PowerBook G4 12″ and an Airport Express

Well, a new 12″ PowerBook G4 has arrived and replaced the trusty iBook.

The new PowerBook is a very nice piece of kit. The keyboard is a vast improvement over the iBooks and the processor is much faster, particularly when compiling code. Bottom line, very impressed. Setting up the machine was a snap. The longest part of the process was copying over all the data from my iBook (this was performed using ‘firewire mode‘ on the iBook). The approach I took was to copy the contents of each director from my home folder over to the corresponding folder on the PowerBook. This seems to have worked fine.

The ‘Airport Express’ has been a bit of a surprise. First, I was surprised by how small the actual piece of kit is. To have the power supply and ‘the Airport guts (essentially a mini-computer)’ in such a small box was a a big surprise. The Airport was extremely easy to configure and was up and running in a matter of minutes. Another surprising plus, and worth the upgrade from the second generation Airport, was for the first time FTP worked! I had tried everything to get FTP to work with my old Airport and just couldn’t get a stable connection. I haven’t seen it published anywhere but the ease at which FTP now works, and the fact it took zero-configuration suggests, that UPnP (i.e. the Airport ’senses’ which ports need to be opened up to support the process [FTP, gaming, chat etc.] being carried out) is now working.

‘Tunes Menu’ updated to version 1.3

Well, an update of ‘Tunes Menu‘ has been released.

This release added a number of stores and contained a major bug fix.

The stores CD WOW! and SecondSpin were added for the US and 101cd for the UK. In addition, searches for CD WOW! across Europe were added, as well as local CD WOW! stores in Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Hong Kong.

The bug fix dealt with a rare bug in all Amazon searches (US, UK, and Germany) which was causing occasional crashes on some machines. (A tricky bug to track as it needed a combination of the right CD and the right store. A CD that caused a crash in the US, may not cause a crash in the UK or Germany.)

NOTE: TUNES MENU IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE AND HAS BE DISCONTINUED

Updates to iCalMaker, JPEGCleaner, quickWebAlbums, and websiteCleaner

It is amazing what can be achieved in a few days away from the office….

During a brief trip I was able to update the following programs:

iCalMaker:

The program has now been taken to version 1.7. This update includes:

New Features:

• Added ‘record-stepper’ in the comma-/tab-delimited data import window – this allows the user to step through the records to check the match with order import
• Added a ‘comma-/tab-delimited’ data counter – very useful during the import of large data-sets as it gives an indication of progress and provides a ‘Cancel’ button

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a ‘comma-/tab-delimited data import bug which prevented data from being correctly displayed in the ‘import-order’ window
• Greatly improved memory handling during the import of large comma- and tab-delimited data sets (noticeable speed improvement)
• Improved the hadling of comma-delimited file import
• Better handling of "","" data
• Better handling of ‘mixed’ comma-delimited formats where inverted-comma are not consistently used, e.g. 3/4/04,9:20 am,3/4/04,10:30 am,"meet me at the restaurant, after the meeting" data
• Improved hadling of ‘extra’ commas in field text, e.g. 3/4/04,9:20 am,3/4/04,10:30 am,"meet me at the restaurant, after the meeting" data
• Recompiled using Xcode 1.5

This update took the most work….

iCalMaker can is shareware ($30 USD) and can be downloaded from http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/downloads/icalmaker.dmg.sit

JPEGCleaner, quickWebAlbums, and websiteCleaner:

These three ‘one trick ponies’ contain some common code at their core. A minor (but annoying!) bug was discovered in the ‘common-code’ and therefore needed to be fixed.

The ‘one trick ponies’ are $5 (USD) each and can be found at: http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/pages/otp/

Looking for a new PowerBook

Time to replace an old and slow iBook with a new PowerBook….

I have looked at the various models and decided the 12 inch PowerBook with a SuperDrive fits my needs. Having looked in various stores in the UK I have discovered that you can not buy a 12 inch PowerBook anywhere! The stores may have them on the shelves, but they have none in stock. One store had a back-order of 120 (and had only 2 models in stock in the UK), and the other store could not find a PowerBook in any of its branches within 60 miles. (They did offer to sell the one on display!)

Tried Amazon (in the UK), with no luck.

Looks like it is time to hit the AppleStore. Whilst I am there I may have to buy an Airport Express! (BTW, don’t get your RAM at the AppleStore as it is way overpriced! £200+ compared to £99 in the High Street for 512 MB.)