Macking 69

StyleWriter Still Works, Maybe
According to Alex, a customer support tech at Apple, the old StyleWriter II and 1200 will still work under OS9.0.4 or 9.1; you just need to use the StyleWriter 1500 driver instead. That makes a bit of sense because that model was a CMY printer (no black) that let you replace the color cartridge with an all-black cartridge.
However, the comment section of the Apple board has replies from people who find that their Mac freezes on startup if the 1500 driver is in the Extensions folder. Remove it and the freeze goes away. Bottom line is that inconsistency reigns. My experience with clients testing this is that if you are using 9.0.0 you can expect freezing, but if you update to 9.0.4 things will be fine and you can use either driver.
The question is now, why is Apple no longer including the 1200 driver if it works fine?

USB Cards: not the total answer
Don't believe the packaging. A client bought a USB card and SmartCard reader to go with her CoolPix camera. She has a beige G3 desktop, same as mine.
The packaging said "MacOS 8.6 or later with USB support" was all that was needed for the card reader. But when it wouldn't work, the tech support rep said that they do not support USB cards. If they had put "Supports built-in USB only" on the package she could have saved an order and some of my time. When in doubt, call the company and verify that a product will work with your setup. These USB cards work fine for other products, and will install in any Mac back to the 7200.

Cubes as Servers
On the MacProfessionals forum, a writer said that the newly-discounted ($1299) G4 Cubes make excellent Web and database servers, for a lot less money and taking up a lot less space than the standard G4 Towers. Get a copy of Timbuktu for each cube and you won't even need monitors. Beware that these low prices may reflect a blowout of the overstock of unsold Cubes from last year and when they are gone it'll be back to $1600.
Otherwise, they are becoming popular with "VIP" users, corporate heads and the like who need a cool, small computer but not all the expansibility as the G4 Tower. Oh, and Apple knocked $1,000 off of their 22" Cinema Display. At $3 grand it still exceeds a student's budget, but has reached the realm of possibility for a busy graphic designer.

A New Standard for Ugly
What kind of mushrooms have they been putting on the pizza at Apple? Two new iMacs, coming in colored patterns I hereby dub "Alien Psoriasis" and "Bad Acid," were released at Macworld Tokyo. Their names are "Blue Dalmatian" and "Flower Power," the latter probably targeted to the people who want to remember the '60s as they never were (meaning anyone under 45). All that remain of the other colors are indigo and graphite.
If you like a particular color that is on the market now, you'd better pick it up or start haunting the refurb dealers. One writer who is an admin at a state university system says that the "new iMac colors are quite possibly the most atrocious attempts at innovative design ever pulled by Apple for as long as I can remember. I do not know any respectable institute of higher education that would even consider placing such psychedelic monstrosities in a standard lab/classroom environment. Sure, we've still got the Indigo and Graphite, but to the degree in which new "styles" are intended to stimulate new sales, I just don't see it happening in higher ed."
What were they thinking? Does this come from the same design-school dropout who came up with the original round hockey-puck mouse? If anyone who worked there understood the concept of "cool" and had any real power we could see some H.R. Geiger-style patterns, or maybe an all-translucent black case with Art Deco trimmings. I'd get either of those.
Nobody expects these bleeding pustules (which would also be a kinda cool case design) to show up in law offices any time soon, but all I can figure is that they are aimed at teenage girls who dot their I's with little hearts. They are probably still waiting for the pink-and-pearl Barbie Edition.
On the up side, all the iMacs now contain CD-RW drives.

Mad is Dead
This has nothing to do with Macs, with this exception: the corporate slime-beasts who produced the Mad on CD-ROM collection designed it in such a manner that it is unusable on anything but Windoze. The March issue of MAD is the first in its 47-year history to contain ads. Real ads, not parodies or ads for Mad-related items.
This is very sad. At least a dozen generations of kids have found Mad as their first exposure to parody and humor, poking holes in authority figures normally perceived as all-powerful gods. Now, it is just like any magazine, nothing to set it apart from Teen Beat or Britney Monthly.
As one wag noted, "You can't serve Mammon and Coyote at the same time." Now they have to avoid offending their corporate masters just as the Dilbert strip does. All the digs at AOL have disappeared from their pages. You will never see another parody ad within its pages, unless (maybe) it is aimed at a competitor of Time-Warner-AOL and their minions. There is probably a do-not-offend list tacked to the wall in the Mad production offices.
You could power the entire East Cost from a generator hooked up to the spinning corpse of William F. Gaines. Farewell, Mad. You'll be missed.

Download problems?
A library/extension called URL Access (version 2.3) can interfere with some downloads, such as the updater for TechTool Pro 3.0.3. The cure is to remove this library from your Extensions Folder. It is required for the Search the Web feature of Sherlock, however, so if you use Sherlock for this purpose you will need to replace URL Access when done. If you don't use Sherlock for Web searches, then you can dump the library for good.

RIP, Global Village
(Russ Alman writes (in Macintouch), "Just got this message back from BestData [owners of the former Global Village line of modems]. I thought I should pass this along so that you can warn others. There was no information about his on their website, and I just spent hours troubleshooting the problem back to them before finding out that the modem was a dead-end product."
Subject: Re: Technical Support Request.
We do not have any newer drivers other than what is originally packaged with the modem. This modem was discontinued last December and there are not any newer drivers expected to be released for the product. Apparently to make this modem work in the newer OS (including the Microsoft OS's too), the modem would need a eeprom upgrade in addition to a newer set of drivers. This is amongst one of the reasons this is a dead product now.
Sincerely, Best Data Technical Support.
Global Village used to make the "best" modems on the market, with fax software far superior to the 2nd-place FaxSTF. As mentioned here last year, the GV modem for USB had serious problems with no upgrade planned.
Their serial modems still work, even under 9.1 on Macs with a serial port, but it is yet another end-of-an-era for one of the great Mac products. Modems are going away anyway, as more and more people get DSL or cable or some other broadband alternative (with satellite coming in the next year or two), but it is sad to see a good product die such an ignoble death.

Network an Epson
DBrook writes,.
I'm hoping there's a somewhat easy way to do this: we have an I Mac and a PowerBook G3 and we have an Epson Stylus printer with both serial and parallel ports. We would like the iMac to be able to use this printer. File sharing is not important.
Any suggestions? If it's expensive, I suppose we would be willing to buy a USB printer and do an ethernet network. What do you think?.
Dave
You can't do it with a serial printer. But USB printers can be shared over an ethernet network if both Macs are running OS 9.0.4 or later. It's called USB Printer Share and it's included with the OS. All you need is an ethernet hub (or simply use a crossover cable) to link up the Macs. File sharing is a free bonus.

Letter: The Computer Store
I read your column in the Computer Bits March 2001 issue, and noticed that you wrote of PowerMacPac, as well as the former site of Prewitt, but left out The Computer Store.
I have had service dealings with both PowerMacPac and The Computer Store..
I had purchased my iMac DV from PowerMacPac, and when it developed a problem, brought it back to have it corrected. I will not bore you with the details, but my brother-in-law and I, after numerous trips to PowerMacPac, found the problem (faulty memory). The trips and return trips to PowerMacPac took weeks, and we had to find the fault ourselves.
After the warranty expired, I had another problem. With my last experience, I reluctantly took it to The Computer Store, where I was treated well, and instead of waiting for a week, I had the iMac back that evening. I feel I was treated well, and with a true belief that they still understand what customer service means.
I had heard stories of problems with The Computer Store, but my experience was courteous, swift, and painless. I would recommend them highly.
Just thought you might like some input.
M C Fries

The Titanium PowerBook
A client got one and I set it up for her, so I had plenty of hands-on time with the new beast. I tell you, it looks as good in person as in the ads. The case is bead-blasted against showing oil from fingerprints, and it feels very solid, even the thin frame around the screen.
But don't be fooled; it is a titanium skin, not a solid body. You could dent and warp the case from rough treatment. It ain't no iBook in that department.
But the screen is absolutely gorgeous. So big and sharp, it will become your primary DVD player, unless you have a monster TV at home. The speed matches the Cube, with an occasional strange hesitation which I eliminated by turning off all sleep features when plugged in. (I recommend all PowerBook users do this.)
It's really tempting. I am glad I have a couple of huge Visa bills to pay off or I probably would have ordered one.

Qworst Hell
One of the hardest things I need to learn is networking. I can do a Mac network, mixed physical and AirPort, and get everything working, but I can run out of steam when it comes to integrating DSL into the mix.
If you have more than one Mac and want to network them onto DSL you will absolutely need a firewall/router like the 3Com or the LinkSys one-port unit ($119). This protects your network from crackers and script kiddies (amateur crackers running prepared scripts who don't even know what they are doing). But while configuration is relatively simple for a home system, it can be a nightmare in a mixed office environment. Expect NO help from Qworst if you have a digital office telephone system, especially if you didn't buy it from them.
The help department at 3Com was excellent. They make the "shark fin" cable modem converters used by AT&T Broadband. They told me that you must have a router in order to allow more than one Mac to connect to the net at the same time. Without it, you get a warning message from the TCP/IP control panel, which then shuts itself off. Most routers are configured through your Web browser but the documentation included with the LinkSys is for Windows only. Most of the info applies to Macs, but it takes experience to figure out which is which.
Bottom line: Try to have the company that sells you the connection do the installation.

There are no IT people
If you were listing to ComputerBits Radio recently, you heard a guest from Pioneer-Pacific Technical College discuss this subject. The problem is that there is a shortfall of more than 80,000 skilled tech workers in Information Technology. This is why every software company you call has robots instead of humans answering the phones. They do whatever they can to protect their few knowledgeable techies from having to talk directly to the people who need them. If you get past the robot, you will often wind up with a customer service rep, someone who may have some tech knowledge but usually doesn't, who serves as a further filter to protect the techs.
It sucks but it's reality in 2001. Moral: You want big bucks, get into this business. Once you get good, you can write your own ticket. And no testing of your bodily fluids for unauthorized molecules, either. Any company tries to pull that crap finds that they can't get anyone to work for them.

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.)