Leopard problems?

Mat Asay wonders why people have a problem with Leopard. It indeed has held me back with upgrading. I just wonder whether these are just a vocal few that have trouble.

I got a new machine at home with Leopard and it seems good to me. I do not have much experience with it though. I am starting to prepare an upgrade with my laptop. Unfortunately the Migration Assistant did not work for me, so I have to do everything by hand. For the applications I have to do that anyway, as I am moving from Tiger to Leopard, and from PowerPC to Intel. I threw away the Intel-forks.

So the upgrading is a slow process. Once I have all my files over, I will start with a clean slate and do a clean install. My system has now so much junk that a bit of cleaning can do no harm.

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Initital Neuf experiences

Well, I am now totally switched to Neuf Telecom. I have been playing a bit with and seem to settle in now. Several observations.

Ping value is OK. At the moment it is 200 msec to a server in Paris. However in the evening it can drop to 500 msec.

Throughput (down) is about 80% better. However last night it dropped to only 200 kbps, it is 20% of my initial value. I hope that this will improve. I will do regular speed testing for a while.

The Neufbox is nice, I had no trouble setting it up. The WiFi signal seems les strong than my previous device. Have it now connected to the Wii and the PS3. So looks good.

I tries to connect my external harddisk to the box. Unfortunately it was not well recognised. I guess this due to the formatting I used (MacOSX extended). Guess I should revert to something else again. I have to experiment what is supported. My USB-ket worked OK. I was able to connect via FTP and WebDav.

I was not able to get my printer (HP DeskJet 5940) going. I found a PPD-file on the net, but it did work. The Neufbox did see the printer. I am at a loss here.

And finally the telephone worked as well through the Neufbox. I could call out and receive calls.

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Upgrading my ISP

I want to upgrade my ISP offer, so I started to look around. The main reason is that I want to have a 2Mbps solution, the maximum possible on my line. While looking around, I noticed that I can get rid of my Telephone subscription as well, saving me 15 Euro / month. I will keep the same phone number, but I guess I will move to VoIP. This also implies that I have free calls to any fixed phone in Europe. Good enough for me. And it looks I can save some 10 Euro per month this way.

In addition all offers force me into a (triple play) box. This is nice as well as my current WiFi solution seems broken. Now I am looking into the details of each offer.

Orange is out of the question as I still have to keep my France Telecom subscription. On their site I am not allowed to sign up for the 8 Mbps package, as I only can get 2 Mbps.

Tele2 has no valid offers in my region,

Darty is still a new player and has insufficient info on it's box. So I did not look any further.

Neuf Telecom stupid that they have a windows only music service. Looks like a good offer. Like the 3 LAN-ports on the box. And It has two USB-ports, for my printer and hard-disk. 45 Euro cancellation costs. Montly costs are at 35 Euro per month. The box also supports WebDAV, so very easy for my Mac. I am not sure whether my printer (HP 5940) is supported.

Club Internet has now become Neuf Telecom, although they still show their own offers. Seems like an interesting offer, but I guess it will merge into the Neuf portfolio.

Alice has a sign-up fee. They have a not very good reputation. There offer seems to be OK.

Free has a cancellation fee of 86 Euro, which diminishes with 3 Euro per month. I hate their website, very hard to figure out what I will get and how much it will cost. Enough reason to stop investigating.

It looks like Neuf Telecom has the best offer, but that is based on their box. In terms of functionality they are all the same. And the quality comparison is impossible to make, alas.

I decided to go for this solution and ordered it today.

Categories: Computing
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Connection bug tracking

I am still busy with finding the bug with connection. I got rid of my local network for a while and hooked my Mac directly to the modem for two days. It worked flawlessly. So I guess the problem is in another part of my network.

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NetNewsWire bug

I am plaged by a small bug in NNW. When I view a post with an embedded YouTube video, I can not easily move to the next Item. When I step to the next Item/Post with the spacebar, the content of the view-pane will not show this new Item. After a long (if ever) while it does change, but that is way to slow for me.

I complained to the author about it, but it is a Flash-problem. Flash is doing all kind of things. That might be true, but I think that NNW should halt that process then, when I want to go to the next Item.

The only way now to halt the process, is to doubleclick the Item, opening a browser tab and then closing that window in order to go back to reader tab. Annoying.

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Solved

I, sort of solved, my wireless connection problems. I am using the Fonera and was not able to access various sites suddenly. My interest was now directed to the Fonera itself. A first check was to find out whether the Fonera was up to date . It turned that it was, as it upgrades itself automatically, which is nice, but not under user control. SO maybe there was something wrong with the latest upgrade?

I started looking for the Fonera error messages on the net. And then I found the problem. It seems that the change from Wanadoo to Orange, also involved a change in DNS servers. And the Wanadoo servers seem to be not as good as the Orange servers. So I added the Orange servers to the DNS list in my router. The Fonera picks these up, when it reboots. I couls access the websites again.

I still have a problem with the Fonera though. It loses its connection now and then. Whereas on the wireline I have no such problems.

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Connection problems

I recently had Internet connection problems, I could reach certain some sites, but not others. For a long time I just thought that there was a problem in the network somewhere, so I did not take any action.

But then I happened to change from from wireless to wire for some reason. And then the connections did work. So there is a problem with the wireless part. And I guess that would be the basestation then. I am using La Fonera. Strange that this is not working. Do they filter on domain? scary...

Guess I have to look at a new solution. Like to have a DSL modem/router/basestation/USB-server solution.

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Xslimmer

I downloaded Xslimmer. This application helps the user to remove unneeded code from applications. It removes the part of fat binaries (intel and powerpc) that you do not need on your Mac. And it deletes unneeded languages.

For me this deleted some 1.4 GB, which is not bad. This required me to buy the application though.

I think this a feature that should be part of the operating system and should include recovery services as well. It is all stuff that I really do not need and litters my harddrive.

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New memory

I added extra memory to my iBook. The number of pageouts is now 0. So the operation is a success. I have now 1.2 GB in my iBook. I took a 512k out and replaced it with a 1 GB. I wonder whether I can access the other module as well and thus replace the 256k with the 512k.

By the way, I have the impression that the iBook is now snappier as well.

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Iomega external harddisk

I got me an external harddisk to store all my multimedia stuff. My main disk was starting to get filled quickly. So I bought a 500 MB disk from Iomega. Connecting to the Mac and starting to work with it was no issue. It worked right out of the box.

Then I however noticed that I could not reach the harddisk from other computers on the network. These are also Macs. It took me a while googling before I found the answer. It turns out that the disk should be formatted 'MacOS Extended' and not 'MS-DOS'.

And I had to Google a bit before I found the formatting guidelines. Did that and now it works like a charm.

I hooked the hard disk up to an old computer, which as only USB 1.1. Still have to test whether this is sufficient for my purposes. All the other computers can automount the harddisk. This is done through the startup items. Just drag the network disk into the startup panel.

Still have to work out how other users can access the harddisk as well. Have an idea to solve it.

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Mac OS9 over?

At last I upgraded Reunion, the genealogy app, to a MacOSX version. I waited a few years before they created nice MacOSX version. So it was about time to change.

I hardly used MacOSX the last few years, just for this app. So it is time to delete this system, at last,

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WWDC disappointing

After reading all the comments on the Jobsnote, my only conclusion is that the keynote was disappointing. I did not see anything I got excited about. I guess we are all waiting for the iPhone. And I wonder whether Leopard will be an interesting upgrade. So I guess I wait at least until 2008, when there are some apps that take advantage of it, and have been debugged.

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Mac security

I am really getting tired of the security discussions of MAcOSX. as if the MacOSX users are in denial. It is a silly discussion and seems to be motivated more by people who seek publicity. For me MacOSX is now perfect. I have no virus scanner, I never had a virus, I have no malware, I have no problems, I have never crashes. So MacOSX is perfect. And the way Apple seems to post security updates, it probably will stay that way for a long while. Any hole that is found has no impact in the real world as long as Apple keeps up in this way.

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WoW

My sun just installed World of Warcraft on my laptop. So I have not much access any more. Unfortunately this is the fastest system we have.

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HP Deskjet 5940

I got me a new printer from Amazon. My old printer, an Epson, would not work anymore. For some time it was already behaving strangely, so I was waiting for this moment. As usual Amazon delivered it quite fast. I had to pick it up at the post office though, as the postman no longer drives to our house.

I had expected an easy installation, this was however not the case. There was a problem with the drivers. The computer recognized the drivers well, but then it did not work. It might well be my fault as I deleted a lot of unused printer stuff. And the CD that came along was no help, it was broken. So to the Googleplex. I found an installer and downloaded a version. Upon installing however everything went wrong. My computer totally hanged. I had to restart a few times, but nothing seemed to help, so back to the Googleplex and now I downloaded a driver from the HP site. Why are these files so large by the way (120 MB), it is ridiculous. But now after the install everything work well.

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