AAUG Reviews

by John McCormick, AAUG Member

Having used PCs for over 20 years at home, work and school, I was dissatisfied with what PCs offered the non-corporately supported user, and with the prospect of being able to run some essential PC apps on Intel Macs, I committed to making my next computer an Apple. This e-book, made available at a local Apple user group meeting was exactly what I needed, especially since the newest iMacs had literally been introduced the day before! I need to make it clear at the outset though that it contains no information specifically for potential switchers from other platforms, but it offers, as the title suggests, help to avoid getting a Mac you would regret buying.

The e-book features the following sections:

Read Me First
This section contains publisher contacts and e-book usage information.

Introduction
The author’s qualifications are listed here with a motivation for purchasing the e-book.

Quick Start to Buying a Mac
This is a one page summary of the sections that follow.

Decide When to Buy
Starting off with “self-analysis comes first,” the author offers a checklist to help you ensure your purchase is not motivated merely the urge to pick up a new toy. Real-life examples show both sides of the right reasons to purchase or not to purchase. A lot of space is used to describe Mac production cycles and what they mean to a potential purchaser.

Figure Out Which Mac to Buy
A laptop or a desktop? (more…)

by Kathleen McCoy, AAUG Member

I picked this book up off the table at the August AAUG meeting, thinking of my 85-year-old mom in San Diego. She is very active and mobile, and has just started attending entry-level computer classes. The other day she told me she was learning how to add attachments to e-mail.

I thought, “This book would be a good, accessible toolkit for her to as she learns.”

I believe I was correct in my snap judgment, but I also think I might not be able to part with this book. I found it pretty useful.

I am a mid-career newspaper editor, so I have been on computers for 20 years or so. But as a print editor, I was stuck in a word-processing box. Now my industry is undergoing remarkable changes, and I find that I need much more computer skill and knowledge. While “Simplified Computers” does cover basics like DSL and dial-up, or how to define text so you can edit and manipulate it, it also gave me information that was in my digital landscape but that I didn’t fully understand.

Here’s a good example: P. 15 of the book is a diagram of the back of a computer with simple explanations about what peripherals get plugged into which portals on the back of your computer. I can imagine using this when/if I had to install a new desktop or move. All those different holes with all those different functions seemed much less intimidating with the road map at hand.

Another example: I have been working to learn video production. In a class where we were making little 2 and 3 minute movies, I needed to acquire some DVD discs to record my movie on. There I was at Costco in Sunnyvale, staring at the display of 100-pack blank DVD discs for sale. What did DVD+R, DVD-R, and DVD+-R really mean? Which one should I get? (more…)

by Kathleen McCoy, AAUG Member

Alaskan Apple Users Group Book Review

Less than a year ago, I found myself down at UC Berkeley in a multimedia boot camp for mid-career journalists. In one week, we were exposed to audio, video, flash, and web page design. We produced a multimedia story for the web in about two and a half days.

Needless to say, this was a manic experience. The grad students who cruised our workroom stepped in to solve problems with the programs that we barely knew or understood. I’d call it getting your feet wet, but I wouldn’t call it learning the software programs.

I finished up my year-long fellowship at Stanford, realizing that the journalism career I had begun was in radical transformation. I needed to know Flash and Dreamweaver. I needed to learn how to shoot a video camera and collect good audio. Now, nine months later, I am trying to make good on my commitment to master Dreamweaver.

(Sorry for the personal details, I’ll cut to the chase here quickly….) I returned to my newspaper-editing job and assumed a new role in interactivity. Suddenly, the web is my life, and sustaining our web site takes up all my time. Now, Dreamweaver has become a way for me to get Word documents onto the web with html coding intact. So, with about 30 seconds of instruction from one of my colleagues, I am now uploading text documents to the web, thanks to Dreamweaver.

But I hardly knew its full capabilities. This book, “Teach Yourself Visually Dreamweaver CS3″ is helping me substantially. The marriage of visuals with simple, very straightforward text is the ticket. I think it will be easy to tackle my first personally designed web page with a book like this by my side.

For one thing, the book includes a really helpful two-page spread right after the table of contents. The purpose of these pages is to tell you “how to use this book.” I gleaned two important facts from this section. (more…)

by Bruce Herman, AAUG Member

The transition from film to digital cameras and from the wet darkroom to computer based photo editing and printing has brought with it technical issues that are new to many photographers. One of them, color management, has been difficult because of poor implementation in Windows, conflicting expectations between photo editing software and printer drivers, and terminology that is foreign to most users. Given that, it was a pleasant surprise to come across a product like X-Rite’s i1Photo that is both easy to use and well documented.

i1Photo is a nearly complete suite of tools for calibrating and profiling all of your digital input and output devices, including your digital camera and scanner on the input side; and your monitor, printer, and digital projector on the output side. In this review I’ve concentrated on the monitor and printer profiling for two reasons. First, my scanner has its own profile utility that I already use. Second, profiling a digital projector and camera with i1Photo require components that are not part of the standard delivery, and so were not evaluated. My normal workflow is to make images on film with a large format camera, scan the film, and then make a print with an ink jet printer. Monitor calibration and profiling and printer profiling are the two most important color management needs from my perspective, and I suspect for most other photographers, too, whether working with film or digital cameras.

i1Photo is delivered in a cordura carrying case with padded sections for each of the pieces. The primary component is the i1Pro spectrophotometer that is used to measure transmitted light from your monitor and reflected from test prints or color swatches. (more…)

by Theresa Geiger, AAUG Member

Windows for Intel Macs describes how to use Windows XP on an Intel Mac when you have installed Parallels to run it. Many other programs are available and described besides Parallels and the Pros and Cons are listed with each and why you may want to use them. This book helps you understand how the systems work and what you may or may not want to use. This was very interesting to me because I never knew there were so many items out there.

The book goes on to explain all the different Windows XP versions and why you may want each one depending on what you want to use it for. Anti-virus programs are described also with the strengths of each one. The rest of the book contains short-cut detailed directions on how to run Windows XP on a Mac. Similarities and differences are shown along with directions on how to operate them.

Basically this is a real short-cut book on “how to” which any person installing these programs will find very handy. I would pre-read the book before doing any installations as you need to make decisions which you may want to consider If you want to use Boot Camp you need to buy another e-Book from the company and it gives detailed explanations and pitfalls on installing it.

by Steve Nigl, AAUG Member

Are you a self-starter with an interest in photography? Can you learn from a book as well as a classroom? If so, I’d like to introduce you to a course series by the online school, Photoworkshop. Written by Blue Fier, a 20 year photo professional who has been teaching via Photoworkshop.com for 10 years. ‘Composition’ is the third in a six-part series designed to elevate your photos from the level of ’snapshot’ to ‘work of art’. They are the Photoworkshop classes in book form. I found the book to be an easy read, with a logical progression in everyday English. Each chapter is closed with a field assignment designed to solidify the new concepts learned. Its ten chapters cover basic composition theory, use of color and BW, Lighting, Macro, Portrait, Still Life, and Travel Photog. It’s fully indexed and comes with a photo terms glossary.

The six books are:
Lighting
Macro Photography
Composition
Portrait and Candid
Exposure
And Photos that Inspire

I regret diving into the middle of the series instead of progressing with the first book. But it did prove that these books seem to stand individually.

If you’re a self-paced learner, interested in honing your photography skills, you can buy this course-in-a-book for a one-time price of $29.99 instead of paying $39-89 per year to get the same info on Photoworkshop’s website. (more…)

by Marcia Arnold, AAUG Member

I originally bought my iPod shuffle as a workout aid. I never intended to buy a dock or get sucked into the black hole of accessory add-ons. That was before I began looking at all of the stereo systems that have recently become available. It didn’t take long to realize that the best way to listen to the iPod at home was through quality speakers. The adapter allows the diminutive and relatively inexpensive iPod shuffle to play in most docking speaker systems.

The package had minimal instructions mostly in the form of little universal icons such as the tiny trashcan with a slash through it located on the bottom of the adapter to indicate not to throw it away, I think. When I went to the Griffin homepage and found the adapter, they listed a Quick start guide in PDF format that could be downloaded. I attempted to download the document several times, but all I got was a blank screen.

The unit didn’t light when playing or charging. Sliding the switch to the “charge” icon (a tiny lightening bolt) revealed a green colored indicator, not visible in the dark. The base is too large to fit into every dock.

The controls (switches) are tiny, making it difficult to manipulate for all but small and nimble fingers, which is generally true of the shuffle, as well.

(more…)