Using iPhoto to create and buy Photo Album

Okay, so this post is more about iPhoto than it is about the MBA. All I can say is that I did it with a MBA. I really never knew what iPhoto could do until recently. I thought it was just a way to organize photos and preview them. However, I saw a spiel on creating your own photo album and I thought, who has hard copy photo albums anymore? Everyone shares on the web. Well, call me old fashioned, but there is just something nice about sharing a hard copy photo album when you have company or you want to give a gift. I think grandparents would really dig something like this. So I tried it. The hard part was sifting through hundreds and hundreds of pictures stored on an external drive and importing them into iPhoto. If I had a complaint about the MBA now, it would be the lack of storage capacity. Using iPhoto to create the album was simple enough once I had all the photos I was going to use. Depending on the type of album you pick you can only have a max of 20 pages. However, you have various layouts that give you up to 16 photos to a page. At the end ordering was rather simple to. iPhoto checks for some types of errors. For example, I had not filled out all the pages that had text to them, so iPhoto warned me that it would be blank. Again, if I had any criticism of the product it was that it told me there were so low res photos in the mix, but did not tell me which one. I didn't have the energy to go look at the directory to see. It was my first album anyway. If it turns out nice, who knows, maybe I'll make another one for our upcoming vacation! Anxiously waiting to see what it looks like.

Remote Desktop Connection Beta 3

In a previous post I talked about using RDC beta version for Mac to connect into work PCs. In a April release, Microsoft put out a new Beta rev. This Beta will not expire and will allow users to continue to use the Beta version to RDC into Windows based machines.

Extending the desktop (take 2)

In my last blog entry about the resolution degradation after connecting to an external monitor, I find that I was in error to some degree. While working at home yesterday, I plugged in an external monitor and the video resolution was great on both screens. So I decided to try and experiment with the display settings when connected to work. This morning, I plugged in the external monitor and sure enough the video resolution on the MBA went down. So I opened up the Display options and found that the resolution had gone from the highest to the 2nd highest resulting in the video degradation. Once I set the settings back to the highest for the MBA, both screens looked GREAT!
What I can't explain is why I had two different experiences. The external monitor at work is a 17" 4:3 aspect ratio and the home external monitor is a 22" 16:9. So it is possible that this had something to do with it. Also, it wasn't immediately intuitive to change display resolution to solve the problem given that 1 screen looked great. This may just be chalked up to figuring some things on your own unless you are willing to pay $99 for education at the Apple store.

Extending the desktop

Okay...so as I write, I realize that my experiences described on this blog has been a mix between the MBA and Leopard. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish which one I am writing about until I post and think about what I just wrote. However, this time I am going to make the callout that this is mostly an entry about Leopard. I will make one or two comments about the MBA.

I used the micro-dvi to connect to an external monitor. I have tried it at home before, but today was the first time at work. Normally, at home, the MBA would transition and show on both monitors. Today was different. After plugging in the monitor, I saw the normal screen come up on the MBA and just my desktop background on the external monitor. I shortly realized after checking the systems display that it configured the setup to be extended monitor. WOW.

I had to do a little bit of configuration to get the extended monitor the way I wanted, but once that once done, I put the RDC application on the extended monitor so I could remote in to my work machine, while saving the MBA monitor space for Safari. Also, I had to configure Spaces to allow the extended monitor to be up the same time as Safari because Safari is configured for Space 4. I am assuming that if I transition to another application on a different space, the application on the extended monitor will hide.

So here is my comment on the MBA. I believe, at least what my eyes see, there is a bit of video degradation when plugging in an external monitor. The words are just not as crisp. Not sure if there is a solution given the video card has to handle both monitors. Is it something I can live with? Yes. After all, this is not my primary machine and I don't think I plan to have it connected to a monitor all the time. That defeats the whole mobility part of it.

MBA for business use

I finally broke down and used the MBA for a business trip. I had to go to Tucson, AZ and I did not want to lug the IBM T60 with me, especially since I was bringing everything I needed in one back pack carry-on. However, before I left, I needed to do some configuration. So I downloaded Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) beta 2.0 from Mactopia. This allowed me to RDC into either of the machines I had logged in at work. Second, since I might be connecting while not at an office site, I downloaded the VPN software for Mac from Apani (formerly Contivity). It is the Mac version of the Nortel Network client. I also had to get a ethernet dongle from the Apple store since I knew the AZ office would not have wireles.

Everything checked out at the home office as well as offsite when checking the VPN software. So off I went last Wednesday evening. Arriving in Tucson at 9:15pm, I checked into the hotel and luckily had free wireless. I was able to RDC into my laptop at work and check some email and make some calendar appointments.

The next day, I LAN'd into the network and everything was a breeze. When I checked email, I could use Outlook Web. If I needed a file or had to use the laptop at work, I just RDC'd into the laptop. Furthermore, I didn't have to carry a paper notebook as the MBA worked just fine as a notetaker. The only thing I dare not do is leave it out of my site. There is no way to lock this thing down.

Using the Air during the trip was a breeze. It was so light to carry and being connected was so nice. However, I really still want to use this just for fun!

The power of Apple

In this posting, I want to write about the power of Apple's innovative prowess. Moving left on the adoption curve, Apple has not only secured me as customer, the company has secured 90% of my mental wallet. Here's what I mean...

In the old days, every cell phone or laptop I would buy would ultimately be replaced with a newer gadget that had either more power or a new feature. This was especially true for cellphones. Every 6-9 months, I would look for the next great thing. Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, Samsung were just some of the companies that I have used. Once the iPhone came out and I purchased it, my urges to look for something better or different have ceased...yes STOPPED!

So it goes with my recent adoption of Mac and the purchase of the Mac Book Air, a.k.a. on forums as MBA. I was...key word "WAS" a HP loyalist. Several of my previous laptops have all been HP. I have recommended HP to friends and family. However, since the MBA, I have not had the urge or desire to look at any HP emails.

What do I attribute to this phenomenon? I give a lot of credit to Apple for their innovativeness and ability to think of things that the customer doesn't have to. In the back of my mind, I am giving this about 6 months to 1 year to let it sink in. That part of me is to test out the newness factor and see how I feel in that time. However, I must say, I have not felt this jazzed about a laptop in a long time.

Using Air with RDC to connect to Windows machine

The latest venture was a request by fellow Mac enthusiast, Oren to somehow connect to a Windows based machine using a Mac. The easy answer was to use Parallels or Fusion. However, considering this a challenge, I researched this on the web. Turns out that the Mactopia site has RDC for Mac! http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx

So I downloaded the 2.0 Beta because the current version is for Power based Macs and I am running the Air, an Intel based Mac. Since my windows based machine in on the company network, I also had to download the Nortel VPN client. After installing both pieces, the only other configuration to figure out was the machine name. Given that I am using a personal machine to tap into the company network, I had to use the full machine address. Voila!