Do you have an old UPS (uninterrupted power supply) that you need to recycle? How about a paper shredder? You can recycle both of these items, as well as other items at your Staples office supply store.

I use a UPS, also known as a battery backup, to protect my Mac from power spikes and to keep it running during brief power outages. After years of use, my old UPS died so I wanted to recycle it. Apparently, Staples has teamed up with APC, a manufacturer of UPSs to recycle them. Yesterday, I dropped off my worn-out UPS at a Staples here in Seattle. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no cost. Staples’ web site indicates that there’s a $10 recycle fee, but Staples has a special through the end of the month which includes waiving that fee. If you don’t have a Staples near you, you might be interested to read about APC’s own UPS recycling options.

I also had a paper shredder which had died on me. Staples also took the entire shredder and pledges to recycle it responsibly. The typical $10 recycle fee was waived. The Staples employee also indicated that they’ll offer a slight discount on the purchase of a new paper shredder if you bring in an old one for recycling.

Staples will also recycle rechargeable batteries, digital cameras and GPS devices. They’ll also accept computers, monitors and printers, but indicated that there is typically a $10 recycle fee for these items. This was a bit surprising since Washington enacted a law a couple of years ago which allows for free recycling of such items. As I’ve mentioned in a previous tech tip, I typically recycle my computers and peripherals at Interconnection since they do their best to re-use the equipment rather then simply recycle it.

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Do you have a pile of old zip disks, floppy disks or videotapes that you want to get rid of? If your pile isn’t too large then you could hand it to me at our next appointment and I’ll send it on to GreenDisk. If your pile is larger or you aren’t one of my clients then you can mail it to GreenDisk. GreenDisk is located in Sammamish, Washington, but they don’t have any drop-off centers. For $9.95 you can ship up to 25 pounds to Greendisk.

GreenDisk actually accepts a wide range of technotrash via their mail-in service. Their web site includes an up-to-date list of everything accepted by GreenDisk. Currently they accept the following:

• Media: CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVDs, Blu-ray, 3.5” and 5.25” floppy disks, zip and jazz disks, and cases

• Tapes: VHS, audio cassette tapes, DAT, DLT, Beta, and Digibeta

• Computer drives: Hard drives, zip, jazz, floppy, CD-ROM, DVD, jump drives

• Communication devices: Cell phones, pagers, PDAs and their chargers, cradles, and headset accessories

• Batteries: Rechargeable batteries and chargers only – no alkaline batteries. See instructions on packing batteries for shipment.

• Small electronics: MP3 players, iPods, hand-held CD and cassette players, and digital cameras

• Ink: Inkjet and toner cartridges (All cartridges must be in a sealed bag to prevent spilling)

• Film:

- Photographic film negatives, instant film, sheet film, Advanced Photo System, slides, Disc film, 110, 126, 127, 120/220

- Black and white or undeveloped only: Motion picture film, film reels, Super 8, 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm

- Medical x-ray, industrial x-ray, lithographic, micro film, microfiche

• Miscellaneous items: UPS units, AC chargers, keyboards, mice, modems, routers, headphones, cords, adaptors, cables, boards, and chips

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In previous tech tips, I’ve talked about ways to donate your computer and peripherals to groups that’ll reuse or recycle them. In some instances your used electronics may still have some value. Here’s an overview of options you have to resell your used electronics to a company, which, in turn, will refurbish and resell or recycle your items.

Recently, there has been a proliferation of companies that will buy your used electronics, including Gazelle, FlipSwap and BuyMyTronics, to name a few. These companies tend to claim to offer the best price, but they can’t all be right. Enter uSell, which offers to help consumers find the best price by comparing quotes from numerous companies. uSell may not include quotes from every company but they offer a guarantee if you can find a lower price.

I recently sold some of my used electronics to Gazelle and FlipSwap. In each case, the process was quite easy. I typed the name of my product into a search field on the company’s web site. The search results let me pick my particular model. I then answered a few questions about the product’s condition and accessories. I then accepted the price that was offered. Finally, there was a short check 0ut-like process. Gazelle offered to send me a box and return shipping label or I could ship it in my own box. FlipSwap provided me with a shipping label and instructed me on how to securely wrap and ship my item. Once the company received my product, they assessed the item and then sent my payment. In Gazelle’s case, I chose to receive an Amazon gift card instead of a check since Gazelle would add an additional 5%.

The New York Times’s Gadgetwise Blog has articles about uSell and Gazelle, if you’d like to get their take on this subject

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Do you use Apple’s Mail application on your Mac? It’s a capable email application and one of its best features is that its abilities can be extended using plug-ins. These plug-ins let you customize Mail so it can better meet your preferences and needs. Here’s a list of 10 plug-ins for Mail that’ll let you increase your productivity.

MsgFiler lets you quickly file email messages into one of your existing Mailboxes (aka folders). Using either a menu command or a keyboard shortcut you can file a message into a folder. Simply type the first few characters of the mailbox’s name and select the desired mailbox from the list of matches.

GrowlMail temporarily displays a small notification window on your screen every time a new email message arrives. By glancing at this notification you can monitor your Inbox while you’re working in another application.

SpamSieve offers better spam protection then Mail’s built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It require some initial training, but it’s very effective.

MailAct-On is an incredibly robust plug-in which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to quickly file, label or flag incoming or outgoing mail messages. That is an over-simplified description of its capabilities. This video introduction http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn_files/Virtual%20Tour.mov and video review http://media.macworld.com/media/vodcast/mwvodcast75.mp4 will give you a more complete understanding of it’s capabilities.

MailTags  let’s you assign keywords, priorities, categories and due dates to actions mentioned in an email. It lets you escape the constraints of folders by allowing you to organize and find your messages by keyword or other metadata that you’ve assigned. Made by the same developers, Mail Act-On and MailTags can be used together or separately.

WideMail reconfigures Mail’s layout. It moves the message preview area from below the list of messages to the right of it. This layout uses your screen’s space more efficiently. Apple realized this layout was very popular so they made it the standard layout in version 5.0 of Mail which comes with Lion, Mac OS X 10.7

Attachment Tamer gives you control over Mail’s handling of attachments that you send. Be default, Mail will display an attachment, such as an image, in the body of the email that you’re composing. Attachment Tamer lets you change this behavior and send the image as a regular attachment instead.

MessageFont  lets you set Mail’s default font when you reply to or compose a new email message. Mail’s preferences appears to let you set the default font, but this affects only what you see, not what the recipient sees. MessageFont changes which font is seen by the recipient.

MissingAttachments scans an email message and notifies you if you have referred to an attachment, but forgotten to attach a file. Unfortunately this plug in hasn’t been updated to work with recent versions of Mail.

MailUnreadStatusBar displays an icon to the upper right corner of your screen which lists the number of unread email messages you have. You can customize it to track multiple folders. Its icon then displays a menu listing the unread message count for each selected folder and lets you go directly to any of the listed folders.

In my opinion, these are some of the best plug-ins for Mail, but you can read about dozens more at the Hawk Wings web site.

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This week’s Tech Tip is written by our guest blogger, Elizabeth Bowman, President of Innovatively Organized.

Are tasks slipping through the cracks? Feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities on your plate?  There are lots of tools to help you manage your to-do list, but how do you know which tools are best?  You’re in luck!  At Innovatively Organized we have put together a list of 4 tools to help you manage your to-do list electronically.  Now, you will be able to access your tasks from home, the office, or on the go from an Internet browser or your mobile device!

Keep in mind, it’s not about having the perfect to-do list, it is about picking a tool that will work for you and using it consistently.

1. TeuxDeux

Compatible with:

• iPhone or iPad

• Internet

• Mac or PC

Highlights:

• Simple design

• Basic list tracker

• Cross out tasks when complete

• Moves un-finished items to the next day automatically

Toodle Do's Interface

2. Toodledo

Compatible with:

• iPhone, iPad, Palm, Blackberry, Droid

• Internet

• Ability to sync with Outlook & TaskAngel

• Has ability to print to-do list neatly

Highlights:

• Comprehensive and robust features

• Offers ability to delegate and email tasks directly

• Can filter and run reports on tasks

• Includes a timer to help you stay on task

3. TaskAngel

Compatible with:

• Native PC software download

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Matches Toodledo’s comprehensive task tracking details

• Runs fast on your PC helping you stay productive easily

• Can export your to-do list to Excel

4. 2Do

Compatible with:

• iPhone & iPad

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Option to color-code tasks by category

• Provides tabs in the interface on an iPhone and iPad

• Has lots of fields to enter your tasks easily from a mobile device

For more organizing and productivity tips, check out the Innovatively Organized blog!

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Do you ever have a problem sending files to a colleague or friend because they are too big to be sent as email attachments? If so, you could use DropBox’s Public Link feature. In a previous Tech Tip I spoke about the convenience of DropBox’s files sharing services. Most of these services require each person on your team to have their own DropBox account. Conveniently, DropBox’s Public Link feature does not require that everybody have a DropBox account. Thus, it’s a great way to share large files with friends or family. Here are some step-by-step instructions.

Note: These instructions already assume you’ve signed up for a DropBox account and have that setup and working on your Mac.

Tip:. I often use this method to share a handful of files like photos. Since I want to only send one Public Link I’ll put all of the photos into a folder on my Mac and then right-click (or control-click) on the folder and select Compress <folder name> (on older versions of Mac OS X, the command will read “Archive <folder name>”). This compressing will create a .zip file. I then put the .zip file into my Public Folder in DropBox.

1. Open your DropBox folder

2. Open the Public folder.

3. Put the large file into your Public folder. This will trigger the automatic upload of this file onto the DropBox server.

4. Right-click (or control-click) on the filename of this large file. A menu will appears. Select DropBox from the menu and then select Copy Public Link from the sub-menu.

5. Open your email application and compose a new email message. Address it to your intended recipient.

7. Go to the Edit menu and select Paste to past the Public Link into the email message. The link will look similar to this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1234567/bigfile.zip

8. Send the email.

9. The recipient can simply click on the link to download the file.

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Do you ever have the need for a transcription service? SpeakWrite is an affordable online transcription service which uses live typists to transcribe your work and send you the finished work within 3 hours. You can submit your work by dictating over the phone, sending a fax or mailing recorded tapes. They even have an iPhone app for submitting your work. The service is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The price for general transcription is 1.25 cents per word. Legal transcription and group conversations cost 2.0 cents per word. There aren’t any additional costs. You can use the service frequently or infrequently.

I’ve had a few clients who have used this service and they speak very highly about it. You can try it for free, one time. Simple go to their website, call the phone number listed and follow the prompts. You can record a message up to 10 minutes in length. You’ll receive the completed transcription via email within 3 hours.

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Are you wondering how long your Mac will last or how frequently you’ll need to replace it? This is a very difficult question to answer since many factors can affect the durability, longevity and compatibility of a computer, but I’ll do my best to provide some concise and useful guidance.

My shortest answer is that I find that many clients replace their computer about every 5 years. Some clients, who have high-end needs might replace their computer every 3-4 years and it’s worthwhile for them to migrate to Apple’s latest and fastest hardware every few years. I have many clients who have been able to stretch their computers to last 7 years or more.

Often customers will replace their computers because their previous computer’s compatibility or performance is no longer adequate. Macs will typically function for many more than 5 years, but if it breaks after 5 years it’s not always cost-effective to repair it so this can lead to replacing it. Needing to make significant upgrades to a Mac’s hardware can also lead to replacing it. The most common upgrades needed are adding memory, installing a larger hard drive or installing a newer version of Mac OS X can be cost-effective if one is able to do the work themselves, but if one has to hire somebody to do the labor, then the labor cost can make it no longer cost-effective.

In recent years, I’ve found that web browser compatibility often drives one to replace their computer. The two most common uses of a computer are sending emails and viewing web sites. The people who make web sites, like banks, often employ ever newer web site technologies to keep their web sites current and secure. These changes often require ever newer versions of web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. As these web browsers get upgraded it becomes necessary for their developers to occasionally drop support for older versions of Mac OS X as well as older or slower processors. For example, Macs using older PowerPC processors like the PowerMac G5 and iMac G5 can no longer run current versions of Safari, Firefox or Chrome. This means users might not be able to properly view or access some web sites. Thus these computers increasingly will need to be replaced since they would become less and less useful. Interestingly, PowerMac G5 ands iMac G5s were made between 2003 and the end of 2005 so they are more then 5 years old so it shouldn’t be too surprising that they need to be replaced.

I don’t have any specific data to support the following claim, but I think the rate of replacing computers is increasing. I think that customers used to replace their computers less frequently then every 5 years. These days, a new Mac has a minimum cost of about $1000 so it’s not easy for many people to replace their computer every 5 years. With the recent advent of the less expensive tablet computers, like the iPad, I find some hope. These devices and their capabilities are rapidly evolving. I think that in the coming years many casual computer users will be able to use an iPad for their email and web browsing needs. Thus, when one next replaces their Mac, you should consider if you could replace it with a less-expensive iPad. Then, if you were to need to replace your iPad every 4-5 years, it would be a less expensive proposition.

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On July 20, 2011, Apple released Lion, their newest version of Mac OS X. One should plan their upgrade to Lion and not rush into it. Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, costs less then many previous updates to Mac OS X. If you purchase Lion from the Mac App Store it costs only $30. Apple doesn’t sell it on disc any longer but they indicated that they’ll make it available on USB flash drives in mid-August for $69.

Lion introduces a number of new features and changes, some of which are confusing when you first encounter them. Thus, the first step in planing the upgrade is to read about these new features either on Apple’s web site or in this excellent PDF-book Take Control of Using Lion ($15)

Next, wait for Mac OS X 10.7.1 or 10.7.2. Inevitably, all new products contain bugs. Some minor, some major. If your Mac is currently pretty stable then I would hate to see you lose productivity by upgrading to Lion and then encountering bugs so let Apple release one or two minor releases which’ll address the most significant bugs. If the past is any indicator of the future, I would expect 10.7.1 to be released about a month after 10.7.0 was released.

Before upgrading a Mac it’s typically best to do some research and make sure that all of the applications and peripherals which you use throughout the week are compatible with Lion.

Roaring Apps is building a list of application compatibility information based on submissions from users like you and me. Apple has an article listing printer and scanner compatibility information. Additional research for applications or peripherals can be conducted at the manufacturer’s web site.

Once, you’re read about Lion’s new features, waited for Apple to release some bug fixes and determined that all of your applications and peripherals are compatible then you’re ready to upgrade to Lion.

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RSS is a convenient way to stay abreast of news stories or articles added to a particular web site. Rather then needing to visit your favorite web site over and over, you can use RSS to be notified when a new story or article has been added as well as read some or all of that article. I like to read my RSS feeds in my email application, Mail.

Below are instructions on how to add an RSS feed to Apple’s Mail application.

1. Open a web browser, like Safari and go to a web site that offers an RSS feed. I’ll use Tidbits.com as my example, so go to http://www.tidbits.com

2. In the right-hand end of the address field you’ll see an RSS icon as depicted in this picture. Click on the RSS icon.

3. If the web site offers ONLY 1 feed then the address of the feed will be listed. In this case, Tidbits.com offers 3 feeds so I choose the “Full Text Feed” and then see a window like this one:

4. Copy the feed address, feed://tidbits.com/feeds/tidbits.rss by highlighting it and selecting Copy from the Edit menu.

5. Open Mail and select “Add RSS Feeds” from the File menu.

6.In the Add RSS Feeds window select “Specify the URL for a feed” and then select Paste from the Edit menu to paste the feed address (aka the URL) into the field. Use the picture below as a guide.

7. Click the Add button.

8. In a few seconds, you’ll see the Tidbits feed listed on the left-hand window of the Mail window under the “RSS section” as depicted below. The number to the right of the RSS feed’s name is an indication of the number of unread articles.

9. If you have added a number of RSS feeds, then you may want to rename them so they sort in a particular order as I’ve done by adding number prefixes.

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I strongly recommend the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) for all MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac and MacPro purchases under most circumstances. I know that, in general, extended warranties have a poor reputation, but I think AppleCare is a good value for most Mac models.

Every Mac computer comes with 90 days of telephone tech support and a 1 year hardware warranty. By purchasing APP, the telephone support is extended to 1 year and the hardware warranty is extended to 3 years. AppleCare protection covers the cost of both parts and labor in the event of a repair. For the rest of this article I’ll simply refer to the AppleCare Protection Plan as AppleCare.

It’s very useful to know that you can buy AppleCare as long as the original 1 year hardware warranty is still in place. Additionally, AppleCare is transferrable. If you should sell your Mac within 3 years of initial purchase, the AppleCare coverage transfers with the computer. This can slightly increase your Mac’s resale value, but it also gives the buyer some reassurance should they detect a hardware issue after they purchase it. AppleCare does not cover accidental damage. AppleCare is available for all new or refurbished Macs bought from Apple.

MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs – The price for AppleCare is currently $249 for every laptop model except the 17″ MacBook Pro. For this model the price is $349. Apple has tiered flat-rate pricing for all laptop repairs. The last time I checked the lowest price was about $300. So, if your laptop is outside of it’s one-year hardware warranty and it breaks then one repair would have paid for the cost of Applecare protection. Since laptops are typically carried around they can sustain a lot of wear and tear. One repair within 3 years is not at all uncommon, thus I think it’s worthwhile to purchase AppleCare for MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. Over a dozen years, I have owned 4 Mac laptops I know that I’ve bought AppleCare for at least the last 3 and used it on each of them. On one of them the CD/DVD drive and a fan was replaced. On two of them the motherboard was replaced. All of these repairs were fully covered by AppleCare.

iMacs and MacPros – AppleCare for iMacs costs $169. AppleCare for MacPros costs $249. iMacs and MacPros repairs are not tied to tiered, flat-rate pricing. Each replacement part is priced individually. While fans and other small components may be inexpensive Apple’s labor rate is around $90-100 per hour. So, again, AppleCare quickly pays for itself. AppleCare covers the monitor built-into the iMac and it covers an external monitor if you purchase it at the same time that you buy a Mac, such as a MacPro, Mac mini or Mac laptop.

Since AppleCare can be purchased at any time within the first year of initial purchase, I have some clients who don’t purchase AppleCare initially for their iMacs or MacPros. Instead, they wait 6 to 9 months to see how the Mac performs and then make a decision. The first 6 months of a computer’s life is not necessarily a good indication of how it’ll perform after 2.5 years of use, but if the Mac has problems in the first 6 months then if seems prudent to buy the insurance of AppleCare in case other problems develop.

I typically don’t recommend AppleCare protection for Mac minis as strongly since AppleCare costs $149 but the price of the mini might be as little as $600. If a business were buying a Mac mini server or, if a person were purchasing an Apple laptop at the same time as the Mac mini then I would recommend it more strongly.

I don’t recommend AppleCare for iPhones, iPods, iPads or AppleTV either due to the relatively low price or the fact that the devices are more likely to be dropped or stolen then require a repair due to a part defect.

If you buy your Mac using a major credit card then the credit card company might double the manufacturer’s warranty. Please call your credit card company to verify and get the details. One client was able to get their iMac’s replacement motherboard covered by their credit card company due to this coverage. The client had to pay for the repair up front and they were subsequently reimbursed after submitting the requisite paperwork. So, utilizing this coverage is not as quick and easy as AppleCare but this protection could help you if you didn’t buy AppleCare within the first year.

Some homeowners insurance policies or specific riders might be a reason to not buy AppleCare. Some insurance policies even cover accidental cover that is not covered by AppleCare.

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Adding memory (RAM) to a computer is one of the most common upgrades made to a computer so many people think that this will speed up a computer. Adding memory to a computer can slightly improve its performance if the computer didn’t previously have sufficient memory installed to accommodate the applications which were simultaneously used. Let me elaborate to add some clarifying detail.

A computer’s processor (CPU) is a chip which carries out the instructions of an application. The faster the processor the faster tasks can be completed. Currently, common processor chips are the Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and Core i3, i5 and i7. These processors typically run at speeds around 2.0 to 3.0 Gigahertz (GHz). The speed of a computer’s processor is typically the largest factor in the computer’s performance. Typically, it’s not possible to either speed up or replace a processor in today’s desktop or laptop computers. Thus, people have to make other changes to try to improve a computer’s performance.

Applications, like Microsoft Word, are permanently stored on a hard drive. When one opens Microsoft Word then large parts of it are copied into memory (RAM). As one opens more and more applications one uses up all of the available memory in a computer. Eventually, the computer will start to use virtual memory. It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain virtual memory but, trust me, whcn I indicate that it’s slower then regular memory.

If one were to add more memory to a computer then the computer would need to rely on virtual memory less, when a lot of applications are open simultaneously. Consequently, the computer’s performance is improved. It’s common to need to add memory to a computer a few years after it was purchased especially if one has installed updated versions of applications like Word or the Mac operating system, Mac OS X. This is because new versions typically require more memory then their predecessors and thus utilize the computer’s memory faster and cause it to start to use virtual memory sooner.

Here are a few Wikipedia articles which could be useful if you want to dig deeper to try to understand some of the terms that I mentioned above: RAM (random access memory), CPU (central processing unit), GHz (gigahertz), virtual memory.

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Have you ever wanted to report a bug or request a feature for an application made by Apple, Adobe or Microsoft? Each company offers you the opportunity to do just that. Use the following web page addresses to submit your bug reports or feature request.

Apple Product Feedback and Feature Request

Microsoft Product Feedback and Feature Request

Adobe Product Feedback and Feature Request

I should mention that you shouldn’t expect to receive any feedback when you fill-out one of these forms. I had a conversation with an Apple Store manager who mentioned that when he had visited Apple’s headquarters, he’d seen a room full of people who were reading and processing all of the feedback which they received.

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I recently discovered a bug in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. If you insert a movie file into a PowerPoint presentation and you’re using the older .ppt file format then the link to the movie break when you close the file.  I’ve confirmed that this problem occurs with .wmv and .mov movie files and I assume it occurs with any other type of movie file. I’ve had a couple of clients encounter this bug. I reported this problem to Microsoft but it hasn’t been fixed as of the time of this writing. There is an easy solution to this problem. Use PowerPoint 2011′s native .pptx file format instead of the older .ppt file format.

Here’s what I did to fix the problem.

Open the .ppt PowerPoint file.

Go to the File menu and select Save As

In the Format section, select PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx)

Click the Save button. This will convert the presentation from .ppt format to the newer .pptx format

Go to the slide where you’d like to place a movie.

Go to the Insert menu and select Movie and then Movie From File

Navigate to the folder on your Mac which contains the movie file you want to insert into your presentation.

Select the movie file and click the Insert button.

Go to the File menu and select Save. The movie has now been imported to your presentation and will be saved within your PowerPoint file. You can check the size of your PowerPoint .pptx file to see that it has grown significantly now that the movie is saved inside it. When I was figuring out what the problem was I noticed that the file size of the .ppt file didn’t grow after I inserted the movie and saved the file. This told me that it wasn’t working properly. I also knew that I’d seen this feature work in other PowerPoint 2011 presentations. I then realized that the difference was that some files were .ppt files while others were .pptx files. That’s when I realized that this insert movie feature failed to work whenever I used the .ppt file format.

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Seattle City Government recently passed a law requiring companies that print the yellow page phone books to honor opt-out requests by Seattle citizens. If you’d like to opt out of receiving phone books from Dex, Frontier, Super Pages and others then you’ll need to do the following.
Go to Seattle City Government’s web site to read the details of this new system. You’ll be prompted to visit the Catalog Choice web site to create your own account. Once you’ve created your account you can click on the Phone Books button at the top of the web site to select which phone books you would or would not like to receive. You can subsequently opt out of receiving catalogs from other companies as well.

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You have choices when you want to re-use, recycle or destroy a hard drive. Let’s look at a few common scenarios to review these choices.

You have a computer that you want to retire or give to somebody else.

In this situation, the hard drive works properly you just want to securely erase your data before you give the computer to another person. Thus, you want to securely erase the hard drive and then reinstall Mac OS X. Follow the instructions in my previous Tech Tip article on how to securely erase a hard drive. If you don’t want to do this work yourself, you could take your computer to an organization like Interconnection orTotal Reclaim. Both of these organizations offer free data wiping of all hard drives on donated computers. I tend to use Interconnection as much as possible since they are a non-profit group that does their best to re-use the computer while Total Reclaim is a for-profit company which focuses on recycling computers and other electronics.

You have either an external hard drive that you want to re-use or sell, but first you want to remove all of your personal data from it.

This is very similar to the first situation. The hard drive works properly and you want to re-use the hard drive. Thus, you should securely erase the data from the hard drive using the instructions in my previous Tech Tip.

You have a hard drive that died that you need to get rid of but you want to make sure that nobody can ever get any of the data on that hard drive.

Since the hard drive is not working properly we can’t securely erase the hard drive as described above. Instead, the hard drive will need to be destroyed. You could either do this yourself or have somebody else do it. If you want to do it yourself you could secure the drive in a drill press and drill a few holes through the drive. This would destroy the circuit boards and, most importantly, the platters containing your data. If you want somebody else to destroy it then I recommend using an organization like Interconnection or Total Reclaim.

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You can use Apple’s infrared (IR) remote control to control slideshows in  PowePoint 2004, PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011. Here are some instructions for getting this setup. PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011 both include support for Apple’s remote. PowerPoint 2004 does not natively have this capability. Instead, you need to use one of the third party applications described in this other article. Personally, I’ve used the free iRed Lite.

First, here’s a little background. Starting in 2005, Apple started to ship remote controls with their iMac G5 computers. They then included it with MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as the Mac mini. Apple’s intended users to use them to control FrontRow which lets user view movies (DVDs), photos and music. I think Apple must have realized that few people actually used the remote controls so they stopped including them with new Macs but they continue to sell the remotely separately for about $20. In 2009 they replaced the original white plastic remote and with a taller, thinner aluminum version. The remotes do have some uses beyond controlling FrontRow. Most commonly I see them used to control PowerPoint slideshows. PowerPoint 2004 does not support the Apple Remote but both PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011 do support the remote. For a more thorough history of the Apple Remote check out this Wikipedia article. To learn about third-party products that allow the remote to control more applications and extend its capabilities in other ways check out this article.

Here are instructions on how to setup the Apple Remote to control PowerPoint 2008.

• Hold your remote control a few inches from your Mac.
• Simultaneously, press the Menu and Next (right-point arrow) buttons for 5-10 seconds.
• Open your PowerPoint presentation and click the Slideshow button to put it into slideshow mode.
• Press the Forward and Back buttons to move through the slideshow. Pressing the Pause/Play button will also advance to the next slide.

Apple's original white IR remote and the newer aluminum one.

If you ever want to unpair your Mac from a given remote you can go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and then Security and click the Unpair button.

I should also mention that by default the IR receiver is on in all Macs. This means that other people could walk up to your Mac and pair a remote with it and start to control it. This isn’t the worst thing in the world but it could cause confusion. What really causes confusion is when there are multiple macs in the same room and one person suddenly starts to use one of Apple’s IR remotes and the remote starts to control all of the Macs simultaneously. I assume this only happens if the Macs have previously been paired with another Apple remote. In these situations it’s useful to know that the Security System Preference pane mentioned above lets you check a box to disable the IR receiver in your Mac.

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Do you need to recover files that were deleted from a Mac’s hard drive? Here’s a quick overview of three options.

Option 1 – By far the easiest way to recover a file is to restore it from the most recent backup. This is why I’m such a strong proponent of setting up a comprehensive backup system including automated TimeMachine or CrashPlan backups. By default, TimeMachine runs every hour and CrashPlan runs every 15 minutes. Here’s are tech tips I wrote about how to restore files from Time Machine and CrashPlan backups.

This option is appropriate for a wide range of situations including: accidentally deleting a file and realizing it a minute or a month later; suffering from a malfunctioning hard drive, losing your computer or having it stolen. Assuming that you make multiple and frequent backup copies of your data this option has a very high recovery success rate.

This is the last of the good options. The two remaining options are either expensive, time consuming or have a much lower chance or success — or some combination thereof.

Option 2 – Use data recovery software such as ProSoft Engineering’s Data Rescue. Data Rescue and comparable applications can search a hard drive for deleted files and it can try to search a malfunctioning hard drive for files. Both of these processes can take hours to run and their success is far from guaranteed. When a file has is deleted it’s not really removed from the hard drive. Instead, the entry for that file is removed from an invisible list of all files and the space where the file resides on the hard drive is marked as available for re-use. Depending upon how much time has elapsed since the file was deleted it may or may not have been over-written. If a hard drive is failing who knows if you’ll be able to recovery any files from it.

Option 3 – Use a professional data recovery company like DriveSavers. DriveSavers has been around since the mid 1980s. They have a stellar reputation and success rate. In the rare cases that I’ve had a client who needed professional data recovery, I’ve often used DriveSavers and they have fortunately been able to recover most of the needed data. The downside of professional data recovery companies is the relatively high cost.

In the past decade, I’ve only sent two hard drives to DriveSavers. One hard drive was from an Mac made in the mid 1990s. It hadn’t been used in years and my client suddenly realized that she needed some data from it. The hard drive no longer worked properly. She spent about $2500 to recover a few dozen files which she needed.

In the other instance, a woman phoned me after most of her iPhoto Library suddenly vanished before her eyes. She didn’t have any backup of the hard drive so we sent the hard drive to DriveSavers. She paid about $1500 for the recovery work. DriveSavers recovered thousands of jpeg photos, but some of them were random clip art files so my client then had to spend countless hours weeding through the recovered files.

In my opinion, options 2 and 3 aren’t really attractive options. They are expensive, time-consuming and the odds of getting all of the files needed are not as high as I’d like. In comparison the cost to buy a couple of backup hard drives or to pay for CrashPlan’s online backup storage system is much less. Please setup an automated, redundant and reliable backup system for your Mac.

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Do you want to clean up your Mac hard drive? Is your hard drive nearly full and you don’t know why? OmniDiskSweeper (free) can help with both of these situations. OmniDiskSweeper will scan all files and folders on your Mac and then list them by size, starting with the folders taking up the most space. This helps you to focus your clean-up efforts on the folders that are taking up the most room on your Mac’s hard drive.

People often erroneously think that their Mac is running slowly because the Mac’s internal hard drive has so much stuff on it. This is rarely the case. Unless the hard drive is 90% or fuller then the computer’s performance is not impacted by the amount of stuff that is stored on the hard drive. I should be clear to mention that when the hard drive is nearly full, typically starting around 90% full, that the computer’s performance is significantly impacted. So, if your hard drive is this full then please download and use OmniDiskSweeper to help you clean it up.

OmniDiskSweeper conveniently shows you all of the invisible files and folders on your Mac. Over the years, I’ve seen several hard drives that were filled with spurious log files or errant backup copies of data — all of which happened to be invisible. These invisible files and folders are part of the Mac operating system, Mac OS X. Some of them are critical files so don’t throw away any invisible file without being sure that you have a full, bootable backup of your Mac and that you know what you’re doing. If you’re unsure check with a Mac expert or hire a Mac consultant.

Using OmniDiskSweeper is easy.

• Download OmniDiskSweeper and install it in your Applications folder. Double-click it to open it.
• Then, from the list, select a hard drive which you want it to scan. OmniDiskSweeper uses the term sweep to imply scan. The scan can take 10-15 minutes or longer, depending upon how much data you have.
• When the scan is complete you’ll see a columned window (see below) listing all folders sorted by size.
• If you’ve identified a file that you want to delete you can select it in the column browswer window and then click the “Delete” button in the lower left corner.
• If you want to look at a file or folder then select it in the column browser and double-click the icon in the lower-right corner. This will reveal the file or folder in the Finder so you can look at it more closely.

Happy hunting. I use OmniDiskSweeper regularly and find it an indispensable tool for cleaning hard drives.

OmniDiskSweeper File Browser

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Did you receive an email attachment named winmail.dat or winmail? Here’s a brief explanation of what this file is and instructions for opening this type of file.

Winmail.dat files are sent by people using Microsoft Outlook as their email application. Under certain circumstances Outlook will encode attached files, like Word or PDF files, in this winmail.dat

Mac users can open the winmail.dat file using a free application (donations accepted) and extract the files hiding inside. Unfortunately, this application has a goofy name which is TNEF’s Enough. I won’t bore you with an explain of this name, but if you care, you can read about it on the developer’s web site.

Here are instructions on how to open the winmail.dat file.

• Save your winmail.dat file on your Desktop.
• If you use Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 then download TNEF’s Enough ver 2.2. If you use OS X 10.4 or earlier then download TNEF’s Enough ver 2.0
• By clicking on one of these links you’ll download a .zip file which contains TNEF’s Enough inside. Your Mac should automatically open the .zip file so you should see TNEF’s Enough sitting in your Downloads folder.
• Move TNEF Enough into your Applications folder.
• Double-click it to open it and then go to the File menu and select Open…
• Select the winmail.dat file which you previously put on the Desktop.
• You’ll then see a window listing the embedded files which are the files that you actually want.
• Click on each file, one at a time, and click the Save button.
• Save these files to your Desktop or any other desired location.
• Quit TNEF’s Enough.

You’re done. You can now throw away the winmail.dat file since you’ve extracted all of the files from inside it.

If you’d like to read more about how and why this happens please read this Microsoft Support article or this other article. These articles also provide instructions that you can pass on to the Outlook user who sent you the winmail.dat file so he or she can make changes to no longer send you winmail.dat files. Essentially, they have to edit their record for you in their Contact list and indicate that you should only receive plain-text emails.

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Do you want to know how to perform some routine preventive maintenance on your Mac? Here’s my recommendation of helpful preventive maintenance tasks as well as instructions on how to perform these maintenance tasks. You don’t need to have advanced knowledge to perform these tasks. These recommendations assume you are using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5 or newer).

Overview

• Daily backup your data files
• Weekly update your bootable backup
• Monthly check your hard drive to make sure it’s not getting too full
• Monthly perform the following tasks using Maintenance (free): Verify your hard drive’s SMART status and its file structure (the invisible directories), repair your hard drive’s permissions, run the Daily, Weekly and Monthly maintenance scripts and delete the System, Application and Font caches.

More Detail

Daily Backup – I strongly believe everybody should have an automated backup system and, ideally, a comprehensive backup system. In other Tech Tips I provided detailed instructions on how to setup Time Machine. Time Machine is Apple’s backup application that comes with Mac OS X 10.5 (and newer). Time Machine will automatically perform hourly backups of one’s data assuming the Mac is on and the backup hard drive is connected.

Weekly Bootable Backup Update - It’s useful to be able to boot (start) your Mac from another hard drive if your Mac is not able to start from its own internal hard drive. This could happen if the internal drive is starting to fail or if an OS X update didn’t install properly or for a myriad of other reason. In other Tech Tips I provided detailed instructions on how to setup Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup of your Mac’s hard drive.

Monthly Check Hard Drive’s Fullness – A Macintosh computer’s performance will slow noticeably if it’s hard drive is more than approximately 90% full. It’s easy to make sure it’s not getting too full by doing this. Click on the hard drive’s icon on the Desktop, it’s typically named Macintosh HD, go to the File menu and select Get Info. Compare the values listed next to “Capacity” and “Used”. If the number of gigabytes of data listed in the “Used” section is 90% or more of the hard drive’s capacity then you need to free up some hard drive space. You can use Omni DiskSweeper (free) to help you determine which files are using the most storage space on your hard drive. Then you can either move some data to another hard drive, archive it to a DVD or delete it.

Monthly Maintenance Tasks – You can perform all of the maintenance tasks that I recommend using a free application aptly named Maintenance. Download the Maintenance disk image (Maintenance.dmg), then double-click it to open it and then drag the Maintenance application to your Applications folder to install it. Then, double-click the application to open it.

When you open Maintenance, it’ll display a message indicating that it’s checking your hard drive’s SMART status. SMART is an acronym which stands for Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology. It’s a simply diagnostic tool built in to most current hard drives. Next, Maintenance will ask if you want to Verify your startup volume (hard drive). Before you start this process please save and close all open documents and then quit all applications. Once the verification process is complete you’ll be prompted to enter an adminitrative-level account name and password. You’ll then be presented with a list of available tasks. I recommend inserting checkmarks into the first 5 items. (See below). Then click the Execute button to have Maintenance do the following: Repair Permissions, Execute Maintenance Scripts and empty the System, Application and Font caches. Wait while these tasks are completed. This could take 10-15 minutes.

Maintenance Task List

No harm should come if you were to perform the other tasks, but I find that they are more troubleshooting tasks rather then preventive maintenance tasks.

If you want to learn more about maintaining your Mac then I encourage you to read the $10 PDF book Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac

Titanium Software makes Maintenance as well as Onyx which can do everything that Maintenance can do plus a whole lot more.

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Are you looking for an easy way to share files with your colleagues who use a mix of Macs and PCs? There are many online file sharing and storage systems, but I use and recommend DropBox. I’ve tried a handful of systems including MobileMe’s iDisk, SugarSync, Windows LiveMesh, Box.net and GoogleDocs. While I use several of these services on an on-going basis I think DropBox is the most versatile and has the best mix of features that I use and care about.

Here’s a list of some of my needs.

• I want a fast, affordable, easy-to-use and secure system. I want to keep the files locally on my computer and have them get copied (synced) to my colleagues Mac or PC.
• I want to be able to share different folders with different people.
• I want to be able to access the shared folders and some of the files from my iPhone and iPad.

Dropbox meets all of these needs and has many other handy features. Here are some highlights.

• It provides status indicators when files are getting synced and optional on-screen notification messages when files have been added, deleted or edited.
• It saves older versions of files so you can retrieve a previous version.
• It lets you view your shared folders and files from their web site so you can access any file from any computer which has an Internet connection.
• If two people simultaneously edit the same file it’s smart enough to save both copies and point out this conflict.
• Files stored in DropBox can be accessed on iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, Android-based phones and tablets
• There is a special Public folder which can be used to share a file with the entire world, if you want. Any file in the public folder has a “public link” which can be put in an email or on a web site to provide an easy way for others to download this file. This is a handy way to share a file that is too large to send as an email attachment.

Dropbox is capable and versatile, but it’s not as robust as a full-fledged file server to which you might be accustomed. In particular it’s important to know that you can’t share a folder inside another shared folder. Instead you would need to create a separate shared folder outside of the shared folder. Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then add, delete or change files within that folder. Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then invite others to join the folder. As the owner of the folder you can see the list of people who have access and you can revoke somebody’s access privileges at any time.

You can try Dropbox for free. A free account includes 2 GB of storage space. If or when you outgrow that 2 GB of storage space you can buy more storage space. 50 GB of storage space costs $100 per year or 100 GB of storage space costs $200 per year. Give Dropbox a try. I think you’ll like it.

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If your printer’s toner or ink cartridge is completely empty then it can be put in the trash according to the City of Seattle’s web site. Otherwise, you should recycle it using any of the following methods.

Many office supply stores like OfficeMax, OfficeDepot and Staples typically offer recycling services. Some of them will give you a small store credit if you’ve signed up for their “rewards program”. For example, Staples will let you recycle up to 10 cartridges per user per month and will give you $2 in Staples Rewards.

Check with the store where you purchased the cartridge many offer refill and recycle services including BestBuy and Cartridge World which both have stores in the greater Seattle area.

Look at the instructions in the box of your new laser or ink jet cartridge to find out how to recycle your old one. Many manufacturers will provide instructions, packaging materials and free postage if you wish to recycle your old cartridge, which is then refilled and used again.

Use the Earth911web site to find an organization near you that will recycle printer cartridges.

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Have you wondered how to properly dispose of compact fluorescent lamps? Compact fluorescent lamps (CFL or sometimes just CF) are energy efficient bulbs but they contain very small amounts of mercury so they need to be properly handled and thus can’t be put directly in your trash. The City of Seattle’s web site has a page providing tips and information about CF bulbs include the mercury they contain.

To properly dispose of compact fluorescent lamps, also called compact fluorescent bulbs, one can take them to any Take It Back Network recycler who’ll handle fluorescent bulbs, but I find it convenient to take mine to one of the 56 Bartell Drug stores in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. Bartell Drugs started their  CF bulb recycling program in 2008. Simply give your unbroken CF bulb to any store clerk or in their recycle bin. Bartell has partnered with Total Reclaim, who says “the used bulbs will be completely recycled, including glass, aluminum, plastic and mercury”.

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This is the first in a series of articles about how to easily recycle your Macintosh computer, monitor, printer, ink and toner cartridges, batteries, cell phones and other electronics commonly used in small businesses or around the home. I live in Seattle so I focus on Seattle and King County, but many of these resources are available in the greater Puget Sound area.

In 2006, Sally Deneen, a Seattle resident, wrote a good overview about How to Recycle Practically Anything. There’s a lot of good information in this article but some details have changed over the years.

Starting in 2009, Washington State joined other states in offering an e-cycle program. It is a free, convenient and environmentally responsible recycling program for computers, monitors, laptops and televisions. It is for households and small businesses, schools, non-profits and others.  Be aware that computer peripherals such as keyboards, mice and printers are not included in this program.

Many of the organizations that participate in the E-Cycle Washington program also belong to the Take It Back Network. This network operates in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. It’s a group of retailers, repair shops, non-profit organizations, waste haulers and recyclers that offer convenient options for recycling certain products that should not be disposed of in the trash. I can’t give you an exhaustive list of all of the items that various groups take, but here’s a partial list of what one can recycle: audio and video equipment, cell phones, printers, computer peripherals,  copiers, fax machines, PDAs, pagers, tapes, discs, video game consoles,  and circuit boards.

One can use this Ecycling Center web site to locate recycling resources across the country. One of my preferred recyclers is Interconnection located in Fremont. While they are a highly certified recycler they try to reuse as much equipment as possible. They test all equipment that is donated and make some computers and equipment available to low-income individuals, people who volunteer their time at Interconnection and local non-profit organizations. Additionally, they ship some computers to overseas groups who can put them to use. I donate most of my computers, monitors, printers, scanners and other peripherals at Interconnection and encourage you to consider them as well.

In future articles I’ll provide more detail about how to recycle specific items like compact fluorescent lamps, zip disk, floppy disks, video tapes, film and other items.

Also, if your computer or other equipment is not broken then you could donate it an organization that’ll attempt to donate the equipment so it gets reused instead of recycled.

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Did you know that Apple’s Preview lets you easily annotate PDFs, merge PDFs as well as delete and re-order pages within a PDF? Preview is a free application which comes bundled with Mac OS X. Apple has been quietly updating over the years and it has become quite capable and user-friendly. Just a few years ago one would have needed to buy the relatively expensive Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional PDF Editor to do many of these tasks.

I should note that there are slight differences in how certain tasks are done if you’re using OS X 10.5′s version of Preview. All of these demonstrations are done using OS X 10.6′s version of Preview.

It’s also important to know that the following techniques may not work on all PDFs. It’s possible for a person who creates a PDF to lock the file in such a way as to prevent others from manipulating it. Typically, locking a PDF like this requires use of an application like Adobe’s Acrobat.

I’ve created short video tutorials on how to do the following tasks. Read the brief text description and then click the link to watch the video.

If you need more extensive editing capabilities then what is offered by Preview then you should check out the relatively affordable PDFPen.

1. Reorder pages in a PDF – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Click on one of the thumbnails and drag the page up or down. Look for the horizontal blue line that appears indicating the new location of the page. To remove a page you can simply click on the thumbnail icon for a page to select it and the press the Delete key on your keyboard.

2. Extract pages from a PDF – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Click on the first page you want to extract. If you want to extract additional pages then hold down the Command key and click on additional thumbnail icons. Release the Command key and then drag the thumbnail icons to the Desktop. A new PDF file will be created on the Desktop. Rename the file as desired. Open this new file by double-clicking to verify that it contains the pages that you want. You can re-order the pages by following the tip listed above.

3. Move pages between PDFs (Merge PDFs) – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Open a second PDF and click its Sidebar button too. Position the two PDFs so you can view both file’s Sidebars at the same time. Select one or more pages from one file’s Sidebar and drag them into the other file’s Sidebar. Look for the horizontal blue line that appears in the receiving file’s Sidebar. This blue line indicates where the new page appear. You can re-order the pages by following the tip listed above. Go to the File menu and select Save to save the changes.

4. Annotate text in a PDF -  Open a PDF file, click the Annotate button to review a row of tools at the bottom of the window. Use these tools to highlight text in a variety of colors, draw a line through the text, enclose text inside a rectangle or oval, add a note in the margin of the PDF.

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Have you wanted to change your Mac’s behavior so Apple’s Preview is used, rather than Adobe Reader to open all .pdf files? You can control which application is used to open any given file type such as .xls, .doc, .jpg, .tiff, or .awk files.

In this example, we’ll configure a Mac to use Apple’s Preview as the default application to open all .pdf files.

• Locate a .pdf file on your Mac.
• Click once on this .pdf file to select it.
• Click on the File menu and select Get Info.
• In the Get Info window which appears, locate the “Open With” section.
• You ‘ll see the current default application listed. Click on this application’s name and select Preview from the list. If you don’t see your desired application then scroll to the bottom of the list and select “Other” then browse your Mac’s hard drive to select your desired application.
• Click the “Change All” button that appears below this list.
• You’ll be asked if you really want to make this change. Click “yes” you do want to make this change.
• Close the Get Info window.

That’s it! You’ve now configured your Mac to use Apple’s Preview as the default application to open all .pdf files.

Every so often, you might want to override the default behavior. For example, you might want to use Adobe Reader to open a particular .pdf file. Here’s how you can do this.

Click on the particular .pdf file. Drag it and drop it onto the application icon for Adobe Reader. It’s easiest to do this if you’ve already added Adobe Reader to your Dock. To do this, go to your Application folder, locate the application named Adobe Reader and drag it to the Dock. This will permanently add it to your Dock.

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In this Tech Tip article, I’ll tell you how to setup CrashPlan’s Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service to perform automated, off-site versioned backups. I use this service to backup my work laptop. In my previous Tech Tip on setting up a comprehensive backup system, I mention how CrashPlan can be a nice supplement to backing up your Mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner since CrashPlan’s backup data can be stored off-site on CrashPlan’s servers. Thus, it can provide automated, off-site backups of your business data.

In another recent Tech Tip I talk about how to use CrashPlan+ to backup personal data so if you’re not backing up business data you’ll probably prefer to sign-up for the less-expensive CrashPlan+ service which offers the same set of features. That article includes definitions of CrashPlan, CrashPlan+ and CrashPlan Central so if you’re not familiar with the differences between these terms please read this part of the article now.

One important detail to know is that CrashPlan’s does not mention this Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service by name and barely mentions that a hosted service is available. In fact, I was confused after reading the CrashPlan web site and trying to understand the proper way to use CrashPlan+ to backup business data. I only learned about the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service by exchanging emails with Code42′s tech support team. I was informed that CrashPlan will be revising their web site to offer a better explanation of the range of services that they offer. In the meantime, here’s my abbreviated explanation.

CrashPlan, the application, can be used to backup either personal or business data to local hard drives, hard drives connected to your friend’s computer at their home or office, or hard drives connected to other computers on your own network. However, neither CrashPlan nor CrashPlan+ allow you to backup business data to CrashPlan Central, Code42′s servers kept in a secure data center. I value having a reliable, redundant backup system and I want my data to be secure so I really like the idea of storing my backup data on the CrashPlan Central servers. So, if you’re a business owner and you want to backup your business data to the CrashPlan Central servers then you need to sign up for either CrashPlan Pro or the Hosted Pro Client Subscription Service (contact info listed below). CrashPlan Pro is advertised as supporting 10-10,000 computers, but technically it could be used for any number of business computers. It just isn’t cost-effective until you have about 10 computers. It seems that Code42 setup their Hosted Pro Client Subscription Service as a bit of an after thought to plug the gap in their service offerings and to give business owners with 1-5 computers a way to more affordably store their data on the CrashPlan Central servers.

If the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service is a good fit for your small business then here’s some guidance on how to set it up.

Contact Code42′s sales team at sales@crashplanpro.com and ask them about the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service.

Fill-in and return the Pro Hosted Order form that is sent to you by the sales team. Read the pricing examples that I provide at the bottom of this article.

You’ll be notified of your login information once your account has been setup.

Download and install the CrashPlan Pro application. It works on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.4.11 or higher.

Open CrashPlan Pro. When you’re prompted to login do so using the account information you were given.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side. Then, in the Backup Destinations section locate “CrashPlan Central” and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.
By default, CrashPlan will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan Pro is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan Pro offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan Pro is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan Pro will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan Pro application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan Pro is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan Pro application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan Pro. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.

By default, CrashPlan Pro will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

Pricing Example – As of the November 2010 the cost is $5/computer/month plus 30 cents per gigabyte per month with a minimum of 50 GB. Thus, for one computer the cost would be $20/month ($5 for the computer and $15 for upto 50 GB of storage).

The cost for 4 computers would be a minimum of $35/month ($20 for 4 computers and $15 for upto 50 GB of storage). $35/month x 12 mns = $420 per year each year.

Here’s a cost example in case you need more then 50 GB of storage space.

4 computers = $20/month

initial 50 GB of storage space = $15/month

additional 20 GB of storage space = $6/month

Total is $20 + $15 + $6 = $41/month    12 months x $41 = $492/year

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I’ve been a long-time customer of Sip & Ship. It is a friendly one-stop shop that is a great resource for my one-person business. They offer a long list of business-related services which are available a la carte. They also coffee, muffins, sandwiches, greeting cards and personal gifts. It’s run by a husband and wife team, Diana and Steve and their team of staff. I use their Ballard location but a few years ago they expanded and opened a second store in Greenwood.

Initially, I only used Sip & Ship’s package receiving service. Signing up for this service is free and then they charged me a few dollars for each package I had delivered to their store. As a computer consultant, I order a lot of products and many require a signature upon delivery. It was very convenient to have the boxes delivered to Sip & Ship where there’s always somebody there to sign for the package. The staff then notified me and I swung by to pick it up.

Over the years, I’ve availed myself of a number of Sip & Ship’s services, including the following:

• I signed up for their private mailbox service when Diana pointed out that the annual fee for this service  was less then then the amount I paid for all of the packages which I received throughout the year. I can now have any and all mail delivered there and they’ll sign for and then hold all of my packages.

• Diana is a notary public so I’ve been able to have her notorize documents for me when I swing by to pick up my mail.

• Pack and mail boxes. Sip & Ship is a full-service shipper. They work with USPS, FedEx, UPS and, no doubt, other shippers. I frequently mail packages and envelopes of all sizes. I get a discount on shipping costs since I rent a private mailbox. The Sip & Ship staff also offer custom packing services if you don’t have a box and padding materials. One time I had to send a laptop to California and they did a great job building a custom box with lots of padding. The laptop arrived intact and on-time.

• Sometimes I purchase a chai and head up to their balcony to get caught up on my email via their free Wi-Fi network.

Recently, I learned that Sip & Ship offers a convenient drop-off shredding service. They charge $1 per pound of paper or $10 per bankers box. The shredding machine is located in their Greenwood store. You can drop off the paper at their Ballard store  and they’ll transport it for you or you can take it directly to their Greenwood store.

I’ve probably only mentioned half of the services that they offer. If you’re a small business owner in the greater Ballard or Greenwood neighborhoods check out Sip & Ship and see if they can be of service to you.

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All batteries will eventually experience diminished efficiency and storage capacity and will need to be replaced. However, regularly recalibrating your Lithium-ion battery will help to prolong your battery’s life and health which helps you to reduce the frequency with which you’ll have to buy a new battery

Apple recommends recalibrating your battery at time of purchase and then every few months after that. Battery University recommends recalibrating your battery every 30 charge/discharge cycles. Apple provides written instructions on how to recalibrate your battery. For years, I had a repeating event on my iCal calendar that sent me an email reminder which included a copy of Apple’s instructions. Recently, I switched and started to use Watts (30-day free trial, then $6.95) which lets me monitor the health of my battery, reminds me to calibrate my battery and then guides me through it.

Apple indicates that one should expect current Mac laptop batteries to retain 80% of their charge capacity after 1000 full charge/discharge cycles. Watts lets you keep an eye on this and alerts you if your battery is not healthy and needs to be replaced. If you have Growl, the notification application installed, then Watts can be configured to display useful notifications and reminders to recalibrate your battery. I recommend Watts, check it out, you might find it helpful.

Here’s a copy of Apple’s current instructions for recalibrating your battery if you own a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or PowerBook G4 with a dual-layer DVD drive.

• Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
• Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
• Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
• At this point, save your work.  Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
• Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
• Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

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Do you want to check to see if your Mac is still under warranty from Apple? The technical support section of Apple’s web site lets you easily check to see if your Apple device is protected by either its built-in or the extended hardware warranty. Here are simple instructions on how to do so.

All Macintosh computers as well as iPhones and iPad come with a standard one-year hardware warranty. Apple offers an optional extended warranty named AppleCare Protection Program. This extended warranty can be purchased anytime during the first year while your Mac is still protected by it’s built-in warranty. To determine if your Mac  is covered do this:

• Obtain your Apple device’s serial number. It is printed on your device but it can sometimes be hard to locate so use this page from Apple which explains where to find your device’s serial number. If you have a Mac that starts up you can follow these instructions instead.
• Go to the Apple menu and select “About This Mac”
• In the window which appears, click the “More Info” button which opens System Profiler application.
• The “Hardware” section will be selected on the left-hand side. In the right-hand side, near the bottom of the Hardware Overview, you’ll see the serial number listed. Select it and copy it.
• Go to Apple’s web page for checking your warranty coverage.
• Paste your Mac’s serial number into the field and click the Continue button. Your hardware coverage will be listed shortly.

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Here are instructions on how to use Disk Utility to securely erase a hard drive connected internally or externally to your Mac. These instructions were written for Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.6. The process is very similar on older versions of Mac OS X but the screens will look a bit different.

Requirements – You’ll need either the Mac OS X install disk that came with your Mac or another OS X install disk that’ll boot your Mac, such as a retail copy of the Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 install disk.

I recommend securely erasing a hard drive before you recycle it or give it away. The instructions below include the option to re-install Mac OS X onto the hard drive at the end of the process.

If you’re securely erasing an external hard drive you do not need to use a Mac OS X install disk. Instead, you can simply open Disk Utility which you’ll find in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. In Disk Utility, select the external hard drive and then follow the last few steps below to erase it using one of the Security Options described below.

Background – Technically, it’s not possible to erase or remove data from hard drives. Thus “securely erasing” is a misnomer. Instead, what we’ll be doing is over-writing the data on your hard drive with gibberish, a random string of bits of data. When you securely erase your hard drive you’ll have a choice of how much over-writing you want to do. This process can take many hours if you select the 7-pass overwrite procedure. I recommend starting this process and then letting it run over-night.

• Insert the Mac OS X install disc that came with your Mac.
• Note: The disc will begin the process of installing Mac OS X on your Mac. Whether or not you actually choose to install Mac OS X is your choice, but if you do, you’ll do it AFTER you’ve securely erased your Mac’s hard drive.
• Select your preferred language from the list presented.
• When you see the welcome screen for the Mac OS X Installer go to the menu named Utilities and select Disk Utility
• In the left pane of the Disk Utility window, click on the hard drive you want to erase.
• In the right pane of the Disk Utility window, click the Erase tab.
• Click the Security Options button
• I recommend that you select the 7-Pass Erase options, but you could choose the 35-Pass Erase option. Here’s my description of these options.

Don’t Erase Data— This option does not provide any security. This option only over-writes the directories on the hard drive. Your files could still be recovered.
Zero Out Data— Provides a pretty good level of security. All of your files are over-written with a string of zeroes. There are forensics utilities that in theory could retrieve some data.
7-Pass Erase— Provides a lot of security. This is considered sufficient by government standards to erase data from a disk. It writes a random string of ones and zeroes over your data files seven times. It may take several hours or more to complete this process.
35-Pass Erase— Provides the maximum amount of security offered.This option takes an extremely long time, possibly more than one day.

• Click the radio button in front of 7-Pass Erase
• Click OK.
• Click the Erase button next to the Security Options button.
• Confirm you want to erase and the process will be begin.
• If you want to install Mac OS X then go to the Disk Utility menu and select Quit
• You’ll be taken back to the Mac OS X Installer welcome window. Click Continue.
• Agree to the software license.
• In the “Select a Destination” window click on the icon for the hard drive which you just erased and then click Continue.
• Click the Install button to start the installation process. Depending upon the speed of your Mac and the version of Mac OS X which you are installing this process could commonly take anywhere from 20-60 minutes.

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You can use these instructions to retrieve any password from your keychain such as the password to your wireless network. The keychain is a secure place to store passwords, when you initially connected to your password-protected wireless network your password would have been stored in your keychain if you checked the “Remember this network”.

• Go to /Applications/Utilities and open Keychain Access. This application lets you view the passwords (keys) stored on your keychain. You’ll notice that the application’s icon is a ring with keys on it.
• Use the Search field in the upper right corner. Type in the name of your wireless network.
• Click on the name of your wireless network from the list of found items. If there are multiple items with the same name then here are some clues on how to find the right one. It’s Kind will be Airport Network Password. It’ll be on the “login” keychain.
• Go to the File menu and select Get Info
• In the lower left corner of the Get Info window check the box named “Show Password”
• You’ll be prompted to enter your administrator account’s password. (This is you main computer password. This is the password you use when installing software updates.)
• Click the “Allow Once” button.
• The password will be displayed.

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Did you know that Apple’s Mail application automatically builds a list of all recipients to whom you’ve sent email? I think it’s very useful to review this list a few times each year. By reviewing this list you can easily add useful email addresses to your Address Book and you can delete out-dated email addresses or addresses that contain typos.

Before we review this list, it’s important to understand how this list is used by Mail. When you are creating a new email message and you begin to type a person’s name or email address in the To: field you’re typically presented with a list of email addresses which match the letters that you’ve typed. This list of email addresses is a composite of email addresses from your Address Book as well as addresses listed in your Previous Recipients list.

If you ever made a typo in an email address and then sent the email message then this incorrect email address was likely added to your Previous Recipient list. By reviewing this list you can remove such undesirable email addresses.

To view your Previous Recipient list, open Mail, click on the Window menu and select Previous Recipient. You can search this list using the search field in the upper right corner. You can also sort this list by any of the columns listed: Name, Email, Last Used. You can also sort by the left-hand most column which is not named. This column indicates if the email address is saved in your Address Book. If it is then you’ll see an icon which resembles a rolodex card. If the address is not in your Address Book then this space will be blank. I like to sort by this column to find common recipient’s whose email addresses I want in my Address Book. I then select them and use the Add to Address Book button. If you don’t typically add people to your Address Book this can be a fast way to add a whole lot of people to your Address Book.

In order to remove an email address containing a typo, I often use the search field to locate it. Then, I’ll click on it to select it and then use the Remove From List button.

I like to sort the list by the Last Used date. I’ll then review the oldest addresses listed and if I don’t recognize them then I’ll select one or more and remove them from the list too.

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The focus of this article is to describe the essential components of a comprehensive backup system for your Macintosh computer and to describe a simple comprehensive backup system for one Mac. This article’s recommendations are appropriate for anybody with a few Macs which they would like to backup. If you have a larger network of Macs then other applications and approaches would be more appropriate.

I believe that there are two types of people in this world. Those who have lost data and those who will lose data. Thus, I feel strongly about the importance of backing up your computer. A comprehensive backup system will help you minimize the amount of data that you could ever lose.

We all store valuable files on our computer though what is valuable varies by person. For some it is email messages, calendar data and address book information. For others it is their Quicken or QuickBooks information. For others still it is their digital pictures, home movies and music. For some it is all of these kinds of files. We increasingly rely on computers, so minimizing downtime and recovering quickly from problems need to be incorporated into a comprehensive backup system.

In some ways, a backup system is analogous to an insurance policy. We hope we never need to rely on it, but we’re very glad that we have it if it is needed. And just as different types of insurance policies provide different amounts of coverage, not all backup systems provide the same levels of protection, however, any level of protection is better then no protection at all. Here is a list of the essential components in a comprehensive backup system.

• It should backup all files on your computer
• It should run frequently and automatically
• It should produce multiple backup copies of your files. The old rule of thumb is that if it’s important enough to backup once then it’s important enough to backup twice.
  
• The multiple copies should be kept on multiple disks which are securely stored in multiple locations. One of these locations should be off-site or, if on-site, in a Class 125 fireproof safe.
  
• You need to monitor the backup system at least weekly to ensure that it is making backup copies of your data.
  
• You need to test your backup system a few times each year to ensure that it’s working properly and so you’ll know how to use it to restore a file under pressure, when a problem arises

The Tao of Backup web site does a very good job of describing the importance of each of these components in an entertaining and educational way.

Backup systems allow us to recover from a range of problems that can occur. The most common type of problem is accidentally deleting  a file and needing to get it back. Another all to common problem is hard drive failure in which case we’d need to recover all files. Although rare, burglaries, fire, flood and theft all occur and would require us to recover all of our files too. To recover an accidentally deleted file or to recover from a hard drive failure all one needs is a local, on-site backup copy of their files. However, to recover from a burglary, fire or flood can often require having an off-site backup copy of your data.

While I encourage everybody to setup a comprehensive backup system, I understand that not everybody has the time or money to commit to such a system so I’ll re-iterate that any level of protection is better than none at all and a pretty good backup can be surprisingly affordable.

In more practical terms here is a simple, comprehensive backup system for one Mac. Start by purchasing two external hard drives. Partition each drive into two parts. Configure Carbon Copy Cloner (donations requested) to make a full bootable backup of your Mac to one of the partitions on each of the external drives. Carbon Copy Cloner can be scheduled to perform automatic backups whenever the hard drive is connected. Configure Time Machine, which comes included in Mac OS X 10.5 and higher, to perform automated hourly backups of all files on your Mac to the other partition on each of the external drives. On a designated day each week you can switch between the two hard drives. The idle drive should be stored off-site at a secure location across the street or across town. If you’re not inclined to buy two backup hard drives then you could supplement your one on-site hard drive with off-site backups made by CrashPlan. CrashPlan is an online backup system. They have different pricing for personal and business use. (I’ve now written Tech Tip articles about using CrashPlan for either personal or business use.)

The reason to use both Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine is even though Time Machine backs up all files on a hard drive it does not do so in a manner which lets one start (boot) their Mac from the Time Machine backup drive. Thus, Carbon Copy Cloner is a nice supplement to Time Machine since it’s focus is making a bootable backup drive. Having another hard drive from which one can boot their Mac can minimize downtime and can be helpful in the event of problem with the internal hard drive.

Monitoring the system is easy. To monitor Time Machine simply click on its Menu Bar icon to see when it last ran and/or look for its Menu Bar icon to spin while it is performing a backup. When you swap the backup drives you should see Carbon Copy Cloner automatically start.

Apple has an article which provides instructions on how to restore files from a Time Machine backup. Practice this a few times so you have confidence that Time Machine is working and so you’ll be calm if you need to rely on Time Machine for real. An important test of the Carbon Copy Cloner backup is to go to the Startup Disk System Preference, select this disk and then restart your Mac to ensure that you can boot from this backup. To determine which drive was used to startup your Mac, go to the Apple menu, select About This Mac and see which disk is listed as the startup disk or use Disk Utility.

A few final notes. Archives are different from backups and I think you should archive your more important data as well. I’ll talk about archives in a future article.

TidBits’ has written a couple of excellent Take Control PDF books about backing up Macs. Check them out:

Take Control of Mac Backups and Take Control of Easy Mac Backups

This article is the first in a series of articles that talk about Macintosh backup systems including specific products. Check my Tech Tip blog regularly for more articles in my Backup category.

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The Fujitsu ScanSnap

I bought my first ScanSnap, the S510M, in January 2007 and it’s still going strong after 2900 scans. Fujitsu has replaced this model with the S1500MS1300.

I was fortunate enough to win one of these in a recent give-away by a Fujitsu representative. The S1300 can be powered by either a power cord or via a USB port on your computer. (It needs a second, separate USB port for transmitting the scanning data.) The software bundled with the S1300 includes some new features and is compatible with my three year-old S510M. If you own an older ScanSnap you can download the current ScanSnap software which is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.

The bundled Macintosh software includes Fujitsu’s own ScanSnap Manager as well as two third-party applications — Abby FineReader 4.1 for ScanSnap and ReadIRIS’ CardIRIS 3.6 for ScanSnap. FineReader is an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) application that let’s you turn your PDFs into searchable PDFs, editable Word or Excel documents. CardIRIS also does OCR, but is intended for business cards. It lets you scan a business card and turn it into a record in Apple’s Address Book.

The S1300 is also the first fully cross-platform ScanSnap model. In the past, Scansnap scanners have been bundled with either Mac-compatible software or Windows-compatible software though the scanner hardware itself works with either Macs or PCs. The S1300 comes with one DVD which contains both Mac and Windows software.

Fujitsu has added a host of other appealing features over the past few years. Here are a few highlights.

• Right-clicking on the Dock icon let’s one select either Simplex (one-sided) or Duplex (two-sided) scans in case you don’t want to scan the back-side of a document such as a store receipt.
• ScanSnap Manager’s Application section lets you scan a document directly to a number of destinations such as iPhoto, your printer or as an attachment in a new email message.
• Marking text with a highlighter pen will turn that text into a keyword in your searchable PDF.

he paperless office that has been prophesied has not appeared, but my ScanSnap lets me reduce the amount of paper records that I have in my filing cabinets. I scan most documents so they are always available on my laptop. Of course, a robust backup system is important if you’re going to entrust all of these documents to your computer.
Note: ScanSnaps do not conform to TWAIN, ISIS and WIA standards.

Update 03-2011: I recently learned that Fujitsu has created a number of ScanSnap Tips and Tricks including one on how to clean your ScanSnap and how to replace the consumables.

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Would you like to schedule automatic email reminders to yourself for iCal appointments? Here are instructions on getting this set up.

1. Open Address Book, click on the Card menu and select Go to My Card. Make sure that the My Card exists and that it contains your name and the email address at which you’d like to receive email reminders. You can add multiple email addresses if you want some reminders to go to one address and have other reminders go to another address.

2. Open iCal, click on the File menu and select Add Event. Type in a name for the event.

3. Double-click the event to see the event’s details if you use OS X 10.5 or 10.6. If you use OS X 10.4 then single click on the event to view the details in the Info area. In the Alarm section click on the word None to view a list of options. Select Email from that list. Then, below that, you can select from multiple email addresses if you have them listed in your My Card. You can also set how far in advance you’d like the email reminder to be sent.

4. You can set multiple email reminders. For example, maybe you’d like a reminder 12 hours in advance and then again 1 hour in advance. If you use OS X 10.5 or 10.6 then a second Alarm field automatically appears so just repeat the instructions in step 3 to add a second alarm. If you use OS X 10.4 then you’ll have to control-click on the word Alarm and select Add Alarm from the menu that appears.

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Do you often want to get driving directions from Google Maps for somebody’s address which is stored in Address Book? If so, then you should use Brian Toth’s Google Maps Address Book Plugin. I’ve used this great little utility for several years and rely on it regularly to get driving directions either from my office to a client’s office or from one of my client’s office to another client’s office. You can try the plugin for free. If you like it then please send a donation to Brian Toth, the developer.

Installation is easy. Click the download button on the developer’s web site. You’ll start to download the compressed zip file. Your Mac you automatically unzip this file, if not you can double-click it to get your Mac to unzip this file. You’ll then see the Google Maps Plugin installer application. Double-click it to install it.

It’s easy to use as well.

1. Open Address Book and hover your cursor over the “work” or “home” address label.

2. Click on the address label and select Google Directions.

3. To change the starting address click on the pop-up list near the top of the window to select your starting address. Then click the “Map” button.

Your default web browser will open and you’ll be shown Google Directions for the selected addresses.

Here are images to illustrate these instructions.
Extra Tip – I also use Brian Toth’s PostCheck plugin for Apple’s Address Book. PostCheck will fill-in an address’ missing zip code or verify that you have the correct zip code. You’ll notice that once you’ve downloaded and installed it that you can select it from the pop-up menu. Just look for PostCheck.

Google Maps Plugin Instructions

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Are you looking for a replacement for PageMaker? Did you like the easy of use that PageMaker offered? It was a basic page layout application. Adobe realized that PageMaker wasn’t capable enough for professional designers so they replaced it with InDesign. However, InDesign is overkill for many small business owners who just want to create simple flyers or newsletters. Here’s a list of applications that you mind find as a suitable replacement for PageMaker. In a future blog post I will compare the best of this list.

Stone Design’s Create $150

Diwan Software’s Ready Set Go $175

Scribus, a free, open source application

BeLight Software’s Swift Publisher $45

Apple’s Pages, part of iWork, $79

iCalamus, 129 Euros

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Have you received a file whose name ends with .docx or .xlsx and been unable to open it on your Mac? These files were created by either Word 2007 and Excel 2007 for Windows or Word 2008 and Excel 2008 for Mac. Thus, one way to open these files is using Office 2008. If you owned this then you wouldn’t have questions about how to open these files and you wouldn’t be reading this article. Here’s information about two other ways to open .docx and .xlsx files.

Option 1 – Use Microsoft’s free OpenXML Converter. It requires you to have an updated copy of Office 2004 as well as Mac OS X 10.4.3 or higher. This option is the focus of this article. See below for details.

Option 2 – Use Apple’s Pages application. It is part of iWork. I believe both Pages ’07 or newer is required.

To determine which version of Mac OS X you’re using please go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac. The version will be listed in the window that appears.

Go to your Applications folder to see if you have Microsoft Office 2004 installed. Look for the Microsoft Auto Update application as well. Run this application repeatedly until it indicates that all updates have been installed.

Finally, download the OpenXML Converter using this link. When you’re viewing this page you need to select which language version you want. For example, click on the link named English (.dmg) if you want the English version of this converter. After the disk image (.dmg) is downloaded on your Mac, you’ll need to open the disk image and then run the installer package (.pkg) file. Once you’ve finished installing this converter simply double-click on a file whose name ends in .docx, .xlsx or .pptx and the OpenXML converter will automatically be invoked in the background and the file will open in Word.

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Dealing with spam or junk email in your Inbox is a waste of time. If you run a small business the time wasted identifying and deleting email can add up over weeks or months whether you are a one-person or multi-person team. Here are a couple of ways to reduce the amount of spam that you receive in your email Inbox.

First, make sure that your email provider’s email filtering feature is turned on. Almost every email provider has such a feature, but many of them are not very capable.

Next, you might consider setting up your own spam filtering application. For Mac users, I recommend SpamSieve. You can try it and if you find it effective then buy it for $30. It works with the most common email client applications including Mail, Entourage, Eudora and Thunderbird. This is a good solution for individuals.

If you own your own domain name and have a small workgroup then you might consider signing up for a email filtering service such as Big Mountain Hosting’s MailFoundry spam filtering service. In order to set this up you need to modify the MX (mail exchange) record within your DNS (domain name system) records. Specifically, you set your MX record to deliver all incoming email to the email filtering server. The server then scans all email messages and delivers legitimate email messages to your Inbox. All email messages that were identified as spam or contain a virus are put into a quarantine. You then receive one email that lists all quarantined messages. If a legitimate email was quarantined then you can  click a button to release the message from its quarantine and have it delivered to your Inbox.
I use Big Mountain’s spam filerting server and find it highly effective. Their plans start at $10/month for up to 5 users. They have tiered pricing for larger groups of users.

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Here’s a list of features in Apple’s Mail application which I use regularly and people appreciate when I point them out.

1. Connection Doctor – Go to the Window menu and select Connection Doctor. A small separate window will appear. It quickly tests all of your incoming and outgoing connections to your mail servers. After a few seconds you should see green dots to the left of each item listed. If you see yellow or red dots then there’s a problem. If you’re having problem sending or receiving email then open Connection Doctor. It might give you some information that helps you to figure out where the problem is. If you see green dots next to all items and you still can’t send a particular email message then it’s time to look for typos on the recipient’s email address.

2. Send Again – To use this feature just click on a message in your Sent mail folder or any other mail folder, for that matter and then select Send Again from the Message menu. I use this feature when I want to send the same email message to different people but I want to address the message individually to each of them. This feature is also handy if I send a message and immediately remember that I forgot to include a piece of information. I’ll select the message I just sent from the Sent folder and add the missing information at the top of the message.

3. Remove Attachments – To use this feature select one or multiple messages and then select Remove Attachments from the Message menu. One can use this feature to quickly stip email messages of all attachments while preserving the message itself. This is useful for housekeeping purposes. Most people don’t need to hold onto the attachments for messages that they sent since that document is typically saved elsewhere on your hard drive.

4. QuickLook – This feature requires that you have Mac OS X version 10.5 or 10.6 installed. As you may know, QuickLook is feature of the Finder. Click on a file in the Finder and press the Space Bar key. OS X will show you a quick preview of the contents of the document. QuickLook doesn’t work with every type of document but it works with the most common types of files such as jpeg images, PDF files and files made with Word, Excel, Pages and Numbers. Apple built QuickLook into Mail. If you have an email message with an attachment look for the QuickLook button near the Attachments line of the email’s header information. It’s just a quick way to look at the attachment.

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As expected, in January Apple announced their first tablet computer. They call it the iPad. What is the iPad able to do and how is it innovative compared to PC tablets?

The iPad is a new class of device at least for Mac users. It’s a tablet computer and it fits somewhere in between a smartphone and a laptop. PC manufacturers have made tablets for over a half dozen years. These tablets typically required users to use a stylus or an on-screen keyboard for input and never sold well since they cost as much or more than a comparable laptop. The iPad differs from these PC tablets in two obvious ways. The iPad is a touch-input device and it costs less than a Mac laptop. The price range for iPads is $499 to $829 depending upon features and storage capacity. One primarily uses finger gestures and an on-screen keyboard to control the iPad.

The iPad is a versatile device that could replace a laptop for some users. This initial model’s strengths are in entertainment. It’s oriented towards consuming data not producing data. It’s capable of letting you listen to music, view photos and watch movies like an iPod and read books like a Kindle. It also has the ability to send and receive email messages and view web pages like an iPhone or a laptop. It also lets you view web sites and access your email. To increase typing speeds one can buy a special full-size external keyboard or use an external bluetooth keyboard. For a thorough description of what the iPad can and can not do, please refer to this MacInTouch article.

There are some important limitations and omissions based on the information that Apple has currently released about the iPad. While it’ll let you view and compose email messages, it’s unclear if you’ll be able to edit attachments. Apple has not indicated that it’ll be able to print. Curiously, it does not include a camera though it seems likely that this’ll be adding in the future.

The iPad’s ability to handle Word and Excel documents is unclear. Not surprisingly Microsoft has not had time to develop versions of Word and Excel for the iPad. Apple has announced special iPad versions of Pages and Numbers but how versatile they’ll be remains to be seen. It’s unknown if they’ll be able to open and edit Word and Excel files.

Over the coming years the iPad will evolve and eventually could become a suitable replacement for a laptop for business users if these shortcomings are addressed but currently it only seems that it’ll replace a laptop for more casual users whose primary uses for a laptop are personal email, viewing web pages and handling music, photos and movies.

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Do you have occasional shredding needs that are too much for the shredder that you have in your office or at home? If so, you might like to know about Datasite’s residential shredding services This is an excellent service for Puget Sound small office and home office customers.

[Update Nov 2010: Sip & Ship offers a drop off shredding service. They charge $1 per pound of paper or $10 per bankers box. You can drop off paper at either their Ballard or Greenwood location. The shredding is done at their Greenwood location. I've been a long-time user of Sip & Ship's services which I discuss in this Tech Tip.]

[Update Jan 2011: I recently learned that most OfficeMax stores offer a drop off shredding service. A press release shows that OfficeMax teamed up with Shred-It to offer this service about a year ago. In my local OfficeMax store I was told that they charge $.59 per pound of paper. You can drop off paper and they'll store it in a secure storage bin. A truck visits their store weekly to pick up the contents of the storage box and hauls it to Shred-It's shredding facility. For small shredding jobs this is the best value I've found. For larger shredding jobs DataSite's drop-off residential shredding service is an even better value.]

Below are some excerpts from their web site that were current as of the early 2010.

DataSite’s Residential Shredding Service meets the needs of the self-employed as well as serving the occasional shredding needs of any resident of the King – Snohomish County area. We recommend shredding your unnecessary bank statements, invoices, utility bills and miscellaneous private information. Clients collect information in a container either provided by DataSite or one of their own choosing.

Our customers may either drop off the collected material at one of two DataSite facilities, or schedule an on-site shredding appointment.

How much does it cost?

For drop-off service there is a minimum charge of $30.00. This is for up to 7 standard letter legal size records boxes (about the size of a copier paper box) or the equivalent.  Additional boxes are charged at $4.00 per box with additional discounts applied for larger volumes.

Document Destruction Boxes DataSite’s new Document Destruction Boxes may be purchased 3 for $25.00.  This includes the shredding once the containers are full.

Once they’re filled simply drop them off at DataSite for shredding.

On-site shredding is available with a minimum service charge of $75.00.

Where are you located?

DataSite has two convenient drop-off locations

Seattle: 9401 Aurora Ave North

Bellevue: 12000 N.E. 8th, Lower Level

How does it work?

Simply bring your sensitive materials to a DataSite facility and come into the office.  A DataSite staff member will bring a mobile locking tote to your vehicle or for larger volumes a pallet.  We do all the heavy lifting.  These materials are staged for shredding later in the day.  You will be issued a Certificate of Destruction for your records.

Do I have to remove staples and paper clips?  Can you destroy computer media?

No – our state of the art shredding equipment handles staples and paper clips with ease.  Report covers, hard bound books and even x-rays are no problem.

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This post builds upon the information that I presented in my last blog entry about how to securely store personal information on your Mac. A disk image file is a special kind of file. When a disk image file is opened it makes the computer think that an actual disk, like a CD, has been physically inserted into the computer. Thus, a disk image file, or more simply a disk image, can be thought of as a virtual disk.

How to create and use a password-protected (encrypted) disk image in Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6

1. Go to your Applications folder and open the Utilities folder.

2. Open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/).

3. Click the “New Image” button, or choose New > Blank Disk Image from the Disk Utility File menu.

• Enter a name for your disk image file in the Save As field

• Change the save destination to either your Documents folder or your Desktop, whichever you prefer.

• Set Volume Name set to “Virtual Disk” (In 10.6 the field is called “Name”, not “Volume Name”)

• Select a Volume Size for the image file. If you’re just going to store a few Word or Excel files in the disk image then 10 or 20 MB should be large enough. (In OS X 10.6 40 MB is the smallest you can select.) You can choose any size you’d like by selecting “Custom” at the bottom. If you ever fill your disk image you can always create a larger one and move the files from the smaller disk image to the larger one.

• Leave the volume format set to “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” (In 10.6 the field is called “Format”, not “Volume Format”)

• Leave “Partitions” set to “No partition map”

• Leave the Image Format set to “read/write disk image”

• Set Encryption to “128-bit AES” if your Mac uses Mac OS X 10.4. Choose “256-bit AES” if your Mac uses Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6

Warning: If you forget the password to your encrypted disk image, your data will be irretrievably lost so please write down your password on a piece of paper. This is just a precautionary measure.

• Click the Create button.

• Important: In this next step you’ll need to first uncheck “Remember password (add to keychain)” then twice enter a strong password. This password is used to secure your disk image.  [By "strong password," I mean one this is long and contains a mix of letter, numbers, odd capitalization and punctuation marks or at least most of these features. For example, 1%milKisgooDforyoU is a strong password.]

• Click OK

4. The disk image file will be created and then it’ll be opened automatically.

5. Look at your Desktop you should see an icon named Virtual Disk. This is what appears whenever your disk image is opened. Copy a file into this Virtual Disk. Notice that the file will automatically be copied when you put it in the Virtual Disk. The original file will remain where it is so you’ll probably want to put it into the Trash in a couple of days after you’re sure you understand how your new disk image works.

6. Close Virtual Disk by dragging its icon to the Trash, which will eject this virtual or fake disk.

7. Now, locate your disk image file. (It’s in the location that you selected in step 3, second bullet). Double-click your disk image file. Enter your password when prompted and then click the “OK” button. You should now see the icon for Virtual Disk again. Open it and you’ll see the file that you copied into it.

8. Now that you know how to use your disk image you can copy more files into it and you can delete the originals.

9. Don’t leave your Virtual Disk on the Desktop all day long. That defeats the added security. Only open it when you need it and then close it when you’re done by dragging its icon to the Trash icon on your Dock.

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Do you have personal or sensitive information about yourself or your clients on your Mac? Such as credit card numbers or passwords? If so, I recommend storing this information in a special kind of file known as an encrypted disk image. I store a list of my own passwords and other sensitive information in such a file on my Mac laptop. This file is thus always readily available while still being inaccessible by others even if my laptop were stolen.

Without getting very technical, disk images were invented as a way to make a backup copy of a disk such as a floppy or CD, but other uses have emerged over time. Mac OS X lets you create a blank disk image that can be thought of as an empty folder. Additionally, this file can be encrypted which requires a password when you open it. Thus, in an over-simplified way, you can think of an encrypted disk image as a password-protected folder.

Read my next blog post for step-by-step instructions on how to create and use an encrypted disk image on your Mac.

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Screen snapshots are pictures of a portion of the screen. Being able to take a screen snapshot can be very useful. I typically use this feature several times each day. Here are some reasons why I commonly take a screen snapshot:

• To capture the exact text of an error message that appears on my screen.
• To be able to print something that is not easily printed.
• To capture a part of the screen so I can send it as an email attachment, often in a set of step-by-step instructions. A picture is worth a thousand words.

I’m going to highlight the two most common ways that I take a screen snapshot. For a complete list of ways read this page. Simultaneously, hold down the Command key (aka Apple key), Shift key and the 4 key. The cursor will change from the arrow to an icon of a crosshair. Position the crosshair in the upper left corner of what you want to capture. Then click and drag to the lower right corner. Release when the entire desired area of the screen is selected. When you release the snapshot will be taken and automatically saved to the Desktop. In Mac OS X version 10.6 the file will be named “Snapshot” followed by a date and time stamp. In older versions of Mac OS X the file will be named Picture 1. Subsequent snapshots will be named Picture 2, Picture 3 and so forth.

You can rename the snapshots. You can double-click it to open it and print it. You can move yours snapshots into folders to keep them organized.

Sometimes, I don’t want to save a copy of the snapshot as a file on my Mac. Instead, I just want to capture something on my screen and immediately paste it into an email or some other document. In this case, I simultaneously hold down the Control key as well as Command, Shift and 4. I then position the crosshair the same way to capture the snapshot. However, in this situation the snapshot is saved to the Mac’s invisible “clipboard”. Now, I can go to an email message or a Word file and use the Paste command to paste the snapshot.

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Do you access your email account from multiple computers? Have you added a smartphone into the mix as well? If so, you should be aware of IMAP. IMAP-enabled email accounts offers better email handling than old-fashioned POP email accounts.

Both POP and IMAP are communication methods used between email programs, like Apple’s Mail or Microsoft’s Entourage, and an email server. POP has been around for many many years. It works just fine but it’s model is out-dated. IMAP was developed around the realization that people increasingly want to check their mail from multiple computers (or cell phones or whatever). Thus, some or all of your email is stored on the server, not on just one computer. Then you can setup say, a home computer, a work computer and a smart phone to all access (view) that email (using IMAP). What you’ll see in your Inbox on each of those computers is the same. You’ll see the same list of messages on each computer plus you’ll see which messages are “new” or have the “replied to” mark next to them. If you delete a message from one computer, it’ll be deleted from the server then subsequently from each of the other computers when those computers next talk to the mail server.  In other words your Inbox stays synchronized across mulitple computers. This same type of synchronization can be setup for other mail folders like Drafts, Sent, Trash as well as saved messages. IMAP is very useful. Personally, I think everybody should be using IMAP, even if you’re only using one computer currently. If you’re interested in using IMAP you could contact your email provider. Not all email providers offer IMAP service. Or, if they do offer it they sometimes charge more since IMAP requires increased storage space on the server and increases the server’s workload.

There is a common myth that if one uses IMAP that email messages ONLY reside on the mail server. This is not true. Each computer will store it’s own local copy of email messages on its hard drive. This way, you can read or review email messages even if you don’t have Internet access such as while on a train or plane.

This recent article in TidBITS gives some more detail about IMAP and its features. You don’t have to read the entire article which covers other topics as well; just a few paragraphs about how IMAP works.

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It seems pretty likely that Apple will be releasing a tablet computer in 2010 since there has been a wide range of articles in the past few months that speculate about such a device. Tablet computers can be thought of as small, lightweight laptops without a traditional keyboard. Instead the user typically interacts with the computer via a touchscreen or a stylus. Tablet computers have been around, in the world of Windows-based computers, for the past half dozen years but they have never experienced wide-appeal.

Apple has scheduled a media event for January 26th. It is widely suspected that Apple will announce their new tablet computer though it won’t likely start to ship until a few months from then. Here’s a link to a story that summarizes the breadth of speculation written in the past months about Apple’s tablet computer. I’m more interested in knowing what Apple’s tablet will be able to do and how Apple intends to innovate tablet computers to make them mainstream devices. This article has some interesting thoughts about this. Check it out.

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