MacReading: How Much Is Too Much, or Not Enough?
Have you been to our My Mac chat sessions, on Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, located at http://www.worldwithoutborders.com We have a direct link from our https://www.mymac.com home page. The moderated conversations are lively and interesting. If you are planning to join in, make sure you are registered in advance, for free, with Java enabled in your browser.
What you will find is a host, a guest, and a bunch of participants. The hour really flies, and you can then take part in an extensive range of other World Without Borders chats.
During one recent session, the group started discussing the current Macintosh e-zines. I asked for some personal recommendations, and two of my colleagues on the magazine provided informed opinions.
Beth Lock, our Babe in Boyland, ranked and rated her favorites:
http://www.mackido.com is one of the first sites I stumbled into. David Every is extremely knowledgeable, and he archives his tutorials very well. He also has some fairly nice humor. His site is easy to navigate. I found his URL from my involvement in World Without Borders. Rated A-1
http://www.everymac.com is a good one, especially their links page. That is where I first found my Macintosh sites many months ago. At that time, they were one of the finest links pages around. Links page rated A-1
http://www.applelinks.com is my personal browser home page. Do I need to rate my home page?
http://www.macopinion.com has excellent commentary. I don’t always agree, but I like the elegance of the writers. Rated A++
http://www.macmarines.com because I never could resist a geek in uniform. G No rating; it’s too embarrassing
https://www.mymac.com Hands down, the best e-zine on the net. I’m not being partial here, of course.
That’s all I read. Oh, I follow the occasional URL that friends send me in email, but these are truly the exceptional Mac sites. Applelinks will lead you to the best of the news each day.
Thanks, Beth.
Before I log onto the Web and look up those URLs, let’s see what Mr. Mac Amalgamation, Bob McCormick, has to say on the subject:
When I got onto the net in ’97, I did some searching and pretty soon I found some rumor sites. MacOS Rumors, Reality, and MacInsider were my favorite rumor sites. Sadly, some of those sites are now either gone or transformed into something else.
I also visited MacHome and MacAddict. MacHome was a bit beneath me, while MacAddict was just too weird. But I tended to read the reviews.
My other favorites were MacWeek, MacWorld, MacInTouch, As the Apple Turns, and whatever I could scare up on MacSurfer.com
Today what do I read? Well, mostly the following, ranked numerically:
MacWeek (7), MacOS Rumors (7.5), AppleInsider (7), As the Apple Turns (8), PowerBook Zone (9.5), and whatever I find interesting on MacSurfer.com (10). For news, I tend to turn to MacCentral (6), AppleLinks (6) and Insanely-Great (5). But not all that often. I don’t find anything usually that original there. I tend to stick with MacSurfer.
I had subscriptions to the print version of MacUser (over my head usually) and MacWorld. I let MacUser lapse, then MacWorld as it just wasn’t very entertaining. But I found the writing to be good. I would usually read it cover to cover. Drooling over the ads for the new CHRP systems, but sadly they were killed.
When I head about My Mac Chats on the World Without Borders site, I started reading My Mac magazine. I thought I had heard of them all. But this was one cool magazine. It was right where I was at, not over my head and not beneath my experience. I had lots to choose from and found it very entertaining. Then Tim asked me to write for it. Wow! A dream come true.
About the only web-only magazine that compares to us, in my opinion, would be MacWeek. And since they killed their plan to offer a PDF download, we seem to stand alone. “1984” and About this Particular Mac and MacWizards are, I believe, the only ones that offer downloads. Ironically I never did get into those three, so I can’t rate them.
Very interesting, Bob.
As for me, I still consider TidBITS http://www.tidbits.com my first and best choice for well-written and researched articles, and I occasionally go to MacCentral when I want to be current on late breaking events. VersionTracker http://www.versiontracker is indispensable for current software update links, and MacFixIt http://www.macfixit.com is the best-ever troubleshooting URL.
What are YOUR preferred sites for Macintosh views and news?
Rebound: More Informed Commentary from Nemo’s Loyal Readers
Two months ago we devoted the entire Nemo Memo to reader responses, primarily on the subject of John’s infamous “$3,000 iMac.” Let’s pick up the story, with additional correspondence.
Marc thinks I am being unrealistic, and joins the many respondents who insist I should skip the iMac altogether.
Nemo,
I think you’re a little off base, because people that buy the iMac are not going to spend 800 bucks for a printer (they aren’t going to be “tired of inkjets”) and I’m guessing they aren’t going to spend 200 dollars on a keyboard and mouse combo. I recently purchased a blue & white G3 and found a two button mouse with scroll wheel for $20. I don’t know where you shop. I doubt very highly that iMac users are going to be looking for a hub, either.
Personally, I think you would be much happier with a tower. With the integrated Zip (which is extremely fast due to the ATAPI connection versus USB), and the ability to upgrade and have more than one internal hard drive (I have two hard drives already) the tower was the only way to go. The iMac is for the novice who just wants to surf and play. However I think the 64MB of RAM is realistic.
BTW, I have been living happily for 4 months without a floppy. I don’t miss it, period. Floppies are just too slow and unreliable. Everyone that I do business with has a Zip drive.
Final note: how are you going to take this computer with you? You have more things to move than I do! I have a monitor and tower, keyboard, mouse, Jaz, and printer. Pretty simple move.
Enough of my raving. Take it easy, and don’t get me wrong. I am just writing this because I don’t think the majority of iMac users are going to have the same wants and desires as yourself, and if they do they should consider a tower.
Marc
+++++
My new pal Mike, the Cyberbites guy http://www.cyberbites.com, takes a long view, and sees the iMac as part of his overall network, as enumerated below.
Dear John,
I enjoyed meeting you in person. I look forward to seeing your articles on mymac.com. I had forgotten (shame!) My Mac — which I used to read religiously before it was a website, back when it was only distributed as a DOCMaker document. I’m delighted to see it is flourishing and, having just read your last 7 columns, wish to congratulate you on your contributions to My Mac!
(See: https://www.mymac.com/archives/sept_99/memo.shtml, for Mike’s original Cyberbites contribution.)
As a sidenote and in reply to your questions of June ’99 (on the $3k iMac), my partner, Barb, has an iMac. I use a souped up 7500 and we each have an ancient PB180c (hers now a dedicated fax server). The printer and the 7500 are on an AppleTalk/LocalTalk network and the iMac and 7500 are directly connected with a special $20 Ethernet cable (no hub).
Using LocalTalk Bridge and LaserWriter Bridge (freeware from Apple that translates Ethernet to LocalTalk) the iMac prints just fine on our older DataProducts laser printer through the 7500. The PBs, while not in direct communication with the 7500 (Ethernet/LocalTalk is either/or), are able to use the printer directly at any time without additional setup as they are part of the printer’s LocalTalk network.
Floppy drive? — the 7500 has one. Read or write floppy disk on the 7500, transfer to iMac via Ethernet (wicked fast) — we thought we’d need this a lot more than we do — we use it maybe twice a month.
Backup? — onto an APS DAT drive via the Ethernet network using Retrospect 4.x ( and *not* the network/client version method — just define the iMac’s HD as one of the volumes to backup from the 7500 and set a schedule).
Zip Drive? — 7500 has a SCSI Zip Drive — open iMac HD on 7500 desktop via Ethernet, drag files/folders from iMac onto icon of Zip disk mounted on 7500 — did I mention file copy/transfer via Ethernet is really fast?! While it is true that the iMac can’t see the Zip disk directly, we don’t need it often enough to create a problem. If and when we do, we’ll buy the USB Zip.
External HD Storage? — The iMac (which already has a 6 gig HFS+ volume) enjoys full access to the SCSI HDs connected to the 7500 via the Ethernet network.
Scanner? — the iMac came with a UMAX 1220U which works better than our old SCSI scanner did.
We did buy 64 megs of iMac RAM and I installed it (about as hard as installing RAM in an 8500 — too hard, really, but doable). The fax software that came with the iMac, FaxSTF, is horrible. We should bite the bullet and get GlobalVillage software for the iMac and someday we probably will.
Barb likes the iMac keyboard and says she types faster and more easily with it than the extended keyboards she has always used before. She doesn’t like mice, vastly preferring her old EMAC ADB trackball which doesn’t work with the iMac. She’ll probably get a MacAlly iBall, rather than an ADB/USB adapter.
I have to say — we love the iMac. It is really fast and exceeds our expectations. My experience suggests the most economical way to upgrade from your Performa is to buy whatever adapter the Performa needs to connect to the iMac via Ethernet and use your existing peripherals until time moves on and we can no longer live without FireWire and whatever technology supplants
the modem.
Mike
(Mike just sent me an update:)
In the original letter I mentioned buying GlobalFax for the iMac (we did and it’s great). The MacAlly iBall was very disappointing (sent back to try again) so I would change mention of it to “a USB trackball” lest others be led astray. Other than those minor issues I wholeheartedly agree with my earlier comments and in the interim we continue to be completely satisfied with the iMac — now that the higher horsepower versions are emerging and ease of RAM installation has been successfully addressed, I would upgrade my recommendation to an even stronger “BUY.”
Several months ago I discussed what I would do with several extra hours of computing time every day. Rob gave this suggestion.
Hi John.
May I recommend a little program that is just fantastic for hour five. I cut and paste links from various sources into “Linkpad” and when I have time run down the list. It works with IE and Nav and you just double-click the link to access the page in the appropriate browser.
I have no connection with Panic, but I think Linkpad is dead handy!
Cheers
Rob
I was curious about Rob’s involvement with the Macintosh, so I asked him for some additional personal information.
Hi again, John.
Hmm, a little background…. I’m a 30-year old Scot working in London, but originally from Aberdeen. I’m married (nearly 3 months!) to Jo.
I work in a drop-in health centre for Street Homeless people in south London and use Macs exclusively! I manage the Centre, and so I got to choose the hardware and software when we upgraded from 486/33 PC’s just over a year ago.
We managed to get some run-out Performa 6500/275’s and a 6200 and we use a IIfx as a print server for our Laserwriter. We’re using FM Pro 4 with some self-written databases for registering clients and their needs and also to keep us all using the same contact numbers for other organisations etc. Wordperfect 3.0 and Nisus 4.1 are our WP programs and we use Pagemaker 6 for printing out information for clients etc. We’re now entirely mac based!
I use a Q610 at home and have a Classic which is on loan to my mother-in-law!
Music and cars are my main interests outside of computers and I play in the band at my local church here in London.
Rob
I dedicate this issue of the Nemo Memo to the memory of my friend Gino.
In Memory of Gino Fortunato
(See: https://www.mymac.com/mymac/archives/jan_99/memo.shtml, for my previous article on Gino.)
Thanks, friends. Until next month!
John Nemerovski
nemo@mymac.com
Websites mentioned:
http://www.worldwithoutborders.com
https://www.mymac.com
http://www.mackido.com
http://www.everymac.com
http://www.applelinks.com
http://www.macopinion.com
http://www.macmarines.com
http://www.tidbits.com
http://www.versiontracker
http://www.macfixit.com
http://www.cyberbites.com
http://www.panic.com
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