Laptop Info Today

Posts Tagged ‘mac’

Since I had my Macbook about a month ago, I was always wanted to make myself easier by not buying a portable hard disk for mac only.

On the shelves of some several stores the prices of those Windows portable hard disks and Mac ones have a difference. Face it, portable hard disk for Mac only tends to more expensive as compared to Windows.

I was running low of space from my 80GB Samsung portable hard disk which I bought 5 years ago and I was thinking of getting a new one. On that Samsung hard disk, its on the NTFS file system, an unreadable file system for Mac and I did test it out … lol.

Anyway I went down to nearby store, grab me a low cost 500GB portable hard disk by Imation …. and for you who don’t know Imation uses Seagate hard disks.

I check out the file system and it was FAT32. Sounds familiar. Windows was using FAT 32 before Windows XP (if I might recall), but it doesn’t change my objective … can a Mac read NTFS ?

Well here comes the surprise …..

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It’ been a very …. very long time since I blog anything and it feels good to be back.

Well one thing I’ve discovered after that long absence is this device : A Portable Hard Disk Duplicator

Sometimes using software might be the easiest solution, but it can be a lengthy one and corruption of data might occur if not done properly.

Aleratec came up this solution and its very useful if you got lots of things to backup in a short time.

Well this HDD duplicator is portable and it supports 2.5 & 3.5 inch hard disks (IDE & Sata I/II). Not only that you can also access your drives via a USB connection to your pc with RAID0, RAID1, JBOD Spanning or Normal disk configuration.

This device is compatable with Microsoft Windows 2000 or above, Mac & Linux systems.

Being a more of a Windows based user, it is a rarity that I’m covering any MAC stuffs at all on my blog.

Not to undermine any MAC OsX users out there but it’s actually rare that that you see any users carrying a MACBook instead of a Windows based laptop.

Anyway, this is special MAC edition post that I’ve made today and I hope it will be useful for my MAC OsX visitors of this blog. This is a post on the “must have” and  ”good-to-have” applications for those who have MAC OsX on their laptops.

Do note that all the applications I have written below are all available free for download and use.

Let’s get started :-

1. SketchBOX  - This neat application allows you to insert notes to your desktop …. call it a “Note Manager”
2. Tudos - This is a dock expansion for you to store all of your applications.
3. iClockr -  A project and tasks management application.
4. OnyX/Deeper - This is utility tool that will maintain, optimize and personalize your MAC OsX.
5. EverSave - The tool that saves your work during crashes.
6. Burn - A burining application for MAC OSX.
7. AppCleaner -  A small application that allows you to throughly uninstall your unwanted applications.
8.  Carbon Copy Cloner -  A cloning, backup up and synchornize tool for your files.
9. SpotLook - A GUI for your desktop search.
10. Photobook - Facebook photo browser for MAC OsX.
11. FMenu - Facebook evenmt notifier.
12. TwitterPod - Twitter client for MAC OsX.
13. Adium -  Universal Internet Messaging Application
14. Cooloquy - Internet Chat Client.
15. NeoOffice - Office suite for MAC OsX
16. Thunderbird - E-mail application
17. Vienna - RSS/Atom Newsreader
18. Skim - PDF Reader and Note -Taker.
19. iStumbler - Utility to detect Wi-Fi signals.
20. Classic FTP - An easy to use FTP client
21. Firefox 3 - Web browser.
22. Camino - Web browser.
23. Opera - Web browser.
24. Audacity - Sound and audio editing software.
25. QLab - Control audio, video and MIDI 
26. Ultramixer - Professional DJ Software 
27. SimpleSynth - Plug in your MIDI keyboard and play.
28. VLC Media Player - Multimedia player
29. Real Player - Real player for MAC OsX.
30. Jing - Captures images and records video.
31. Frame By Frame - Stop motion movie creation application.
32. Sweet Home 3D - Interior design application software.
33. Blender - 3D content creator software.
34. GIMP - A photoshop alternative and image editor.
35. 7zX - Compression archiever. 
36. UnRarX - Uncompressed RAR files.
37. Perian - Adds all popular video formats for Quicktime.
38. Handbrake - DVD to Mpeg-4 converter
39. Senuti - Transfer iPod songs back to your iMac or MacBook.

This is the list that I can think of at the moment. If you have better suggestions … drop a comment on to this post and share it on this blog.

Hope this lists is sufficient for your needs …. till next post ….

Recently (well its yesterday actually), I did a post on the new Open Office 3.0.

One of the functions that thrills me with the new Open Office 3.0 is definitely the PDF Importer.

Finally a freeware that allows you to edit your PDF file (well it’s a long wait really ).

Unfortunately this is NOT part of the installation files but it is an extension or add-on to the Open Office 3.0 suite. Do note this extension does not work with earlier versions of Open Office.

It is one of the hottest downloads of the moment; so HOT that it has already reach 254749 downloads at the moment and 58382 downloads from this week already.

What’s more users from various platforms are able to enjoy this breakthrough function. Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris and even Linux (x32 and x64) users can use this powerful tool on their already FREE Open Office 3.0.

To download the PDF importer for Open Office 3.0, click here.

To enjoy enhancing your Open Office with new extensions (if you are familiar with Firefox style of add-ons, this is very much similar) , Click here.

The alternative office suite for PCs (laptops included), OpenOffice.org, has now released version 3.0 of its office suite.

There are many new features in this new suite and for the first time ever ” a PDF importer”.

Which means you can import you pdf files …. edit them up and save as a document, spreadsheet, presentation or draw file (something Microsoft haven’t come out with ).

Though Microsoft has been working with third party ….. Able2Extract on this function to be in the future releases of Microsoft Office suites, Sun Microsystems has leapfrog a step further with this release.

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Some of might have new laptops recently and might be surprised that you are not given any cds from your operating system.

This happens and is something quite normally …… so to speak.

It is something not out of the blue as certain manufacturers are cutting down their own cost by placing the operating as restoration backup at the D drive, something I find absolutely ridiculous.

One common brand is HP or Compaq ( which is now a sister company of HP) .

Hey, I’m not try to blast companies here but sometimes you may wonder what if the hard disk itself is faulty. How are you going to recover the operating system from there?

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In Windows or linux we are fond of seeing users migrating to OpenOffice.org.

Why?

Simply because it’s open-source and it’s free.

However what about the Apple MAC users?

Based on the OpenOffice.org, the open source community build Neo Office.

Let’s go into further details.

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