Macking 82

Sending a Message
Is your Mac on a network with other Macs? Want to send a message to someone who has your Mac mounted on their desktop? This incredibly useful tip, which I am amazed I never knew about, came from the MacProfessionals email list. I suppose if I worked in a company or other group of Mackers instead of just my home network I'd know, but I just learned about this trick today so I pass it on to you.
To quote Threemacs.com (formerly Three Macs and a Printer)
"If you use File Sharing, you can send messages to other users on your network. If someone is connected to one of your shared volumes, you can send them a message through the Activity Monitor tab on the File Sharing control panel.
"Open the control panel, then click on the Activity Monitor tab to bring up a list of all network users connected to your Mac. Hold the Option key, then double-click on the desired user's name. Type your message in the window that appears and the message will appear on the selected user's screen."

Mac-Compatible GPS
John Herrmann writes,
Good news - the Powerbook Zone website (www.pbzone.com) has had several articles about [Mac-compatible Global Positioning System software] recently. Their readers have posted several items, including a link to the Route 66 website, which lists Mac compatible software. Several others have posted information regarding link-ups between Garmin GPS units and Mac serial ports. Check it out at the Route 66 website .

PRAM Batteries
All Macs have a small battery on the motherboard. Its purpose is to keep data in Parameter RAM, which stores Date & Time, whether AppleTalk is on or off, Startup Disk info and more, active when the Mac is shut down and unplugged.
In older models, the battery also enabled the monitor to see the video port, and some Performas won't even start if the battery is dead. If the Mac starts but the monitor won't come on, you can sometimes make it work by turning the Mac off immediately after startup (leaving enough time to tell if the monitor is going to come on or not) and then turning it right back on. You can do this only with units that have a hardware switch like the 6100 series and some models of Quadra. Other Macs can sometimes be awakened by hitting command-control-power switch after determining the monitor isn't going to come on, but you'd be better off just going out and getting a battery. On most models it is designed to be user-replaceable, but if you are not comfortable opening up your Mac, have an Apple shop do it.
The two most common batteries are the 3.6 volt TL2150/S or equivalent, or the 4.5 volt Rayovac 841. Most Mac dealers can get their hands on the 4.5, and most of them stock the 3.6 (which looks like half an AA battery). Radio Shack also sells this battery because it is used in security systems as well. They sure don't keep it around for us! It's $10 there, but more expensive elsewhere. Wholesale price is about $4.50 from BatteryBiz, but you have to buy in quantity, at least 10 at a time.
When your Mac is off but still plugged in, a small trickle of current is still coming in, which helps preserve the battery. If you switch it off with a power strip, or unplug it outright, you shorten the life of the battery because then it has to work alone to keep the PRAM chip alive.
Symptoms of a dead battery: Mac won't start at all if it's a Performa; monitor won't come on until you force a couple of restarts; the date and time keep decaying back to 1904 or 1956, and AppleTalk, if normally off, turns itself on.
Normal life of a battery is three to five years, so if you have had your Mac that long and not replaced the battery, it may soon be time.

Eudora on ATTBI
Jock Gill writes in RISKS Digest:
"Eudora users who are ATTBI customers might want to know this [From Dave Farber's IP list].
"As Eudora users will know, ATTBI Broadband [formerly Road Runner or MediaOne] does NOT support Eudora -- only MS products. What they may not know is that ATTBI's instructions for re-configuring Eudora to work with ATTBI contain a very peculiar instruction in lines 10 and 17 = suggesting that you MUST select SECURE SOCKETS WHEN RECEIVING.
"This is in fact NOT TRUE, as David Reed helped me to discover last night. If you do follow their instructions and select the SSL feature, you will discover that your RETURN address MUST be the same as your LOGIN name. This, obviously prevents a return address other than the ATTBI domain. So, if you have your own domain and wish to use it in the RETURN field in Eudora, do NOT select the SSL functions in steps 10 & 17 of ATTBI's online instructions -- see their web site.
"Trying to be a good dooby, I explicitly followed ATTBI's online instructions, only to discover the above problem. When ever I tried tied to usemy normal email address as my return address, I got error 553 from the ATTBI servers.
"Calls with very long wait times to ATTBI, and chats with them online, were fruitless to the point of their suggesting the 553 error message was an Eudora problem. The ATTBI techs had no idea whatsoever about the relationship between the so-called SSL requirement and is effect to force you to use your ATTBI login in name for your return address.
"Makes you wonder why we ever trust large organizations. As David might say, the power of the edges to collectively organize around problems solved this problem in very short order -- once I gave up on the old notion of turning to the central authority."

iMacs Ship Severly Fragmented
This was a stunner. I helped setup two clients recently and both of their new iMacs needed defragmentation immediately out of the box.
When documents, applications, system files and directories are written to non-contiguous parts of the hard drive it's called fragmentation. It normally builds up over time as old files are deleted and new ones written in their place.
When you run Norton SpeedDisk, it reorganizes all of your files so the system files, applications and the like are in the inside of the disk, and documents are on the outside (I may have this backwards) and remaining free space is in the middle. When you copy a large file to an unfragmented disk, all the sectors it occupies are adjoining. If there are lots of little blocks of free space, then a document that takes up, say, 100 sectors (400K), the drive will look for the first available free space, and when that fills up, go scurrying off to find the next nearest free blocks.
The location of these fragments is entered in the desktop database with each sector having a number.
When you try to open a fragmented application or document, the directory tells the drive head which sector it begins. If it doesn't find all of the file in the adjacent sectors, it goes back to the directory to find out where the next block is, then goes over there to get it.
But if the directory itself is fragmented, then the head has to scurry around the disk just to find out where the pieces are. Multiply the number of fragments in the document by the number of fragments in the directory, and you have noticeable slowdown as you sit there, waiting nanosecond after endless nanosecond for something you could swear happened quicker a few months ago.
On a new drive, this should not happen. Fragmentation builds up over time, it should not start out that way!
I have found the Severe fragmentation on older "snow" iMacs that came with OSX preinstalled.
The bottom line: if you don't own Norton Utilities when you get your new Mac, you shouldn't wait. Buy it at the same time, and run both Disk Doctor and then SpeedDisk before you even start installing applications. Alternative products to do the same thing: DiskWarrior for directory repair and PlusOptimizer for defragmentation (but PlusOptimizer is getting a little old).
It seems that everyone is discovering this phenomenon about the same time. Just as I started asking questions, a discussion area on Macintouch about this started up. Comments on the site state that an unfragmented disk becomes fragmented after an install of any version of OSX takes place, whether or not the drive ever had it on before.
I wrote and called Apple press relations for a statement on this but apparently pressed a controversial button because they have not responded with any answers. Expect some kind of press release with enough spin to drive a generator. Hopefully they will figure out what is wrong and fix it.
Don't expect an answer from tech support - the number you call when you have problems with a brand new Mac - because the guy on the end (working on Saturday) said that Symantec never discussed the design of Norton Utilities with them, have no clue about how OSX works, etc. He could not explain the fragmentation or even understand why it may be bad, or if it even existed.
My guess: The master disk that contains all the software to be put on new drives is fragmented and was not fixed before becoming the master disk. Since copying is done bit-by-bit, the fragmentation follows right along.

Typing on Air
A virtual keyboard was unveiled by Siemens at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover, Germany. The device, manufactured by VKB Inc., a company in Israel, uses a projector to display an image of a keyboard on a flat surface and detects user interaction with the surface so, voila, you have a virtual keyboard. It also simulates a mouse pad.
It's perfect for mobile phones, laptops, PDAs or even sterile medical environments.
The article has a must-see picture. Ananova 19-Mar-02.

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.)