Mac OS X Lion...

[Guest WyattEarp]

Hooked up a $40 wireless logitech mouse and keyboard to the Mac Pro which has been working fabulous ever since.

ha, i did the same thing, and bought a logitech pc mouse and a microsoft keyboard, and stuck the bluetooth mouse and keyboard back in the box. the pc mouse and keyboard work much better, i just need to figure out how to map the cd/dvd eject button onto one of the buttons on my keyboard.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

ha, i did the same thing, and bought a logitech pc mouse and a microsoft keyboard, and stuck the bluetooth mouse and keyboard back in the box. the pc mouse and keyboard work much better, i just need to figure out how to map the cd/dvd eject button onto one of the buttons on my keyboard.

Hi Wyatt

It OUGHT to work to press and hold the F12 key for a couple of seconds. Which also works to close the dvd tray if it is open.

[Guest WyattEarp]

Hi Wyatt

It OUGHT to work to press and hold the F12 key for a couple of seconds. Which also works to close the dvd tray if it is open.

thanks Lester, Worked great!!!

i dont have a dvd tray though, all I have is a slot on the side of the monitor, and oddly enough there is no eject button built into the monitor itself. one of the few things I don't like about this mac, and there's no button to just turn the display off, instead you have to go to your system preferences and adjust the power settings. but no matter, like it a lot better than any of my PC's I've had. far less issues.

Edited August 4, 2011 by WyattEarp

[Guest Lester Weevils]

thanks Lester, Worked great!!!

i dont have a dvd tray though, all I have is a slot on the side of the monitor, and oddly enough there is no eject button built into the monitor itself. one of the few things I don't like about this mac, and there's no button to just turn the display off, instead you have to go to your system preferences and adjust the power settings. but no matter, like it a lot better than any of my PC's I've had. far less issues.

Yes Apple makes good computers overall.

I've had good Apple keyboards and mice too. I got Apple fashionable clear plastic wired USB keyboard and mouse along with a Mac G4 back in the 1990's when USB keyboards and mice first took over from Apple ADB connectors. Those were so heavy duty that the keyboard only failed last year, and the mouse still works but isn't as ergonomic as modern mice.

Something Apple puters will never have as long as Steve Jobs is alive, that would be my most favorite feature-- A dedicated blinky LED for every drive bay in the system. IOW, on a Mac Pro there would be at least 6 little blinky LED's on the front.

Jobs thinks blinky drive LED's are too unfashionable, but I can't count the times that the Mac has been doing some very long task and I would have paid big money to know whether the process was just taking a long time or whether the process was hung and will never ever complete no matter how long I wait.

[TGO David]

I would have paid big money to know whether the process was just taking a long time or whether the process was hung and will never ever complete no matter how long I wait.

Disk LED Puts System Drive LED in Mac Menu Bar

[Guest WyattEarp]

If any of you MAC owners don't have this program for your MAC, I suggest you get it, because this thing cleaned up 1 GBe worth of space deleting unnecessary language files, and various other leftover files. This piece of software is worth every dollar.

Enjoy your clean Mac with just a few clicks! CleanMyMac

[Guest nicemac]

If any of you MAC owners don't have this program for your MAC, I suggest you get it, because this thing cleaned up 1 GBe worth of space deleting unnecessary language files, and various other leftover files. This piece of software is worth every dollar.

Enjoy your clean Mac with just a few clicks! CleanMyMac

Be careful using this with Abobe applications. Adobe puts thousands of files on your drive when you install Creative Suite (the ReadMe and Legal disclaimers) for dozens of languages, even if you only install English. If those files are missing, the Adobe Updater will fail. The tough part is that it will not give you a heads up and tell you why. It just fails with a generic error message.

Cleaning up localization files is great idea, but companies like Adobe make it dangerous and realistically, saving a GB or two these days is not that big of a deal. I mean a 1TB drive cost what, $50?

I remember paying 10x that for a 500MB drive and thought I got a deal…

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Disk LED Puts System Drive LED in Mac Menu Bar

Thanks David. Might try that.

Unix on a multi-core processor might work pretty well with a soft disk light nowadays.

I used to use such things years ago, but back then if the system got real busy and quit processing update events, then the soft disk light could quit updating, and those were the times when the disk light was most needed. That is why I've liked hardware lights better. But nowadays maybe a soft disk light is fine.

[Guest WyattEarp]

Be careful using this with Abobe applications. Adobe puts thousands of files on your drive when you install Creative Suite (the ReadMe and Legal disclaimers) for dozens of languages, even if you only install English. If those files are missing, the Adobe Updater will fail. The tough part is that it will not give you a heads up and tell you why. It just fails with a generic error message.

Cleaning up localization files is great idea, but companies like Adobe make it dangerous and realistically, saving a GB or two these days is not that big of a deal. I mean a 1TB drive cost what, $50?

I remember paying 10x that for a 500MB drive and thought I got a deal…

yeah, for my adobe programs i just turn the updater off. i have CS5, the latest and greatest, no need to update it, ill wait till CS6 or whatever comes out before I update again. Need to learn to use this version before I do any more updating.

overall this OS seems A LOT faster in everything, even loading web pages and surfing the net and downloads even seem a bit faster.

[Guest nicemac]

yeah, for my adobe programs i just turn the updater off. i have CS5, the latest and greatest, no need to update it, ill wait till CS6 or whatever comes out before I update again. Need to learn to use this version before I do any more updating.

overall this OS seems A LOT faster in everything, even loading web pages and surfing the net and downloads even seem a bit faster.

You know CS 5.5 has been out for several months? CS6 due in May…

[Guest WyattEarp]

oh yes I know, i'll wait to see what CS6 has though, if it's nothing big in terms of new features, i'll just keep what I have. the nice thing about being in college is I get access to all this wonderful software for free. I'm taking Intro to Digital Animation this semester (Autodesk Maya 2012), and 2 video production classes that will both utilize Final Cut Pro X. I am finally in the meat and potatoes of my major and starting to get into the really exciting classes. in the Spring I'll be learning Flash, Dreamweaver, advanced Photoshop (already took Still Digital Imaging) all kinds of good stuff. My major is Digital Media Communications.

Last semester was a real pain, because I had a laptop PC and a desktop PC and all my classes use MAC's, and every time I went to the lab, all the computers were full, so I ended up gettin' a 27" iMAC with an iCore 5 3.6 ghz, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HD, 1 GB Video Card, DVD/CD Drive for home. Now I'll be able to do what I can in class, and take the rest of it home and finish up in a timely manner (was struggling to stuff done on time due to limited lab times, as only 1 building on the entire campus has a MAC lab, there rest are all PC).

After I learn Maya, I'm going to begin learnign how to use Autodesk Automotive 2012 and Autodesk Alias 2012, and eventually AutoCAD. I have all the tutorials, but with school starting in a few weeks, won't have time to get into them a whole lot.

[Guest UberDuper]

thanks Lester, Worked great!!!

i dont have a dvd tray though, all I have is a slot on the side of the monitor, and oddly enough there is no eject button built into the monitor itself. one of the few things I don't like about this mac, and there's no button to just turn the display off, instead you have to go to your system preferences and adjust the power settings. but no matter, like it a lot better than any of my PC's I've had. far less issues.

Go into the preferences and set a "hot corner" to put the screen to sleep.

[Guest WyattEarp]

just an interesting feat I accomplished this weekend.

I was successfully able to load MAC OS X 10.6 on to my pc laptop, and it is very stable. just need to get my wireless internet working and get a workaround for my video chipset installed. Other than everything works except for the sleep feature. Shutdown, Restart all work. the screensaver will work better once I get the video chipset workaround figured out.

I have not decided if I will try to update or not. There is not much support or info out there for my latitude, so I may hold off for now, till more people try it and get things to work, and I've read when people start updating they become unstable, because of changes in the code of the OS X versions.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

That is neat, WyattEarp.

The last few versions of MacOS have continued to optimize screen drawing. Old programs that do a lot of screen drawing have to be continually updated at least somewhat to make sure that everything the programs draw make it to the screen.

Just thinking that a good MacOS video driver for your hardware would be pretty important for reliable performance.

[Guest WyattEarp]

i found the workaround, but I need to wait for something called a DSDT. there's a guy on another forum who is making one for me based on my specs. Once I have that, most of these issues will go away. my touchpad mouse will work, sleep will work, the video driver and the wifi will all work. once I get the DSDT and I run it in Terminal, I should be good to go.

once i got the correct version MAC OS X everything went rather smoothly. initially i tried to install using my oem disc from my iMAC but it was telling me no bueno amigo.

[Guest WyattEarp]

touchpad mouse is now working.

no sound

no wifi internet

no video card (monitor is in a 32 bit resolution state right now, but still needs the drivers to process video and flash stuff).

currently downloading a combo update to take me from 10.6 to 10.6.3. I've backed up to in Time Machine so if something happens I can restore to the last stable point. Once I successfully update to 10.6.3, I'll download the update to 10.6.6. once that's stable, then we can finally update to 10.7 Lion (i have my disc) and then I'm done, except getting the video card and sound work arounds fully functional.

Then I can start installing my regular software that I will use.

[Guest WyattEarp]

I now have mac osx 10.6.8 running on my dell laptop. Long story short, but I Friday night/Sat morning i had gotten to where i had successfully updated from 10.6 to 10.6.3 to 10.6.6. when I got to 10.6.6 i should have backed up my data like had previously done. When I tried to install 10.6.8 update, it crashed and I lost it all. Spent all day Sat trying to get back to where I was before and for some reason I couldn't get 10.6.3 update to work properly. Neighbor gave me 10.6.8 Full Retail for free, cause he already has 10.7 Lion Full Retail Gold Master, so I just installed this instead of doing all that updating, and it went off without a hitch.

Just gotta get my audio, wifi and mouse touchpad working again and I'll be set.

Edited August 21, 2011 by WyattEarp