I'm back to the world of Macs

[gear02]

Last time I was here I had a powerbook G4. To make a long story short, I sold it because the school I was going to was going to give me a laptop (included with tuition). Turns out I didn't go to that school and went to another one, which meant buying a laptop, but I got an IBM X40 which I loved.

After my first year (and in my summer internship), I decided to get a Macbook. I almost left the store with a MBP, but I came to my senses and realized for me it wasn't worth the extra money for (essentially) a graphics card. I have a white 2.0Ghz macbook.

So what did I miss? I want to make sure I got everything covered.

1) I tried installing boot camp with Vista but that didn't work (kept getting the winload.exe error). Any help with that?

2) Added 2 1Gb RAM chips so hopefully they're running in pairs. How can I check to see if they are working in pairs?

3) I got Entourage and updated to the latest version. However, I can't get spotlight to retrieve information from my emails. How do I get that to work? I checked the setting in Entourage and indeed spotlight integration is active.

4) If I wanted a pad or a stand to keep the bottom cool, is there one that is good for macs?

5) I want to impress the crap out of people when I get back to school next term. Other than Expose, is there any graphical stuff I can get to show it off? Like a neat screensaver or background?

6) Is there a way to get ical and entourage synced?

7) Anything else I should know about my MB? Any programs I must have?

 

[mark!]

1) I tried installing boot camp with Vista but that didn't work (kept getting the winload.exe error). Any help with that?

The Vista beta is not compatible with Parallels or BootCamp as of now. On TUAW.com they explain the process. To run Windows via BootCamp you will need Windows XP Service Pack 2

2) Added 2 1Gb RAM chips so hopefully they're running in pairs. How can I check to see if they are working in pairs?

They automatically use dual channel if they are both the same size.

3) I got Entourage and updated to the latest version. However, I can't get spotlight to retrieve information from my emails. How do I get that to work? I checked the setting in Entourage and indeed spotlight integration is active.

Have you tried "Thunderbird" or Apple's "Mail"? Entourage is not Universal and may run slow anyway.

4) If I wanted a pad or a stand to keep the bottom cool, is there one that is good for macs?

iLap

5) I want to impress the crap out of people when I get back to school next term. Other than Expose, is there any graphical stuff I can get to show it off? Like a neat screensaver or background?

Press SHIFT when minimizing or doing any window movement, this works with expose also. You can also do this with FrontRow (but for me it only works from FrontRow to Desktop. to go to frontrow without the remote, press ''Command+escape'' after frontrow is activated and up on the screen, press "command+escape+shifT''.) You can also show them dashboard. Maybe even ctrl+option+command+8 & do the same to undo it. Don't freak out on the last thing I told you though, don't worry it will go back if you press the same buttons. You can also go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES>DOCK>and turn on magnification

6) Is there a way to get ical and entourage synced?

Sorry, I don't know someone will get at you with that though.

7) Anything else I should know about my MB? Any programs I must have?

I don't know, what do you generally do with your MacBook?

 

[plinden]

6) Is there a way to get ical and entourage synced?

Entourage Preferences/General Preferences/Sync Services

 

[gear02]

I don't know, what do you generally do with your MacBook?

Just typical email, office apps, etc. I don't think I can play games on this thing without a good video card.

 

[mark!]

Just typical email, office apps, etc. I don't think I can play games on this thing without a good video card.

Well, first I would get a beta version of Flip4Mac, which plays Windows Media Player files in Quicktime instead of Windows Media Player, which is teh suxxx0rz.

Do you like Super Nintendo?

If you just do basic stuff like, email, and word processing then there isn't much else to get.

I sort of wish I got a MacBook instead of the MacBook Pro because it is so much cheaper. But I like playing SIMS 2, so ... too bad.

Maybe I just wish there was a MacBook with a dedicated graphics card....
I just like the keys on the MacBook...

 

[Lone Deranger]

I don't think I can play games on this thing without a good video card.

Don't know if it's your kinda thing, but you might try running Mame on it. Not so GPU heavy.. more CPU rather.
Running some old Arcade favourites always impresses peeps.

 

[Queso]

5) I want to impress the crap out of people when I get back to school next term. Other than Expose, is there any graphical stuff I can get to show it off? Like a neat screensaver or background?

In Sys Prefs, pull up Desktop and Screensaver and tick the box at the bottom to change the picture every minute or so. Not that great, but always gets Windows users attention.

 

[regre7]

I'm planning on doing the same thing as you (impressing the crap out of classmates), and what I've got planned is to start up a video chat in the middle of class (when we're idle) with another friend who's buying a MB at about the same time as I will (a couple of weeks). I think that'll amaze them, as most students haven't really used or even seen video chat, only heard about it. Not to mention the "less than average" kids exclaiming, "WHERE'S THE F***IN CAMERA!"

 

[Killyp]

Photo Booth has led to at least four lunchtimes of side splitting fun at my school with at least 30 people crowded behind me and trying to get into the pinch point on the shot.

Also, I did a thing to impress all the techies at my school during a rig for a production at the theatre. We had a sim2 projecting onto a 300 inch screen in pitch black and just for fun, I opened up 4 HiDef movies at the same time on Quick Time and minimized all of them while holding shift. After about half a second of thinking about it, they all simultaneously began to warp the hi def videos real time and minimize them to the dock. Even my dual 3.6 GHz pentium 4 HT extreme struggles with scaling full hi def videos while resizing Quick Time in XP! And it has DUAL graphics cards!

This new intel chip is bit of a beast. If the MacBook can't handle the shrinking, try smaller vidoes...

Dropping new widgets onto the Dashboard is good fun, oh yes and locking the computer (so the whole screen rotates round, you can download the locker widget to do this)...

The Whoopee Cushion Widget is also very good fun during lessons, along with Hula Dancer and Go Go Red ball!!