Duplicate Programs in User Folder

The installation of Snow Leopard prompted me to do something semi-dangerous — delete a bunch of duplicate programs.

These duplicate programs resided in my “Users” folder under the folder “Adam” (the other folder is “shared”).  Because I have this inane trust in Apple, I assumed that these programs were supposed to be there and that they were not in fact true duplicates.  I thought that they were just a link to the main file.

I was wrong.

Snow Leopard made me look at my old Mac programs, which I thought would have been deleted during Snow Leopard installation.  The old Mac programs were not deleted.  I copied to new Snow Leopard Mac program version into my “Apple” folder.

I then looked at the “user –> Adam” folder.  All the programs in that file were the older (sometimes much older) version of the most recent version of a given program.  The most up-to-date version of the program resided in my “Application” folder.

I have no idea how these programs came to reside in this location.  I never directed them to install here.  My guess is that they installed in this location at the same time of the original program installation.  As I updated the file that also resided in the “application folder” these files did not change or update.  My assumption (giving Apple the benefit of the doubt) is that these files reside here as a backup in case your main application version becomes corrupted somehow.  This is smart except for one problem — if you do a spotlight search for a program, it is not clear which version is the updated one and you may end up using the older one.  Apple should delineate the the backup file as such.  Of course, this is only speculation.  Maybe this is something that is wrong with my machine.

With that said, I have Time Machine so I deleted away.  I deleted 90% of the programs (about 80 files).  I recovered about 3 gigs of space.  My computer is still running fine without any issues (yet). If you are worried about doing this, don’t worry too much.  No problems here thus far.

Next time I install a file, I will check to see if it copies to the “user –> Adam” folder.

Has anyone else seen this occur?  Is this normal?  Is there a way to turn this off?

Apple Snow Leopard

My Macbook Pro has a horribly small hard drive — 120gb.  With Windows Vista taking up 32 gigs, I was not left with much.  With some music and a bunch of random applications, I was left with little extra space.  As of last week, I had about 3gigs of free space.

When Snow Leopard, the new operating system from Apple, was announced, I was curious.  I am a tech guy so new OS’s interest me.  However, I am not usually one to jump at version 1 of most products.

Snow Leopard promised something that I could not pass up — more free space on my hard drive (8 gigs was promised).  I pre-ordered Snow Leopard via Amazon.  Choosing free super saver shipping, Amazon took exactly 14 days to deliver my item.  Super Saver shipping is never usually that slow (although they claim it could take 10 business days and it did).

I immediately installed Snow Leopard.  My main goal: free up hard drive space.  The installation requires 5 free gigs.  I found some files to move to my external backup drive and had 5.15 free gigs.  Installation proceeded and took a little over an hour.

At the end — 18.5 free gigs.  In other words, Snow Leopard gave me back ~13.5 gigs.  Thank you, Apple.  This one improvement is huge.  [If only MS was promising the same with Windows 7.  My Windows Vista partition is completely out of space -- only 32 megs of space free, seriously].

With a few days of light use, I have only found one major problem with Snow Leopard.  It installed new versions of many the main Mac programs such as Quicktime and iChat.  However, it did not delete the older versions.  This may be due to the fact that I have the older versions in folders other than the “Application” folder.  Either way, I am about to delete the older programs and hope it does not some how corrupt the newer programs (which are clearly using data from the older programs).  Wish me luck.

Side note: my computer seems to run at about the same speed as before.  No changes there but the free gigs are huge.

Slow internet and the culprit – Entourage

Brief summary – entourage slowed down my internet and I could not find a post about this anywhere online.  I hope this helps.  If you don’t want to read the story, scroll to the bottom.

Over the past week, for a reason unbeknownst to me, my internet slowed to a crawl.  By slowed to a crawl, I meant that speedtest.net was showing 999 ping and approximately 200kbps up and 20kbps down — i.e. my Internet was nearly unusable.

I should note that this occurred just after I lectured my parents on the slowly dying need for any specific OS such as Windows Vista or Mac OSX.  I told them that the OS of the future was a web browser and all one would need was access to the an internet connection.  Then my internet…broke.

My first reaction — blame Comcast (my internet provider).  I recently moved and the place where I was using internet has notoriously terrible service.  At my old place, my internet (also from Comcast) was extremely fast and worked without major issues.  My new place — terrible.  I called Comcast cust support and the rep did a few checks and said that I was achieiving 75% data packet loss.  He sounded impressed and admitted that this was “unacceptable.”  I couldn’t agree more.  A technician is on the way.

I now realize that my knee-jerk “blame it on comcast” reaction might have been just that — knee jerk.  I am now at my parent’s place for the holidays.  I started up my computer here and after about 30 seconds, the internet speed dropped from acceptable but not great 1.5Mbps speeds  with 299 ping to 999 ping and the same slow speeds I had at home.  My parent’s confirmed that their internet usually worked well and this new “speed” was not common.

Could my computer somehow be corrupting an internet connection?  Personally, I have never heard of such a thing occurring.  Unless a person was using ungodly amounts of down and upstream data, they should never experience dramatic drops in speed. However, I was experiencing just that epidemic and my computer was clearly somehow at fault (the moment I shut down my computer was the same moment that my parent’s internet sped right back up).   Whoa…stop the presses.  What was going on?

I did a few searches and decided that I had one of three problems: 1. major spyware, 2. my computer was part of a botnet, 3. my computer was doing something that it should not.  Since I have a Mac and keep everything password protected, I felt fairly confident that number 1 was not too realistic.    I dont know much about #2  but thought that it could be possible (although the Mac thing made me wary).  #3 was the most likely.

Unfortunately, I consider myself fairly tech savvy.  I keep my computer clean.  I maintain it (and everyone else’s computers & technological gadgets).  What could be the culprit?

Like any sleuth, I set out to find the problem.  I ran Applejack to clean up everything (caches, etc).  I went through every process in the activity monitor to make sure I knew what it did.  Unfortunately, the problem persisted.

Next step, trial and error with my programs.  Which two do I use most often?  1. Firefox, 2. Entourage.  They usually run all the time, at the same time.  I turned on FF.  Speed was good.  I turned off FF and turned on Entourage.  Speed dropped — FAST.

Success [sort of] — problem identified.  Somehow and for some reason, Entourage was slow my internet to a snail’s pace.  My internet was slow.

Fix — my Entourage has two email accounts — 1. gmail, 2. hotmail.  Gmail was storing thousands of my messages on my hard drive.  I liked my set up even though it took up a lot of disk space.  I was also desperate to fix the problem.  I didnt need those messages on my hard drive.  I did need fast (i.e. usable) internet.

For those who have yet to do this — IN ENTOURAGE, LOCK YOUR SETTINGS TO SAVE ALL THE EMAILS IN THE GMAIL FOLDERS AND NOT LOCALLY.  To do this, go to entourage, account settings, choose gmail, go to the advanced tab, for all of the special folders, choose the [Gmail] folder.  Do the same for the deleted items folder.

My internet is now fast[er] and usable.  My hard drive has a lot more space.  Problem, thankfully, solved.

What happens when Apple is no longer cool?

With the launch of the new iPhone rapibly approaching, a thought has popped into my head — what happens to Apple when they are no longer as cool or counter-culture as they used to be?  Will its legions of hardcore fans, the ones who stuck by Apple through all of those tough years (and the new people who are joining the train now), want to continue to eat every scrap Apple throws their way without complaint?

People are lining up throughout the world to be the first to get their hands on the new iPhone.  From everything I have read, it is a great phone but if you already have an iPhone version 1, version 2 isnt so much better.  The most important part of this launch is the App Store and that is available on iPhone 1, as well as 2. Why are people lining up?  Why so much hype (in every newspaper in the world)?  Because it is Apple.  What happens when they stop being the golden Apple?

I loved my Apple when it was only one of a few around town.  I was part of the Apple crew and I bonded with people over my Mac.  Sure, it is a great computer with great software but it stood out because it was an Apple.  Heck, just today someone asked me questions about it and whether they should buy one.  This person came to me because he saw I had a Mac.  I can’t imagine someone doing the same if I was using a Dell.  My problem was this — I didn’t want to tell him to buy a Mac.  I wanted to say, “no, dont buy a Mac.”  I didn’t want the people not already in the Apple group to join.  I wanted my Mac to be exclusive.

Apple no longer is exclusive.  It has gone mainstream.  I still love my Mac but it is no longer the same sort of love and devotion that I used to have for it.  “Everyone” has a Mac.  It simply is not special.  Will this hurt or help Apple’s business?  What happens when Apple’s every move is not as closely tracked and people don’t care.  I don’t see people lining up for any other product launches (except video game systems and that only happens once every five or so years).

Too many apples too much of the time makes one sick of Apples.

Why Dell, HP and the other PC manufacturers are scared

In the past week, there have been a slew of articles discussing the huge growth in Apple’s share of the overall computer market.  One article discussed how nearly 8% of computers now in use are Apples, which is a nearly 32% jump in a year and another article here.  Apple’s notebook sales jumped 61% in a year.  Another article discussed how 14% of all new computers sold are Apple (cant find the link).

To add to this growth, a number of articles have discussed the iPhone halo effect (similar to the iPod halo effect).  The big difference this time around — the iPhone does much more and is a more important part of people’s live than any iPod ever was.  If you use and iPhone and love it, buying a Mac running on similar software makes sense.  Check out some discussions/articles, here, and here.  Apple has seen a dramatic rise in sales of Macs but the interest in the iPhone far dwarfs that of Macs.   Add the halo effect plus an unprecedented level of interest in the iPhone and you have huge potential Mac growth.

Of course none of this would be possible without the help of Microsoft.  Vista’s growth is huge but it started from zeo and is in the range of 250% growth year or year.  However, that growth happens because people are not nearly as willing to switch to a new computer OS as they are to make the move from a regular cell phone to a smartphone.  A computer is already an integral part of people’s lives and they are rightfully scared of making any big changes (especially when most folks fear computers and any minor computer change).  Making the move to a smartphone is less frightening than moving to a new computer system.

Vista, as anyone who has tried it knows, is not the revolution that Microsoft promised.  It is, at best, adequate.  Whenever I turn on parallels or bootcamp, I cringe in fear of something freezing.  Components still do not work and drivers are not out.  Vista forced me to return to Apple after a near 10 year separation and anecdotal evidence shows that it is making many people do the same.

However, to return to the title of this post, Dell, HP and the other PC manufacturers are scared.  Apple sales are growing and, with the iPhone effect + Vista, they are likely to continue to grow for the foreseeable future (Windows 7.0 might change this but it is too far away to discuss here).

Why are they scared?  Apple has one thing that those PC manufacturers do not and that they can never reproduce — Apple’s OS Leopard.  Dell, HP and the others can build the best computers in the world but Apple will not allow them to run Leopard on those machines.  Those machines are stuck with Vista (or XP).  As the iPhone, Leopard & Vista have shown, people are drawn to stable software on quality hardware.  Apple has both of these things while Dell and the others only have one.  Apple’s growth can continue unabated while Dell and the other PC guys will decline and they do nothing to stop it. With an enterprise based iPhone coming down the pipe, a less virus prone & crash prone OS, and with consumers snapping up Apple’s for their homes, company’s are going to start to make the switch (as they already have).  When this switch begins to happen in full, Apple will begin to hit at the jugular of PC/Vista sales.

The PC manufacturers are tied to a now sinking (or at least leaking) ship of Vista.  If I were them, I would be scared…

Installing RAM on a Macbook Pro

When I bought my computer, it came with 2GB of RAM. I like speed and hate waiting for my computer to do something. More RAM = faster computer = happier Adam.

Upgrading from 2GB to 4GB of RAM, if done through Apple, costs $400. Buying more RAM on Newegg costs approximately $75 (with free 3 day shipping!). For the math challenged, that is a difference of $325.

For some, that extra $325 is worth paying. Apple installs the memory for you without any hassle or worry on your part.

I am here to tell you that you should not worry. It took me 15 minutes to install my new RAM in my Macbook Pro. 15 minutes! I bought 2 2GB DIMMs of DDR2 667mhz memory.

Here is a brief tutorial of what to do:

1. Shut down your computer

2. Turn it over

3. Take out the battery

4. Remove the three tiny screws that you see

5. Take off the metal case that was held down by those screws

6. Remove your current RAM as shown by the picture next to the RAM

7. Put in your new RAM

8. Close everything back up, replace your battery, turn on your computer. Your MBP will automatically detect the new memory.

Total time = 15 minutes.

If my brief tutorial sounds too simplistic, check out this video by Chris Pirillo:

Apple tablet computer and/or internet tablet or cloud computer

I want an iPod Touch with a 12-14 inch screen and the width of a Macbook Air.  I want to cradle my computer in my hand or lap and read it like a book.  I don’t want to use a mouse or keyboard unless absolutely necessary.  My fingers work just fine.

The majority of my life is centered around the internet.  A powerful computer (like my Macbook Pro) is great for a few specialized tasks that really push it (which I personally enjoy doing to hardware).  However, a huge percentage (90% or more) of the time I spend sitting in front of the computer is spent online.  My email is held on some magic google server.  My news comes from websites, I can do everything with my pictures online, and I can track my friend’s lives online, and I can write documents, create spreadsheets and presentations online.  I don’t need a strong processor.

What I need is a strong internet connection.

I don’t care who makes this device (and sorry, Nokia, but your N800 does not cut it.  I have used it and it misses the mark).  I have a feeling this device will come from Apple.  The phone manufacturers couldn’t produce an iPhone and computer makers still can’t make a system that is as quiet, cool, or small as my Macbook Pro (if judged by the same techical specs).

I’m looking to the future…

Macbook/Macbook Pro update

Damn my Mac envy. Apple just came out with new versions of the Macbook and Macbook Pro. Updated processor, graphics, HD, and multi-touch trackpad all for the same price I paid 4 months ago. At least they didn’t change the aesthetics.

I love the relentless march of technology. Niiiice.

Finally played with Dell’s M1330

My friend just bought a Dell XPS M1330. As follower’s of this blog know, this computer was one of my top choices to replace my old ABS. I ended up buying a Macbook Pro. I am glad that I did.

Why did I like the M1330? The computer was small and light but powerful. It had a discrete graphics card, which was a must. Also, at the time I was looking, it was slightly cheaper than a Macbook Pro. Now, it is much cheaper and a MBP. I think my friend paid around $1,200 for a system with all the trimmings. That compares to about $1,800 for a MBP with a student discount included.

If you compare the two computers based solely on hardware/price, the Dell wins. Aesthetically, it is a draw. So why am I so happy that I bought a MBP instead of the M1330? The answer is simple — my friend’s M1330 is loud, hot and it vibrates (when only running Vista and IE). My MBP is essentially silent and never shakes even when running multiple programs.

I have a pet peeve with noisy computers. There is no reason why a computer’s fan should run unless intense programs are running. The average program is not intense. HD accessing should be limited. The heat, noise, and vibration of the M1330 is probably due to both the construction/engineering inside the M1330 and the software it is running, namely Windows Vista (although note, Vista on my Mac runs with only moderate heat/HD accessing issues).

The Macbook Pro wins this battle, at least for me. Had I bought an M1330 and it ran as hot, loud, with as many vibrations as my friends’, then I would have returned it immediately.

Dear Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

I hate you. I hate you because you should have had me. I should have been one of your customers. I wanted to be one of your customers. If you are confused, let me explain.

Ten years ago, I bought a brand new Power Computing Mac clone. It was a nice computer. Apple was the way to go for a wannabe techie kid in ‘94 whose parents wouldn’t spring for an actual Mac. The computer worked well but I ended up hating it. The main reason was that I enjoy playing around with programs and the Mac platform didn’t have many. Plus, all the best games came out for the PC first and then, if I was lucky, for Mac. I swore I would never own another Mac. It was not compatible with my lifestyle.

When I went to college, I bought a nice Sony Vaio. It served me well for four years. It broke on its way to law school. After a long arduous search for a new computer that met my qualifications (i.e. medium weight with a high-end graphics card — not an easy combination to find), I bought an ABS. That stands for Always Better Service if you did not know. While their service was terrible, I didn’t buy the computer for the service since I believed, whether a Dell, Sony, Gateway or ABS, the hardware guts of my computer were the same. Plus, I know what to do with messed up computers and did not really need the ABS.

My ABS served me very well until January. In January, as I am sure you know, you launched Windows Vista. Generously, you provided it free to my graduate University. Being the excited techie that I was, I installed Vista immediately. Unlike most people with three year old computers, my computer easily met Vista’s specs. I received a 3.5 score and Aero ran without a glitch. I was in heaven — until I fell far, fast, and hard.

Why did I fall? Vista took up too many resources and that ran okay under XP barely ran in Vista. Drivers for a most of my internal hardware components were missing. To my internet addicted horror, that included the drivers to turn on my wireless card. Did you really expect ABS to provide all those drivers? Please…

I spent hours finding drivers for similar components from the big manufacturers that might make my hardware work (thanks, especially to Toshiba — my internet would not have worked without you!). I excused this lapse as the growing pains of a cool new OS and the laziness of my cheap PC manufacturer.

But then other issues began to surface. The most annoying was that my computer never wanted to return from sleep mode (by either opening the laptop screen or pressing keys or both when necessary). It sometimes took over five minutes for it to wake. It might have been tired. It might have been hitting its own snooze button. this might make sense, however, because it usually took a number of tries to make the computer sleep. Using the software to go into sleep mode didn’t always work. Closing the screen didn’t work half the time either. Even if it did sleep, it was apt to turn itself on while I was sleeping and light up my whole room. Whatever the reasons, I was annoyed. Whenever starting the computer, which occurred each morning due to the aforementioned sleep problems, the computer turned off the screen after passing the DOS info. Therefore, to turn the screen back on, I had to press the power key and put the computer into sleep mode and then hit the power key again to unsleep it again. This took time and battery power.

I was able to live with these problems and even lay some of the blame on the shoulders of ABS. However, ABS was not responsible for the software creep that slowly crippled my computer. As the months passed, my computer became slower and slower. I was not doing anything abnormal. I just wanted to check go online, write a document or two and edit some photos. Yet by the end, my computer’s processor ran non-stop. The fan blew as loud as an airplane (ok, that is part ABS’ fault and the age of my comp). This happened even though, from what on my screen, just the basic programs were running (note, obviously, a lot was happening in the background despite all of my best semi-techie efforts to shut off every single program unless I told it to start).

Everything was slow and my computer became unusable. I needed a new computer.

What to buy?

For the first time since laptops were produced, my ideal laptop hardware began production this summer. The Dell M1330 is it. It is small, light, and can handle all the highest end components I could [maybe not] afford. But the M1330 runs Windows Vista. Yes, it is new and it is from Dell and I know you think that should just about guarantee that all my drivers will work and that problems shouldnt occur. I know you think this and want me to think this. But with Vista you lost credibility. Minus the driver issues, Vista ran pretty well at the beginning on my creaky old ABS after a clean install. But software creep occurred. Would it happen to my new Dell? In a year, would I find myself wishing I hadn’t purchased the computer because it had become creaky and relatively slow with all the junkware that was attaching itself to my computer?

I couldn’t take the risk. The Dell M1330 was my ideal hardware setup. No other manufacturer comes particularly close (Sony has a competitor but I swore off Sony after my Vaio in college). Even Vaunted Apple lacks a piece of hardware that met my needs to precisely.

Yet, thanks to Vista, I bought a Macbook Pro. I couldn’t take the risk of Vista creep.

So my dear Microsoft, you had me and I hate you for forcing me to buy a laptop that was not what I really wanted. Damn you.

Rooting that the next MS OS will be better,

Adam