FAT but not NTFS. Then only I went back to Mac iTunes to sync my musics and video.

In Mac iTunes, it gave a warning saying that my iPod was sync with another iTunes, do I want to erase those previous sync and switch to it, I choose yes.

I believe it is confusing and weird but don't ask me why ya, it just work and I've been using my iPod between two environment and sync it with iTunes from Mac for the past 4 months now :o

Thursday, 24 January 2008

iLife'08

Today I upgraded iLife’06 to iLife’08 hoping to find new themes and feature. Well, 1st thing 1st. It took few more seconds (compare with the 06 version) for loading up, but I don’t think this is a problem for Intel Duo Core or Core 2 Duo system with 1GB of memory and better view with bigger screen using iMac not MacBook :o




For iDVD so far only discover new themes, about the building time (creating my DVD movie), I felt almost the same which I believe this has to depends on my source clips (MPG, AVI etc.) format.

A big change was the layout of iMovie, I’m lost! Nearly don’t know where to start clicking. Ha !! But did some try on error, manage to get a few things done and try out the result. It was good! Rendering time speed up, quick time export quality was sharp. Anyway, still need more time to explore. iLife'08

Tuesday, 22 January 2008

Rat Year

After the turbulent Fire Pig 2007, the Earth Rat year starts on the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar, which falls on February 7 this year.

The Rat is number one in the ranking of the twelve animals and considered the leader in the Chinese Zodiac.

The magical or power name of Earth Rat Year 2008 is Mou Tzu that means the start of the new twelve years reign beginning from the Rat down to the Pig year. The Chinese word Tzu also means infant and signifies the New Era. It is also used for the midnight hours from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. announcing the birth of a new day. more...

Monday, 21 January 2008

iPod Classic 80GB or 160GB


Decisions, decisions. Who needs ’em? Why should you have to choose what to put on your iPod? With up to 160GB of storage, iPod classic lets you carry everything in your collection — up to 40,000 songs and up to 200 hours of video — everywhere you go. In a completely new, even thinner all-metal design starting at RM1,099, this iPod is a modern classic.

^_^ I'm already iPod classic 160GB, Which iPod Are You?

MacBook Air

MacBook Air is ultrathin, ultraportable and ultra unlike anything else. But you don’t lose cms and kilos overnight. It’s the result of rethinking conventions. Of multiple wireless innovations. And of breakthrough design. With MacBook Air, mobile computing suddenly has a new standard.
Just one small problem, only one usb port :P