Macking 29

Avoid Sleep Mode
The Energy Saver control panel has settings for Sleep mode in all new and recent Macs. There are serious problems in some 603e models that can cause a blinking question mark at startup, which means that it won't recognize the hard drive and may require reinitialization, at worst.
Other Macs don't properly recover from system sleep and just need to be rebooted. It's rare, but every user should protect themselves by disabling system sleep while preserving monitor sleep.
Do this by opening the Energy Saver control panel and clicking the More Settings. You can then set separate times for monitor and system sleep. Slide the System and Hard Drive option to Never, and the Monitor sleep to a reasonable time, such as 30 minutes.
This sleep option is pointless if your monitor is not Energy Star-compliant; but if it is, you will save 90% of your Mac's energy use by sleeping the monitor. In any case, a monitor with an accessible on/off switch can simply be turned off when not in use. It does not negatively affect the Mac in any way.
Screen savers? They're just entertainment these days. Screens don't need saving because they are no longer subject to burn-in like the old monochrome monitors (MacPlus, SE-30) were. As entertainment they are worthwhile, but beware of conflicts that can happen when you run AfterDark and its clones. Safest screensaver is Dark Side of the Mac, which can run most After Dark modules, yet runs as a background application and does not patch the System heap in any potentially troublesome way.

The New Macs
Deadline time keeps me from getting my hands on them so no useful info, except what is available on the Web: 3 models, each using the 750 chip (aka G3) which is faster than anything else out now. Report is that if you get the cheapest unit, a 7300-style case model with a 233-mHz chip, you will have a box faster than the 8600/300. Price is just $2 grand with a minimal 32-megs RAM on board, and three slots for DIMMs. Fast CD, 4-gig HD, plenty of VRAM for a 17" monitor.
The other two models are $2500 and $3000 (for a minitower configuration). Both run at 266 mHz and the latter comes with a 6 gig drive. Six gigs, fer Bob's sake! Oh, and there is a very high-end PowerBook using that chip in the pipeline too, starting at $5600. They should all be in the stores right now.

Precise Mousing Surface
It took a review in Corvallis MUG's "Mouse Droppings" to convince me to try this new mouse pad from 3M, but I am now not only hooked, I am going to buy wholesale and sell them to my clients. This is simply the best mouse pad I have ever used.
Mouse pads come in a variety of textures and materials, the most common ones being the rubber-bottom fabric, and smooth-surfaced, rectangles. The smooth ones are almost useless; every bit of dust and dirt gets immediately transferred to the ball, and they skip and slip. Horrid things. Get rid of yours now; your pants leg would work better. I pause here to whine that this is the pad that you frequently find the Apple (and Power Computing) logo or name on; they handed them out for years.
The fabric-surfaced ones make pretty good traction; I have used them since day one. The ball has a texture to grip, but they collect dust and hand oil and transfer it to the ball and internal rollers after a month or so.
Some have a matte surface, transparent to the art or images underneath. They are not as good as fabric, but better than smooth. The surface is similar to the vinyl 3-ring binders you probably have cluttering up the closet (not the smooth ones; these have a visibly textured surface). If you want an emergency mouse pad, locate one of those binders, remove the center ring assembly and you have two passable 9x12" mousing pads.
But the 3M Precision Mousing Surface is another creature entirely. It is smaller than a conventional pad, and shaped somewhat like an artist's palette. This shape just happens to be the shape of the motion a user makes when moving around on the pad. The surface is composed of thousands of tiny pyramids which make for a positive grip on the ball as it passes overhead. Dust has nothing to stick to and is wiped off by the back of your hand in a whisk. Skin oil sinks below the tips of the pyramids; the pad can be quickly cleaned with dish soap and water.
The PMS (my acronym, not theirs) is very thin; just a few millimeters above the surface of the desk. Wide mouse movements that leave the pad are not going to stop the ball at the edge, and your wrist bends back less than when the pad is 1/8" or more thick.
The PMS costs around $15 at better computer and office supply stores everywhere. Until Dec. 31 it is on sale for $11.

Sticking Mouse
If your mouse is sticking, flip it upside down and rotate the ball cover counter-clockwise until it comes off. Drop out the ball and look carefully at the three rollers (one for pressure and one each for the x and y axes). My bet is you will see dust at each end of the rollers and a band of crud right down the middle. The ball, in most cases, should be light grey, not dark.
Fingernail the crud off the roller and tweezer the dust bunnies at the ends. Do not use metal on the rollers as that will scratch the plastic and make it crud up sooner. If your fingernails aren't up to the task, use wood sticks or Q-tips and alcohol. It may take some scrubbing, but get them clean. Then clean the ball with alcohol and cloth (preferable lint-free).
This should be a monthly chore until you get the PMS; you should not need to clean it more than yearly after that.

Pronouncing URLs
A recent issue of NetBITS commented on just how to best pronounce the "http://www" part of most URLs (pronounced in the US as "earls" or "uhrls" and Britain as "you are ell" because "earls" means something else). The UK magazine New Scientest collected suggestions and all agreed that the best one was "Hitweb." For example, you'd read http://www.apple.com as "Hitweb apple dot com." This has not caught on, sadly, but I think I will start using it myself. Maybe we can force the issue.

Useful Extensions and Panels
My very first column for Computer Bits explored the world of patches, add-ons and hacks available for Macs in the form of control panels and extensions. For the next few months I'll be catching up on what's out there now, and check in on a few old favorites. Most of these can be found on any Mac shareware site, including download.com, kagi.com (where you can also pay the fees for subscribing products), and many of the commerical network providers such as AOL and CompuServe. I will be reviewing only those extensions that work with OS 8 and earlier.
SmoothType This extension uses your PostScript and TrueType font outlines to anti-alias fonts in your Fonts folder or loaded with Suitcase or other font utility. It takes processor time and effort to do this, so expect some noticable slowdown in font-related activity on slower Macs.
Anti-aliasing fonts softens the sharp edges of bitmap (screen) fonts by blurring the edges, effectively doubling your screen resolution. In some cases this makes a font less readable, but Charcoal, the default replacement for Chicago in OS8, looks very nice with SmoothType loaded. It's shareware, and registration $5 through Kagi. This is by the author of Kaleidoscope, Greg's Buttons and Aaron.
Kaleidoscope. This package allows you to make radical changes to your buttons, scroll bars and other parts of the general appearance of your windows. A fast Mac needed as this can slow you down quite a bit, but if you love customizing your desktop, Kaleidoscope will do it.
There is a Web page included in the documentation that contains dozens of looks programmed by Kaleidoscope fans, some simple and some utterly bizarre. Shareware $20 at Kagi.
SmartScroll. Much as I hate Windows, there are a couple of features that I have wanted in my Mac. One of them is dynamic scroll bars. Normal scroll bars in windows are fixed squares that, by position, show you where you are in a window that contains more information than can be displayed all at once. In SmartScroll, that bar elongates to show you how much of what you can't see is above and below the part you can see. If there is very little, the bar takes up most of the slider area. When there is a lot of data not showing, such as a long Finder list or a word-processing document with many pages, the bar shrinks proportionately.
PowerBar Pro. The original PowerBar was a control panel and no longer works (properly) under 8. It creates one or more button bars that can launch applications, control panels, documents or folders. It supports hierarchical menus, so if you put in a folder (or your entire hard drive) you can navigate anywhere within via popup submenus. There have been several products like this (OneClick comes to mind), but I have been hooked on PowerBar for years and I love this version. 3.0 is current for OS8. It runs as a demo for 30 days; price is just $25 and free if you registered the older version.
PopChar 2.5.2. This control panel installs a dropdown menu in your menubar that displays all the characters in the active font. It works in almost any application with a font menu, which means trouble sometimes in older Illustrator and Photoshop versions, and Word 6, which displays only in Chicago. When you see the character you want, drag over to it and release the mouse. It types it for you. Great for iconic fonts like Zapf Dingbats, or extended characters not visible on the keyboard. Freeware.

Letters

I have a Power 7100 running system 7.1.3. I got a used LaserWriter II NT but no disks and would like to connect it to the Power Mac. I've looked around and can't seem to find the necessary software (printer drivers and fonts). I went to Apple site and located the Web page for downloading LaserWriter files but found it somewhat confusing! Do you have an easy answer? What kind of costs are involved? I'd hate to think the printer can't be used.

SyJet isn’t perfect, either
Chuck and Karen Coleman write,

We decided to upgrade all the EZ drives to the SyJet 1.5GB for backups and large file transfers. We needed internal drives and I bought one to test it out. It failed after the first hour of use. I called the tech support line and got the "press 1 if..."
After getting through 9 to 10 layers of answers to FAQs (none of which solved my problem), I was given a non-toll-free number to call. I called this number and finally got a tech. Well, I soon discovered that the automated answering system was smarter than this guy. Now I am stuck with a $400 drive that doesn't work.
I called the main office and finally got a RMA number and sent the drive back. The new one took about a week. I put it in and it failed right away -- didn't even get an hour out of it.
It was sent back and I was given an external drive to use while the internal was being fixed/replaced. The external failed after several days.
I was told it was the power supply. I sent it back and finally got the internal back.
It works OK now but freezes after 90% of the file is transferred unless I restart and turn off all extensions. I have run Conflict Catcher three times and haven't discovered the problem, and am convinced that it isn't a problem with extensions or control panels. The drive has also lost the desktop DBF and the system didn't recognize it so it had to be reformatted.
This has happened twice.
I have e-mailed my troubles with SyQuest to all our associated industries (group mail list) and to all our 16,000 employees. I guarantee that SyQuest has felt the sting. So much so that the vice-president of sales called me to ask what the problem was. I told him that there wasn't a problem any more. We went and bought 11 Jaz drives that all work well and are considering purchasing more.

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)