Macking 84

IXTV Returns
Richard Taylor writes in response to my statement in a recent article "The now-defunct company was to be the supplier of video cards to Apple, but after they experienced a 25% failure rate with new cards, Apple dumped them and the company went out of business. The IXTV card, which puts a TV into your Mac along with video-in for an analog VCR, lost compatibility with the OS after 8.6. Anyone want mine?"
While the ixTV card isn't compatible with OS X (though there are people working on making it so) the card does work under OS 9.x - I use it almost every day on my G4/867 desktop.

Unusable CDs
Do not buy the following CDs: Shakira: "Laundry Service," Jennifer Lopez: "J To Tha L-O!" or Celine Dion: "A New Day Has Come," "Star Wars Episode 2," Sarah Connor's "Green Eyed Soul" and "This Is The Remix" by Destiny's Child. Taste issues aside, these disks are in violation of the standards for Compact Disks and as such are excluded from the warranty protection of your Mac. The Dion album can get stuck in the drive and may not be removable without disassembly, and will also prevent your Mac from even being able to boot!
The Campaign for Digital Rights web site discusses the issue with workarounds and a link to the Apple Knowledge Base that tells you what to try should a disk get stuck in your CD drive.
Be sure to let the retailer know that they are losing sales of these disks (whether you have any actual interest in buying them or not).

The ProScope
At the recent Macintosh Business Expo, I bought a Bodelin ProScope digital microscope. While I had no idea what I would do with it, it seemed like a great toy and I have been wanting one since seeing a similar item a few years ago.
For more on this device see The ProScope and a few pictures I put on my own web site.
The best way I can think of to justify the cost of this is to make it a part of Moonlight Mac's services, but of course simple toy value is sufficient justification in almost any case.
(You want that $3500 Apple Cinema Display? Call it a toy and break out the old Visa.)
In any event, after a month of using it, I can say it is really a lot of fun and you learn a lot about the structure of things. Next up is the 200x lens.
Available options include a table stand (although it will work with any tripod), a 10x, 100x and 200x lens, a ring mount so any 35mm camera lens will work (including an optical microscope). Combine this with any USB PowerBook and you can use it in the field on the laptop's battery alone. It's also great for students of any age.

Which Printer?
After two months I am really happy with my Epson C80. The advantage this has over the cheaper C60 is separate ink cartridges for CMYK. Others (in fact most), have one cartridge for CMY ink and one for K (blacK). The Epson photo-quality 6-color printer puts 5 colors in one cartridge. The obvious disadvantage is that when one color runs out the whole cartridge is shot.
At $13 each for the colors and $32 for the black it isn't cheap but no inkjet is. That is how they make their money. They could give away the printers and make it on the ink. In fact, that is how Lexmark works. Their inkjet is included free in many bundled deals, and the only cartridge included is CMY; no black. Now it will fake black by combining all three colors into a dripping wet page, but if you get one of those Lexmarks, don't leave the store without buying another color cartridge and two black ones.

Bigger Screen iMacs Coming
According to the rumor sites, Apple is increasing their orders for larger TFT monitors in the form that lends themselves to installation at the end of the iMac's pivoting arm. If you aren't in any particular hurry to upgrade your current model, you might want to wait until fall (Q3) when this is supposed to ship, or at least be officially announced.

Online Investing with Macs
You can read all you will want to know about investing online throughout this issue; most of the information is not platform-specific. But you have to be careful who you set up your accounts with because some online traders make use of the Microsoft browser a condition of participation. There is no reason to do this; other browsers, except for Netscape 4.7 and earlier, are perfectly capable of handling secure transactions. Hell, even 4.7.9 supports encryption, just not the latest and greatest.
Other alternatives are Mozilla 1.0 (the open-source version of still-in-development Netscape 7), Netscape 6.2.1 (which is positively awful), Opera, iCab and Omniweb. Before signing up with an online broker make sure that there are no gotchas or conditions that would preclude you from full participation on your Mac.

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.)