PAST MEETINGS

June 20, 2011 - Hammondsport Mac Users Group

ATTENDING: Tom B, Jerry L, Larry T, Dorothy E, Bob G.

TOPIC: UNDER THE HOOD (How to replace / backup your Hard Drive)

We all watched with awe as Jerry dissected his MacBook Pro and removed its heart..hard drive. We were even more amazed that he got it it all back together and it worked - - - actually just a couple screws and cover to change the HD. Those Apple engineers are good. See Jerry's special tools.

Drive Genius - great disk-maintenance / repair / cloner utility recommended by Jerry ($99) - 10.5.3 or higher

How A HD Works (The Engineer Guy) - 5min video for those who need to know the details

iStat Menus - a set of 8 separate and highly configurable menu extras that let you know exactly what’s going on inside your Mac. View realtime stats for CPU, Network, Date & Time, Disk Usage, Disk Activity, Sensors (fans & temperatures), Memory and Battery. Each menu extra comes with many different display modes, customizable colours, font sizes and widths.

BackupLoupe $5 shareware - allows you to answer questions like:
---Why does Time Machine take so long to back up my files?
---Which files are actually being backed up?
---Has a particular file/folder been backed up at all?
---How many revisions of a file/folder exist in Time Machine?
---A file/folder was deleted accidentally. When did this happen and where is the latest backup?
---Is my backup drive big enough? Should I consider buying a larger one? And if yes, when?

Carbon Copy Cloner - FREE backup utility - 1.9MB download - make a complete bootable copy of your entire hard drive

TIP - boot up from your backup clone by holding down 'Option' key when restarting.

'On-The-Go' FireWire/USB HD enclosure $65 from OWC (Other World Computing) - transfer 50MB/sec - for 2.5 inch laptop hard drives. Just buy a hard new drive to match the one in your Mac and clone a bootable copy of your entire HD. OWC has 120GB HD for as little as $60!

- fantastic detailed tutorials show how-to fix or upgrade your Mac.

IN THE NEWS

iCloud - Apple to drop MobileMe in June 2012 but no mention of website hosting capability (iDisk)

MacBook Thief Caught - owner had installed Hidden on mac before theft and was able recover it.

Embedding YouTube video - may soon be a felony!

EQUIPMENT

50-Compartment Sorting Tray - very handy for computer repair work and keeping track of a zillion screws - $7.36 - see picture

18-Compartment Sorting Tray - another good place for your loose screws - see picture

54-piece Bit Driver Set - from iFixit - $19.95 - see picture

SPEED TIP

Safari sluggish? (especially if you're using 10.4 Tiger, an older mac or a dial-up connection)----In Safari Prefs>Security uncheck 'Enable Plug-ins' - this will speed up website interaction tremendously. If a site says you need Adobe Flash Player to view video, just re-enable Safari Plug-ins. See more here.

HUMOR

Exclusive preview of IOS 5 - you won't believe your eyes! (3min 35sec)

Hammondsport Mac Users Group - Hammondsport, NY 14840 - www.hportmug.com