One of the greatest sources of confusion for computer users is the difference between a computer’s memory and its storage space. The confusion is not entirely the users’ fault. Overlapping terminology contributes as does poor word choice. I’ll try to reduce confusion by differentiating the terms as well as talking about their overlap.

A classic example of this confusion is when a person receives an error message which states something about insufficient memory and the person thinks that they need to delete files from their computer to make more memory available. This is  not the right action to take. Taking the error message at its face value, the proper response would be to close applications and files to free up memory. Alternatively, one could buy more memory for the computer. Let’s start to examine these terms.

Computers have two kinds of storage — temporary and permanent. A computer’s memory is used for temporary storage while a computer’s hard drive is used for permanent storage. Whoever selected the term memory for temporary computer storage did the world a disservice since people tend to permanently store information in our memories. If I asked you to recall your first grade teacher’s name, you could, most likely, tell me because that piece of information is stored in your memory, right? This is not how computers use their memory. A computer’s memory is also called RAM which is an acronym for Random Access Memory. A computer’s memory is where information is temporarily stored while it is being accessed or worked upon. For example, if I’m updating my resume, then I double-click its icon to open it. This process of opening the file, copies it from its permanent home on the computer’s hard drive, into the computer’s memory. Once in memory, I can edit it. If the computer loses electrical power while I am updating my resume, the most recent changes I’d made would be lost. This is because, the information in a computer’s memory is only kept there while electrical power is supplied. To avoid losing my most recent changes, I would need to save the file. The act of saving a file copies the file back to the computer’s hard drive. The contents of a hard drive remain intact even if the computer is turned off or it loses its electrical power some other way.

A simple analogy I use to help remember these terms is that memory is like your desk’s work space and your hard drive is like a filling cabinet. Your filing cabinet is typically large enough to store hundreds of file folders and thousands of pieces of paper. Your desktop work space is not large enough for all of these file folders and papers.

Both temporary computer storage (memory or RAM) and permanent computer storage (hard drives) are measure in bytes. These days they are measured specifically in gigabytes (GB). If you’d like to learn more about bytes and gigabytes, please read this previous Tech Tip. This overlap in measurement systems contributes to some of the confusion.

In early 2012, a new Mac might be equipped with 4 GB of memory and a hard drive whose storage capacity is 500 GB. The primary reason for this great disparity is cost. Memory, RAM, is much more expensive then hard drive storage space. Here’s a rough comparison. 1 GB of RAM costs about $8 while 1 GB of hard drive storage space costs about 10 cents. In other words, RAM costs about 8000 as much as hard drive storage space. Wow.

This price differential explains why we can have much more hard drive storage space compared to memory (RAM) storage space, but why do we need both? Why are computers designed this way, constantly copying data back and forth, into memory and then back to the hard drive? The primary reason is that RAM is much faster then hard drive storage space. I don’t have exact number,s but RAM is thousands, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of times faster then a hard drive. This is true for both mechanical hard drives, which have been used for decades, as well as solid-state drives (SSDs) which are becoming increasingly common. Apple uses SSDs in all iPhones, iPads and MacBook Airs. SSDs are an option in the iMac, at present.

The prevalence of confusion between (temporary) memory and (permanent) hard drive storage space is so great that the occurrences of misuse of these terms is greater then the proper use of these terms. For example, a discussion from January 2012 is about how much memory is enough in an iPhone. The original poster’s question should be how much storage space is sufficient in an iPhone. It’s tough to use these terms correctly when so many don’t. I feel like a fussbudget grammarian when I correct a person or clarify a person’s question. Now that you have a better understanding, help me out and use the terms properly!

Note: Since I’m a strong advocate for everybody backing up their computer’s hard drive, I should point out that hard drives should be thought of as only semi-permanent storage. This is because hard drives fail. Every hard drive will eventually fail. It’s only a matter of time. Drives can fail in a number of ways so some fail sooner then others. Sometimes they give warning signs and other times they don’t. Consequently, it’s necessary to backup the contents of a hard drive. Ironically, we often backup one hard drive onto another hard drive! In previous Tech Tips, I’ve recommended backing up your data to at least two different drives and haivng one copy of your data stored in an off-site location.

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If you connect your Mac to your TV you might need to deal with TV Overscan. Explaining what TV overscan is and why TVs do it is complicated, but recognizing it is easy. If  your TV screen cuts off the outer edges of your Mac’s image then you’re suffering from TV overscan. For example, you might not be able to see all of the menus at the top of your Mac’s screen or the lower half of the Dock icons might be cut off. If this is the case then you should figure out how to turn off the overscan feature on your TV.

If you want to understand what TV overscan is and why TVs do it then I’ll direct you to these articles from Wikipedia and Graham Hughes.

My focus is try give you some guidance on how to turn off this feature. I recommend using your TV’s manual since television manufacturers use different terms and the exact process varies from model to model. For example, I have a Samsung LCD TV. I eventually found a Picture Option named Just Scan.It turns out that this turned off overscan. The only clue that I was a parenthetical phrase in the manual which read, “Use the function to see the full image without any cutoff when HDMI, Component or DTV signals are input.” The feature’s name clearly didn’t give me a clue about what it does. I’ve learned that Samsung also sometimes calls the feature Screen Fit. Pioneer apparently calls this feature Dot by Dot. If you don’t have your TV manual hand you might be able to download one online. I typically find manuals by doing a Google search terms like this, “download Samsung LN42A550 manual”. Often the results will take me to a download link from the manufacturer’s site or a third party site which compiles user manuals.

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Clients are often unsure how to properly use the term streaming or unsure about what this term means. In a slight misuse of terms, you could substitute broadcast for stream. For example, you might hear a person say, “Last night, I streamed Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino on Netflix”. You could think in your head, “Last night, I broadcast Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino on Netflix”. It isn’t 100% accurate to think this, but it could help you while you work on getting your head around the term streaming.

A proper definition of streaming is transmitting a continuous flow of audio and/or video data while earlier parts are being used. The term refers to the delivery method of the data rather than the data itself. Another common delivery method for audio and/or video data is downloading the data onto your computer so the data ends up being stored on your computer. Streamed data is not stored on your computer, at least not the entire data file all at one time. When audio or video is streamed to your computer, the data is being continuously sent to your computer and your computer displays earlier parts while subsequent parts are being received. Once the earlier parts have been displayed they are typically discarded. Downloading and streaming data are two contrasting ways of obtaining audio or video data.

Looking back at our movie example, if a person downloads a copy of Clint Eastwood’s movie onto her computer so she can watch it again and again then she is not streaming the movie when she watches it. However, if this same person goes to her Netflix account and clicks a button to begin to watch the movie then Netflix begins to stream the movie across the Internet to her computer. This transmission is more fleeting. At any one point in time, only a small portion of the movie is on her computer.

There are a variety of streaming media currently available. These days, one can stream movie trailers, Internet television and radio, YouTube videos and much more. Let’s look at some examples. If one lives in Boston, but wants to listen to a Seattle radio station, like KUOW, then one could go to www.kuow.org to listen to an audio stream that is identical to the radio station’s FM broadcast.  Streams can be live or on-demand. KUOW’s Internet audio stream is a live stream. Similarly, when Apple Inc. introduces a new product they will often hold an event in an auditorium and invite the press. To increase the event’s exposure they would often send out a live video stream of Steve Jobs’ presentation. Subsequently, they also often allow visitors to their web site to watch the video presentation streamed to them on-demand.

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Here’s an easy way to determine the default password for many routers. You might need to know your router’s default password if you forget or don’t have a record of your router’s current password and end up resetting the router to its factory defaults. You can visit the Open Sez Me web site to locate your router and determine its default login information. I recently had to use this web site for a client whose router had been setup by a friend a few years ago. My client didn’t have any record of the password. I guessed that the friend hadn’t changed the password from its default. So, I used the Open Sez Me web site to locate the particular model of router and its default login information. Sure enough, it worked on my client’s router.

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Intuit recently announced that it plans to release an update to Quicken 2007 that’ll make it compatible with Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion. This news is a big relieve to a number of my clients who have intentionally held off on updating to Lion since they use Quicken 2007 and migrating to another application is not a simple task. iBank and Quicken Essentials are two applications that users could consider as a replacement, but an update to Quicken 2007 simplifies the entire situation.

When Lion was released in July 2011, Tidbits had an article talking about finding a replacement for Quicken. One colleague switched to iBank but due to differences in how iBank handles investment accounts, he spent many hours cleaning up his Quicken data after it was imported into iBank and needed assistance repeatedly from iBank’s tech support staff. A few of my clients who used only the account registers and reporting features in Quicken were able to Quicken Essentials. Quicken Essentials for Mac was released in 2010. It is not really an update for Quicken 2007 users. Instead, you could think of it as a successor to Quicken 2007, but one that lacks some of Quicken 2007′s features. As its name implies, it is a bare-bones financial management application. It is enough for some but not for all Quicken 2007 users. Thus, the news of this Quicken 2007 update is welcomed news.

Intuit indicates that this Lion-compatible update will be available “soon”. Elsewhere, I’ve read that it’ll be early-spring 2012. Users will be able to update their Quicken 2005, 2006 and 2007 data files into this updated version of Quicken 2007. Please read Intuit’s note about this update as well as Tidbit’s article about this Quicken update if you’d like more information.

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Do you send out annual updates about your family around the holiday season? If so, MacWorld has written a good article about how to create a newsletter using Pages. Pages is Apple’s word processor which competes with Microsoft Word. It comes bundled with some Macs so you may already have a copy. If not, you can buy it as part of iWork. Or, if you have Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher  on your Mac then you can use the App Store to buy it for about $20. I used the MacWorld article as a guide to design our holiday newsletter this year. Here’s a brief overview.

Start by opening iPhoto and identifying which photos you want to include in your newsletter. I found it easiest to put my photos into an album so I would be able to find them again easily when using Pages.

Next, I opened Pages and selected the “Informal Newsletter” template. I clicked on the Media button in Pages’ toolbar. I clicked on Photos and selected the iPhoto Album containing my selected photos. I then dragged the images on top of the placeholder images that appear in the template.

I clicked on the text box on the first page, selected all of the text and deleted it. Then I typed in our content.

We wanted to add a second page so I went to the Insert menu, selected Pages and added a “Back Page” since it has pre-defined locations for text and photos. I linked the text boxes on page 1 and page 2 so the text would automatically flow between them. I replaced the placeholder photos, of course, as well.

Finally, I realized that I needed more room to fit all of the text so I had to adjust the template’s layout some. I removed one of the photos on page one and added a new text box and linked it to the other box on page 1. I then changed the font and font size a bit to get everything to fit. Finally, I was satisfied with the layout. Pages is a pretty elegant program to use for tasks like this and the templates are really professional so it made this task easy to do.

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Recently, a client presented me with a new problem. I devised a solution and wanted to share what I learned. My client bought a new Panasonic 55 inch flat panel TV, model Viera TVP55VT30. After he’d set up the TV in his home, he looked for a headphone jack and was surprised that he couldn’t find one. This particular model of TV only had a digital audio output connector! It did not have an old-fashioned analog audio connector, aka a mini stereo jack, which would accept the plug on his headphones. After spending time talking to Panasonic’s support staff and doing some research via Google, he was confused by the lack of a simple and affordable solution. Numerous people had directed him to find a digital to analog converter and the appropriate cables to connect everything but nobody could identify exactly what he needed and the items that he found would have cost over $100. I did some research and pieced together a solution that cost about $27.

We bought a $23 digital to analog converter and two cables which each cost about $2. The digital analog converter converts either coaxial or optical (Toslink) digital stereo audio signals to analog stereo audio. My client’s Panasonic TV had an optical Toslink connector so we bought a 6 foot Toslink cable, but some televisions may require a digital coax cable. I list both cables below. Finally, we used a 6″ adapter which connected to the digital to analog converter’s dual RCA (aka phono) connectors and had a stereo mini jack on the other head which would accept his headphone’s plug.

Digital to Analog converter for $23 from Monoprice.com

Optical Toslink cable for $1.94 from Monoprice.com

Digital Coax cable for $1.28 from Monoprice.com

Stereo Female to Dual RCA Male cable for $1.79 from Geeks.com

I was very surprised that a TV manufacturer wouldn’t include an inexpensive analog audio jack for headphones. If you find yourself in this pickle some day, please know that there is an affordable solution.

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Would you like to learn to use iMovie better? Here’s a list of some online information that can help you to learn how to use iMovie. iMovie has grown and evolved since it was introduced in 1999. In 2007, Apple gave iMovie’s interface and workflow a complete overhaul with the introduction of iMovie ’08 (aka version 7). This same general interface is still present in the current version of iMovie, iMovie ’11. The interface overhaul has thrown experienced iMovie users for a loop and confuses many novice users. Consequently, I frequently provide iMovie training to help users get oriented. However, there are some very good online resources to help you get started with learning how to use iMovie.

Apple offers some free how-to videos for iMovie. Apple also has a list of iMovie keyboard shortcuts which can really speed up your work in iMovie.

Ken Stone, a professional photographer, who uses Apple’s high-end video editing application, Final Cut Pro, has written a detailed overview of iMovie ’09. While he approaches some things from his perspective and personal needs, I found the article very informative.

Lynda.com is an online computer training business which has been around since the late 1990′s. It has an extensive collection of video tutorials. For a relatively low monthly subscription fee you have access to the entire library including their iMovie training videos.

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Zamzar, an online file conversion service, is an easy way to save a copy of a YouTube video on your Mac. To do this you enter the YouTube video’s address at Zamzar’s web site and it will convert the YouTube video into a file type which you choose and then send you an email containing a link to download the  converted file.

Zamzar is actually a very versatile file conversion service. I’ve used it to convert Microsoft Visio drawings, Microsoft Works files and Microsoft Publisher files. To read Zamzar’s huge list of supported file types visit this web page.  Zamzar offers several levels of service. Their free accounts are ad-supported. Free accounts are limited to processing upto 20 files per day which add up to not more than 500 MB. Paid accounts let you overcome these limitations as well as offering additional features.

Update: Here’s another possible option. Jaksta is a commercial application which claims to let you save a copy of any audio or video file that you stream in your web browser.

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Have you ended up with duplicate songs in iTunes that you want to remove? iTunes has a built-in “Display Duplicate” feature which can be helpful, but I prefer to use the slightly hidden “Display Exact Duplicates” feature instead. How’s are instructions on its use.

• Open iTunes.
• Hold down the Option key and then click on the File menu and select “Display Exact Duplicates”. (If you don’t hold down the option key then you’ll instead see “Display Duplicates”.
• iTunes will do a search and do its best to display pairs of songs which are exact duplicates of each other. This feature doesn’t work perfectly but it’s pretty good.
• Then to actually get rid of the duplicates you can hold down the Command key (aka Apple key) and click on each of the songs that you want to delete.
• Finally, press the Delete key.
• You’ll be asked if you really want to remove the song. Click the Remove button.
• Finally, you’ll be asked if your want to move the song file to Trash or keep it in the iTunes Media folder. You could do either but to really get rid of the file you should put it in the Trash.

Note: There is a reason why I don’t like to use  iTunes’ built-in “Display Duplicates” feature. In a nutshell, it doesn’t seem to be very effective. I think it only compares the song’s Name and Artist. There are times when one might want two copies of the same song by the same artist. For example, one might have two versions of the same song — one from the original album release and a second version from a live concert album or a greatest hits album.

If you find that iTunes’ “Display Exact Duplicates” is not adequate for your needs then I’ll direct you to two third-party products. Acertant’s Tunes Ranger and SuperSync. I’ve used Tunes Ranger to merge multiple iTunes Libraries while retaining playlists. I haven’t used SuperSync. Both products indicate that they’ll help to identify and remove duplicates.

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Are you having difficulty getting Verizon Wireless UMW190 Aircard working on your Mac running OS X 10.6? If so, make sure you’re using the proper version of VZAccess Manager. I know that the UMW190 works with version 7.0.5.

Verizon Wireless’ web page for Support Devices & Platforms lists the incorrect version of VZAccess Manager. It indicates that if your Mac is running OS X 10.6 then you should use VZAccess Manager version 7.2.1 (2595a). This is incorrect. I spent a long time banging my head against the wall. You can install version 7.2.1 and your UMW190 will be able to establish a connection to Verizon Wireless. It even gets an IP number assigned, but it can’t ping its WAN IP number, it can’t ping typically available public IP numbers and it doesn’t respond to pings. I spoke to Verizon Wireless tech support on a handful of occasions and we repeatedly reviewed which version of VZAccess Manager I had installed. I indicated version 7.2.1 and none of them indicated that this was wrong. So, either they refer to the same web page that I found or their internal documentation lists the wrong version also.

The clue that lead me to try the “wrong” version was the ReadMe file for the 7.2.1 Installer. I read through the list of supported Aircard devices and the UWM190 wasn’t listed. I then revisited Verizon Wireless’ Supported Devices & Platforms page and saw that the UMW175 and UMW 150 cards use VZAccess Manager 7.0.5.  I guessed that the UMW190 was probably a pretty similar device. I downloaded version 7.0.5 and read its ReadMe file. Sure enough the UMW190 was listed! I installed this version, restarted my Mac, established a connection. Voila. That was it. Everything worked. I was able to view web pages and send and receive email.

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How big is a kilobyte? How big is a gigabyte? Relative to each other how big are any two files? Here’s some information which can help you to get your head around file sizes and comparing file sizes.

File size is commonly measured in bytes. In a plain text file, typically each byte is equal to one letter. One page of text can hold a few thousand letters so a plain text file that has one page’s worth of text might be about 4000 bytes in size. Since 1000 bytes equals 1 kilobyte, we could express that as  4 kilobytes (KB).

Plain text files can only contain letters, numbers and punctuation marks. In other words, they can’t contain any formatting. Formatting is a general term which includes such things as bold text, colored text and fonts (typefaces). The information needed to store formatting information in a file takes up space and thus increases a file’s size. If one took that one page plain text file and converted it into a Microsoft Word document, underlined some of the text, converted some of the text to Palatino and other text to Times New Roman then this formatted one-page document might grow to be around 100 KB in size.

If you then placed a jpeg image into that one-page Word file its size would increase further. The size of jpeg images can vary widely from tens of kilobytes to hundred, thousand or even tens of thousands. Let’s imagine that we insert a jpeg that is about 2 inches x 3 inches in size and is low resolution. Such a jpeg might be 100 KB in size. Now, our Word file could be about 200 KB in size.

At this point, you hopefully remember that 1 letter is typically 1 byte in size and have a sense for how file size grows and that you have a rough idea of how large a word processing file can be. Let’s move on.

In addition to kilo- there are other metric prefixes which you’ll commonly see in front of byte. Here’s a list of some of these prefixes and their size relationship to each other.

8 bits = 1 Byte = 1 letter

Bytes
1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes
1 megabyte  = 1000 kilobytes (KB)
1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (MB)
1 terabyte  = 1000 gigabytes (GB)
1 petabyte = 1000 terabytes (TB)
1 exabyte (EB) = 1000 petabytes (PB

While file sizes can vary widely here are some gross generalizations to further help you get your head around the sizes of different types of files.
1 page of text might be around 50 KB
1 an email message of two paragraphs might be 10 KB
1 jpeg photo could  be 500 KB
60 minutes of spoken words could be 25 MB = 25, 000 KB
a 10 minute long mp3 song could be  20 MB = 20,000 KB
1000 minutes of an audiobook could be = 1.4 GB = 1,400 MB = 1,400,000 KB
2 hour long movie could be = 5 GB = 5,000 MB = 5,000,000 KB

These days a computer’s hard drive is typically measured in terms of gigabytes or possibly even terabytes. So how many Word files, jpeg photos, mp3 songs and movies could be stored on your hard drive?

If your hard drive’s storage capacity is 100 GB then you could have room for the following. Let’s assume that Mac OS X requires about 5 GB of storage space and that your applications (Word, Safari, iPhoto, etc) take another 20 GB then that leaves us with 75 GB to store our own files. Again, let me use some gross estimates and generalizations. This’ll let you see some rough comparisons and see that photos and music files take up a lot more space then individual Word files or a typical email message.

5,000 photos could use 10 GB

5,000 mp3 songs could use 30 GB

5, 000 email messages with their attachments could use 100 MB  or .1 GB

5,000 Word, Excel and PDF documents could use 600 MB or .6 GB

Added together these photos, songs, email messages and other files are about 42 GB. Since we have 75 GB of available space on our 100 GB hard drive we know that we’d still have a healthy amount of free space even with this many items. Roughly 30 GB of space would still be free. To fill up this much space you might need another 15,000 photos or another 5, 000 songs or another million or so email messages.

With this information you should have a general sense of how large files of different types should be and how their sizes compare. If somebody told you that you need to clean up your hard drive to free up storage space then you’d know that you should focus on files that take up 100 of megabytes or gigabytes of space and not worry about files which take up kilobytes of storage space since it would take thousands and thousands of these kilobyte files to equal the space of a larger file. Thus, when you need to do clean up you typically shouldn’t waste your time on deleting old emails. Instead, review your pictures, music and video files to see if you can get rid of some of these.

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Here are instructions on how to reindex your Quicken Data File.

• Open your Quicken data file.
• Open the Accounts window and then simultaneously press the Command, Option and B keys on the keyboard.
• The reindexing will begin. Once it has been done then go to the File menu and select Save A Copy. Give your file a new name and save it to your desired folder.

You can read these reindexing instructions in more detail in this troubleshooting article on Intuit’s web site. The article does also suggestion exporting the data in QIF format and then re-importing the data into a new file if the reindexing fails or does not solve your problem.

I’ve supported many people who use Quicken and this is the first time that I’ve had to reindex a Quicken data file. I was not even aware that Quicken included this feature. I’m pleased that Quicken has this feature since it’s common to have do do maintenance on large database files from time to time. I wonder why Intuit has hidden this feature, but now I’m glad I know how to do it. I discovered this procedure while recently working with a client.

This client had a damaged Quicken data file that was fixed after we reindexed the file. My client was a long-time Quicken user and this Quicken data file had been in use for many years. He used it to track his checking, savings and investment accounts. I provide all of this detail to indicate that this file had seen a lot of activity over a many year period. Apparently, out of the blue this Quicken file started to give him problems. Specifically, the symptom was that he would add a transaction to one of his accounts, close and then re-open the data file and the balance for that account would have changed radically.

Intuit’s web site indicates that there are a host of symptoms which can be signs that you need to reindex your Quicken file including these:
Categories and numbers are not associated with the correct transactions or accounts in reports.
Categories/classes are missing from your Categories & Transfers list.
You are unable to assign a Category to an item in a split transaction.
You are unable to open a backup of your data file.
Your reconciliation is off in a previously reconciled statement and you have not made changes to previously reconciled transactions.
Duplication or “Unknown” items are listed in the Payee column of the QuickFill Transactions list.
You receive errors when performing a Save a Copy.

• Categories/classes are missing from your Categories & Transfers list.
• You are unable to assign a Category to an item in a split transaction.
• You are unable to open a backup of your data file.
• Your reconciliation is off in a previously reconciled statement and you have not made changes to previously reconciled transactions.
• Duplication or “Unknown” items are listed in the Payee column of the QuickFill Transactions list.
• You receive errors when performing a Save a Copy.

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What is the difference between the words download and upload?

I’m asked these questions frequently. I have 3 answers that I offer.

1. It doesn’t matter if you use them properly. Go ahead and use the words.  People will understand what you’re trying to communicate even if you pick the incorrect word for a given situation.

2. Rather than worrying about which word is correct, just avoid the words and use alternatives. Using either copy or move will work in most situations. For example, rather then saying “There’s a problem downloading photos from my digital camera to my Mac.” you could say “There’s a problem moving photos from my digital camera to my Mac.”

3. Finally, here’s a direct answer to the question. Use download when you’re talking about moving files (such as song files, pictures or Word docments) onto your local computer. Use upload when you’re talking about moving data off of your local computer. For example,

“Yesterday, I downloaded pictures from my digital camera onto my Mac. Then I uploaded them to my Flickr account so my friends would be able to view them”

I should probably add a bit more clarifying detail. Historically, uploading referred to moving files from your local computer to some remote, typically larger, shared computer. Downloading, was thus, moving files from a shared, remote computer to your local, peripheral computer. So, one typically uploads from a smaller device to a larger device.Thus, one uploads files from a personal computer to a fancy server computer like the ones that comprise Flickr.  So, I think one could also say that one uploads files from a camera to a computer even though in my example above, I used the word download to talk about moving files from the camera to the Mac. Don’t you see why people get confused about how to use these words and thus you should just avoid these words and use move or copy!

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Have you ever wanted to print just part of a web page or some other document? If so, you should consider installing the free Print Selection service.

Using Print Selection is easy. One just needs to select text in any document such as a web page, a word processing document or a PDF file. Then go to the application menu, select Services and select Print Selection. A preview window will appear. Simply click the Print button. The only tricky thing is being able to find the application menu. The application menu is the menu named after the application you are using. For example, if you’re using Safari then its application menu is the menu named Safari. If you’re using Pages then the application menu is named Pages.

Print Selection requires Mac OS X 10.4 or newer. Print Selection also requires a Mac application that supports the use of Services. While most applications do support services not all developers take the time to build this into their product. The most notable example of this is Microsoft. Neither Office 2004 nor Office 2008 applications support services.

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For years, SanDisk’s Cruzer USB flash drives have been partitioned into two parts. One part is named U3 and contains some Windows-only software that can be used to protect files stored on the other partition. This software is useless to Mac users and the U3 partition just becomes an annoyance. So, many people have wondered how they can delete this U3 partition. Until recently one needed to download and use a Windows-only application made by Cruzer. Finally, in Jan 2010, Cruzer released a Mac application which can be used to get rid of the U3 partition.

You can download the application from here.

Once it’s downloaded you can open it and start its installation. Be aware that installation will require you to restart your Mac.

After the restart you’ll find several applications in a folder named “SanDisk Cruzer” in your /Applications/Utilities folder.

Open up the application named “LaunchPad Removal Utility for Mac” and follow the on-screen instructions. I found one part of the instructions confusing. It asks if you want to backup the data. I thought it was referring to the data on the other partition, but that is apparently not the case. I figured out that it was only referring to the data on the U3 partition, not the data on the main partition where you put your files. So, I told the application to go ahead and remove the partition without backing up data. I waited 30 seconds and it finished the process successfully and all of my data on the main partition was still intact.

Even though I told you that the application won’t erase your data on the USB flash drive I still recommend that you backup the data on the USB flash drive just in case something goes wrong. I don’t want you to lose any of your data.

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