Patrick Sweeney Posted July 6, 2004 Share Posted July 6, 2004 I started working on computers back when we coded in Fortran or Cobol, and submitted our stacks of punch cards to the Senior Programmer at the Entry Desk. Then through C/PM, a Kaypro, several dumb as a box o' rocks DOS boxes, two Amigas, and a rotating cast of Pentiums. And now I have a Mac. Specifically, I've been handed a Powerbook G3 Pismo, 500mhz, 256M ram, 20G HD, with CD/DVD reader/burner, Airport ready, with OS 10.3, Photshop 7-something and a laundry list of other software loaded, for $500. What Firewall software do I need? Should I spring for the Airport card, and will it let me access the WiFi at the local coffee shop? What's this Firewire thingie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Moore Posted July 6, 2004 Share Posted July 6, 2004 patrick the only thing a mac is good for is proping a door open. i'm just kidding, sounds like you got a good deal. i use the norton personal firewall on a pc and have had great success. i'm not sure if there is a mac version....otoh i would be surprised if there wasn't. i've not heard of an airport card. are you talking about an air card that goes in the pcmcia slot on the laptop? make sure your laptop doesn't have builtin wifi first. as for the firewire thingie, it's a connection for transfering data such as digital pictures or movies at a high rate of speed, kind of like the usb port. btw...what is fortran and punch cards? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted July 6, 2004 Share Posted July 6, 2004 Should I spring for the Airport card, and will it let me access the WiFi at the local coffee shop? Yes. As long as you realize that many times the WiFi service is fee-based. That is changing rapidly, however as free "hot zones" are becoming more popular. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidwiz Posted July 6, 2004 Share Posted July 6, 2004 Pat, As for a firewall, the Zone Alarm is good as is the BlackIce (what I'm using). Also, here is a decent page about firewalls and security stuff. As for WiFi, get the AirPort, that will turn your Mac into a wireless router. Meaning, you plug your Internet connection into the AirPort, and then you can access the 'net (or data on that Mac) from other computers. As for being able to access a Wi-Fi connection (wireless Internet connection) on the go, I believe your Mac is already able to receive such a signal. FireWire allows data to be transfered btwn computers at very high speeds. Good if you are transfering multi-media files, tunes, digial picture, digital movies (like from a camcorder), etc. It is like a USB port, but 2x as fast. HTH, David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted July 6, 2004 Share Posted July 6, 2004 Hi Patrick, That is a great deal. The Pismo is a good, rugged machine. If you don’t have an Airport card installed, the $99 it costs is well worth it. If you want a wireless connection at home, don’t bother with the Apple Airport base station, it costs a lot more than the Linksys wireless cable/dsl router and doesn’t really work any better. As far as a Firewall goes, OS 10 come with one, all you have to do is turn it on. Open “System Preferences” from the Apple Menu, or the Dock. Click the “Sharing” icon, when the next screen opens, click the “Firewall” tab and most likely you will find it already on, if not, turn it on and Voila, Firewall! Norton Internet Security is a waste of money for the Mac and will also slow it down and lock it up occasionally, total crap except for the AD blocker which still isn’t worth it. PM me if you have any problems, or questions. OSX is rock solid, but there are a few things to pay attention to if you want a completely trouble free OSX experience over the long haul. BTW, an additional 256 MB of RAM will help it run a lot faster with 10. Cheap and easy to install too. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 6, 2004 Share Posted July 6, 2004 ..."and submitted our stacks of punch cards to the Senior Programmer at the Entry Desk."... ...And I used to PUNCH those cards... then drag them into highly-refrigerated rooms where the IBM 1401 would eat them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael_aos Posted July 7, 2004 Share Posted July 7, 2004 Yep, get a Linksys cable / DSL wireless / wired router -- this is also your first-level firewall. Then use the native OS-X firewall. Agreed -- the more RAM the better. I'd say 512MB minimum. Make sure you're doing the Software Updates. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik Habicht Posted July 7, 2004 Share Posted July 7, 2004 Patrick, The best thing about firewire is that you can now buy a firewire card reader from someone like Lexar to transfer images from your compact flash cards to the computer in a fraction of the time it used to take with a usb card reader ---- or even worse, with the camera direct cable connection.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik Habicht Posted July 7, 2004 Share Posted July 7, 2004 And speaking of RAM, if you intend to do a lot of photoshop work, PS gets a major speed boost on macs at 768MB of Ram installed. 512 RAM modules should be under $100 now, I think..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted July 7, 2004 Author Share Posted July 7, 2004 Thanks for the info. I've already got a PCMCIA card to port photos into the 50" HD TV, apparently it can also be used to port photos from the card into the Mac. The machine came able to boot in either 9.2 or 10.3 As son as I find word processing software that runs under 10.3 and can be read byt Microsoft Word, I'm going to boot solely in 10.3. I found the Firewall in SysPref. Wooohoo! The Airport card will be my "road warrior" internet hookup. A cup of coffee and a free hookup at a coffee shop, and I can keep in touch while traveling. Now to figure out the "leave copy on server" setting for e-mail..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted July 7, 2004 Share Posted July 7, 2004 http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts...spx?pid=officex That "Word-friendly" enough for you? If you have Appleworks 6 installed, you can save things in Word format, also. Airport rocks. Let's see where I've been able to hookup: home, neighbor's houses, school, other school, other other school, coffee shoppes^10, JFK Airport (ironic, eh?), etc. WiFi kicks ass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted July 7, 2004 Share Posted July 7, 2004 Oh, and if you're using Mail as your email program, just go into Preferences (underneath Mail on the menu bar, or type *cloverleaf-symbol-thing-aka-"command/open apple"*-*,* without the asterisks), from there go to Accounts, then Advanced, and uncheck the box that says "Remove copy from server after retrieving message:". HTH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted July 7, 2004 Share Posted July 7, 2004 Now to figure out the "leave copy on server" setting for e-mail In OSX most programs have the preferences in the pulldown menu right next to the Apple menu where the name of the app is when it is forward. If using Entourage (the MS equivalent of Outlook in X) the setting will be in the "Tools" menu under accounts. If you have been using Outlook for mail in Wintel land, you will probably be happier with Entourage as your e-mail client. I helped Brian move into X last month and he found Entourage to be a perfect fit after running Outlook in OS9. There really isn't any great way to move all of your old mail into X from Windows except via the Apple .mac method which is very tedious if you have a lot of old mail and/or a slow connection. The method also requires a $99 .mac account. Here is the info on using Apple's "Switch" methodology to migrate from Wintel. http://www.apple.com/switch/ -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted July 14, 2004 Author Share Posted July 14, 2004 Thanks for the info. I had the seller install the airport card, and while he was at it he added another 256 megs of ram. I also found out he got something like 50 of these turned in from a corporaiton that was upgrading. Upgrading to what, HAL 9000? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Patrick, Definitely stick with Geoff till you're comfortable with the machine. He tirelessly guided me as I switched my office over to X... and I'm so happy with it that I'd probably blow my brains out if I had to boot back into 9. be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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