New PC and KVM for the Home Office

Recently I made a major change to my home computing platforms with the addition of a PC running Windows 11.

My primary computer was and will remain a 2025 MacBook Air, which works splendidly, and it runs the OS with which I'm most productive. However, as I near retirement and may be taking on some consulting, I wanted access to a powerful PC that could run Windows 11 and an as-yet TBD Linux distribution for running local LLMs.

So, a few weeks ago I bought at MicroCenter a PowerSpec G732 gaming PC. It's a beefy rig that IMO gives you a lot for the money:

• AMD Ryzen 7 7700X (4.5GHz) Processor
• MSI PRO B850M-VC WiFi Motherboard
• 32GB DDR5-6000 RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Graphics Card
• 1TB NVMe SSD
• 5GbE LAN, WiFi 6E (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.3
• Windows 11 Home

My old monitor was a 27" LG from 2019 which was built to work with the then-new MacBooks that had only Thunderbolt ports. It acted as my docking station proving power, audio and video, Gig-E and a decent built-in webcam. Unfortunately, it only works with Macs, not PCs, so I needed to replace it.

Microcenter had an LG UltraGear 27G640A-B.AUSQ 27" 2K QHD (2560 x 1440) 300Hz Gaming Monitor with built-in speakers but no webcam on sale for $300. While the old unit was 4K-capable I ran it at only 2K because at 4K everything was too small for me to see.

The new monitor lacks a webcam so I added a Logitech Brio 100 1080p Webcam which include a microphone.

I'm using my old Dell keyboard and Logitech mouse, both connected via USB.

My impressions so far:

The PC's build quality is excellent with nice interior cable management. Performance seems very good although the closest thing I've done to taxing it is to run Skyrim at the highest resolution. If I run it faster than 60FPS, though, the video spins which is apparently a known Skyrim bug. Obviously, I need something more modern to really stretch out the graphics, and after I get it setup for local LLMs I expect to put the NVidea card to real work.

The Logitech webcam was only $40 but apparently the video quality is nicer than the one built into my old monitor. I didn't get any complaints about audio from its mic on a Google Meetings call or a Zoom call.

The new monitor is sharp, displaying either text or graphics well. The built-in speakers are inferior to those on my old monitor. I may replace them with USB speakers connected to the KVM.

Windows 11 is DOGSHIT. I had to do a lot of tweaking to disable unwanted features (e.g. Copilot) but it seems to be running OK for now. I did make a USB recovery stick in case a Microsoft update breaks it. (As far as I'm concerned the best version of Windows for end user computing was Windows 7.)

The biggest problem I had with the PC was trying to get a PowerA brand USB XBox controller working with it. This should have been plug and play. Fat chance. I spent HOURS trying to get it to be seen by any applications or the Windows joystick control app, which included a ton of Googling and even troubleshooting with the aid of Google Gemini to no avail. Eventually, I returned the PowerA controller and replaced it with a Bluetooth Microsoft XBox controller that installed and worked with minimal effort.

The PC has two empty slots on its motherboard for NVME SSDs. I plan to populate one in the near future and dual-boot with Linux for running local LLMs. I haven't decided which version. I'm debating between Fedora, Alma, Debian, or Ubuntu. Stay tuned.

However, the new setup left me without the ability to connect the MacBook Air to the new monitor and my mouse and keyboard, so today I went back to Microcenter and got a UGreen HDMI KVM Switch (2 Computers, 1 Monitor, 4K@60Hz) model #15707.

Yes, I have too much crap on my desk. My Xfinity gateway (in bridge mode) is the white tower back left. In front of that is a Yaesu FT-2800R 2M/70cm transceiver. On the right you can see my MacBook Air in a cradle I bought around 10 years ago to use in my old home office, and finally the new PC. The WiFi adapter is connected to the PC but not in use since wired Ethernet > WiFi. Behind the monitor is a three-tier wire rack shelf holding my WiFi router on top, and below that my desktop switch and Intel Nuc, and on the bottom shelf my power strip.

The KVM is behind the Mac, with its remote control below the monitor.

Because the MacBook Air only has the Magsafe power connector, A/V, and two Thunderbolt ports, I have it connected with an older Anker USB-C hub/dock that has an HDMI port, three USB-A ports, and a Gig-E port, which is then connected to my desktop switch. Power to the Mac is provided by the OEM Magsafe charger.

I chose the UGreen KVM switch because of the mostly positive reviews at Microcenter and Amazon, and because it's noted as being compatible with Mac, Linux, and Windows. A couple reviews noted instability when it was run off bus power, so I added a USB-A to USB-C cable for power, which I have plugged into my power strip.

A nice feature of the KVM is that it has a remote button for switching inputs. I need to stick it to the base of the monitor with some double-sided Velcro.

The KVM seems to work with both the Mac and the PC. I tested the webcam and it works on both machines in MS Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet.

The main downside to the new setup is that due to limited desk space I had to give up the ability to use the laptop with the screen open, but I can live with that.

This new setup will allow me to retain the use of my Mac for most productivity and Internet activities while enabling me to run Windows 11 or desktop Linux when needed.

Running iPhone/iPad Apps on Macs with Apple Silicon

This is a nifty feature of Macs with Apple Silicon processors (i.e., M1 or M2 CPUs) that I wasn't aware of. You can run some iPhone and iPad apps on these Macs.

See: https://support.apple.com/guide/app-store/iphone-ipad-apps-mac-apple-silicon-fird2c7092da/mac

The screenshot is of the Storm Radar app that I normally use on my iPhone, but running on my M1 MacBook Air.

Microsoft Office 365 for Mac Hung Updates

Last week I started having a problem with Microsoft Office 365 for Mac crashing when I tried to open one of its apps. I kept getting a message indicating that Outlook (or whatever) would open when an update completed. The app never did.

What was happening was that the Microsoft Office AutoUpdate app kept hanging. Here's what I had to do to fix it:

1. Close any Office app that happened to be still open.
2. Kill Microsoft AutoUpdate. You can do this with Activity Monitor or like I did, via the terminal.
1. Open Terminal.app
2. Do ps ax | grep Auto to find the PID
3. Do sudo kill -9 <PID>
3. Download the latest Microsoft AutoUpdate from here and ran it.

New Personal MacBook Pro

Last weekend I broke down and finally did my income taxes. I used Turbo Tax on my old mid-2009 MacBook Pro. When I installed the software, it warned that unless I upgrade to macOS High Sierra, I won't be able to use it again next year. That Mac is too old to be upgraded beyond Sierra. I've been thinking of getting a new personal laptop and this pushed me to finally do so.

Therefore, on the way home from work last night I stopped in the Apple Store in King of Prussia and bought a 2017-model 15" MBP (MacBookPro14,3). The specs are impressive:

• CPU: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7 with 4 cores
• RAM: 16 GB
• SSD: 512 GB (I was running low on space on the old machine's 256 GB SSD.)
• Graphics: Onboard Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB AND a 4G AMD Radeon Pro 560 GPU.

It has the Touch Bar (yawn) and 4 Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C 3.1 ports and a headphone jack.

I got it in silver to clearly differentiate it from the work-provided Space Grey 15" MBP.

Since I use Google Drive and Dropbox for documents, migrating them over was as simple as installing the clients and letting them sync. To move over my videos, pictures, and music, I went old school and sneaker-netted them using a 64 GB SanDisk USB stick with both USB-A and USB-C connectors.

This machine is very similar to my company-provided work laptop so I knew what I was getting. To partially reiterate from my post last Spring after I got that one:

• Replacing the MagSafe 2 power connector with USB-C sucks.
• On the other hand, with the right cable I should be able to charge the battery from something like a cell phone power bank or my Harbor Freight jump pack/12V power source.
• I am underwhelmed with the Touch Bar. At work I rarely use it because 90% of the time the lid is closed while the machine is connected to an external keyboard, mouse, and dual displays. Since I use the machine at home as a laptop, I expect the Touch Bar will see more use.
• It's fast as hell.
• The screen is great.
• Battery life is good.
• The keyboard is OK.
• For me, macOS 10.13 High Sierra has been very stable. I expect the new machine to be even more so, because it won't have corporate IT management crap like the Eracent agent installed.

Since last night I've installed the following software:

• MS Office 2016.
• TextWrangler (in which I'm writing this.)
• Truecrypt 7.1a, which requires some tweaking to install.
• ZOC 7 for telnet and SSH. I don't use it much at home but at work for managing Linux servers or network devices, it's awesome.
• LibreOffice for some old OpenOffice files I have. Even on this machine, LibreOffice is a bloated, slow POS. Amazing.
• 1Password.
• Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Google Chrome.

I still need to install a few ham radio apps, including Fldigi, CHIRP, and WSJT. Using them with my radios will require a Thunderbolt 3 to USB-A adapter, and maybe an external sound card.

One thing I need to pick up is a 1 TB Thunderbolt 3-compatible hard disk, to use for Time Machine backups. MicroCenter appears to have several suitable models in stock.

My employer has a purchase plan negotiated with Apple which saved me a couple hundred bucks on the laptop and AppleCare. It still came out to about $3,100 after tax. That's a ton of money but it's worth it to me to have a top-quality machine that I fully expect to be able to use for nearly a decade.

Solution for Broken Time Machine Backups and a New Laptop on the Way

At work I use a late 2013 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display. Most of my files are kept in our corporate Box.com account, which is a handy way to ensure that they are backed up. However, I was using Time Machine to ensure application settings were also backed up, and in general for a "belt and suspenders" approach.

Unfortunately, Time Machine stopped functioning back in October. I kept running into this problem.

I tried all sorts of fixes, including disabling application throttling for it, to no avail.

I have a new 15" MacBook Pro on the way and want to be able to move all my old settings over to it, so I revisited the issue yesterday. After trying several of the fixes I found online, again with no positive results, I decided to upgrade from OS 10.11 El Capitan to 10.12 Sierra. That fixed it.

My laptop is bound to our NT domain and I found that after the upgrade my NT account was locked. It turns out that there was a known bug with Sierra causing this. Applying the OS 10.12.3 update fixed that. I also had to upgrade to the later versions of the Symantec VIP soft token app and the Pulse Secure VPN client. The older versions I had weren't compatible with Sierra.

Other than fixing my Time Machine backup and requiring a couple application updates, Sierra isn't dramatically different from El Capitan. I deleted the Siri icon from my dock -- I don't use it even on my iPhone.

Hopefully, I'll have the new MBP by the end of the week, but at the rate our IT department is working it may not be until next week.

Digital QRP with a Mac and SignaLink USB

Operating QRP PSK31 using a Mac, Fldigi, and a SignaLink USB interface. In the video I provide details on my antenna, physical connections between the radio and rig, and about configuring Fldigi.

More info on the antenna can be found in this older post.

Reenabling Back with the Backspace Key in Chrome

Chrome on my MacBook Pro was automatically updated this morning, after which I noticed that the backspace key no longer worked to go back a page. Apparently this was implemented a little while ago but didn't manifest itself on my machine until today. This matches the default behavior on Linux, which I detest, since I use backspace to return to a previous page constantly.

After some searching, I discovered that Google made the change to prevent people from accidentally deleting data in a form. Initially, there was no way to reenable the backspace key.

However, enough people bitched about the change to get Google to create an extension to restore the previous behaving. You can get it here.

A plea to developers: Please do not change the behavior of your program's user interface without giving the end user a choice.

MacBook Pro Performance

Every so often you'll read comments from Windows fanboys that Macs are good only for Facebook or graphic artists. Well, this is what I had running on my late-2013 13" Retina display MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz Core i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD) as of a little while ago:

• Safari web browser with multiple tabs.
• Thunderbird for 2 personal email accounts.
• MS Outlook for work email and calendar.
• MS Lync for work IM.
• Slack for work IM/file sharing.
• Textwrangler text editor for a scratchpad.
• Evernote for note taking.
• OS X Terminal.app running SSH tunnel to a Linux server.
• OS X Terminal.app for ping and traceroute to troubleshoot connection to a vSphere server.
• ZOC for SSH connections to multiple Linux servers.
• MS Remote Desktop Client with connections to 2 VMware vCenter servers.
• MS Excel with two spreadsheets open for looking up server IPs.
• MS Word to review a quote I got on some electrical work in my data center.

And...

• Windows 7 Professional running in Parallels Desktop, so I could run Internet Explorer and the HP .NET iLO remote console for a VMware vSphere server that is acting up.

I have the application windows spread out across multiple virtual desktops on my 27" Apple Thunderbolt display. It's perfectly stable and responsive.

MacBook Pro Upgrades

Three years ago I bought my wife a 13" MacBook Pro (mid-2012, MacBook Pro 9,2). For the time it was an excellent system, with an i5 CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB hard drive. However, she's been complaining lately that it runs slowly.

I checked it out yesterday morning and sure enough, it felt sluggish, even more so than my mid-2009 MBP with a Core 2 Duo CPU. However, my machine has 8 GB of RAM and, most importantly, an SSD. It was time to upgrade her laptop.

Based on my experience upgrading several older Macs and PCs, a solid state drive (SSD) is the single best performance-enhancing hardware upgrade for an older machine. SSD's have vastly better read/write times than spinning disk. In laptops, SSDs also improve battery life because they draw less electricity.

My plan was to first cleanup the hard disk, then upgrade the OS on the machine, clone the hard disk to an SSD, then upgrade the hardware.

To clean up the disk I ran OnyX. Next, I upgraded the machine from Yosemite to El Capitan. In my experience, Yosemite was a real turd, giving me a lot of grief on my work machine. When I was stuck with it I had a lot of instability issues that I didn't have with earlier versions of OS X. El Capitan seems to have fixed that.

While the upgrade to El Capitan was proceeding, I went to microcenter.com and ordered a few items for in-store pickup to complete the upgrade:

• An 8 GB RAM kit from Crucial
• A Crucial 480 GB BX200 SSD
• An external enclosure for the OEM hard disk, so that it can be repurposed as a Time Machine drive.
• A Kingwin USB 3.0-to-SATA or IDE adapter. I have an older adapter that supports USB 2.0, but since USB 3.0 is becoming more common (and is supported on my wife's laptop), I felt it was due for a replacement.

(The links go to Amazon. I bought them from my local Microcenter because I wanted to get this done in one day.)

I installed the RAM first and fired up the machine. It still felt a little slow so as expected, the spinning disk was the main reason.

To clone the OEM disk to the new SSD I downloaded and installed SuperDuper, which I have used previously to clone Mac disks. My wife had less than 150 GB used on her disk, but even using a USB 3.0 interface, cloning it took one hour and 16 minutes.

The physical swap was straightforward, although I had to grab my precision screwdriver set with Torx bits, because Apple used T6 screws to hold the hard disk in place.

The machine performs much, much better now. Cold boots are much faster and applications launch with very little lag. My wife should get several more years out of it.

Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks

One of the challenges of a career in IT is keeping up to date and learning new skills. For the past 14 months or so, I've managed the primary lab/data center at my employer's corporate HQ, but have relied upon a couple other guys to handle the network. I'd like to take over the network, which mostly runs on Cisco equipment. So, I decided it's time to get my CCNA certification as a way to get my feet wet.

For texts, I went with Wendell Odom's CCNA Routing and Switching 200-120 Official Certification Library. Additionally, the Free CCNA Workbook site has a variety of lab exercises to do.

Although I'll be able to work on real equipment I felt it would be prudent to learn on gear completely separate from my lab network. My first step was to download and install the GNS3 router emulator on my laptop. I was able to find some usable Cisco images by exercising my Google-fu.

But I also wanted physical hardware to bang on. eBay is full of used Cisco gear. This post on Reddit was helpful in deciding what to buy (and what to avoid). Using that, I ordered a kit off eBay containing three Catalyst 2950 switches and three 1841 routers, plus various cables and T1 WICs, and a desktop rack.

One thing you need when working on initial device configuration and sometimes for troubleshooting is a console cable. Most laptops no longer have a serial port, so I and my coworkers have been relying on USB-to-RS232 adapters, mostly the Keyspan USA-19HS. However, I recently found FTDI chipset based USB-to console cables and got one of them. So far, it's been working fine in OS X Yosemite and El Capitan.

PA to MO on 5 Watts

Yesterday I spent some time out back with my Yaesu FT-817ND and laptop, playing with digital modes. I got a new Easy Digi interface from KF5INZ for connecting the FT-817ND to laptops and wanted to get it setup before taking it to Tioga County next weekend. I wound up having a nice rag chew with another ham who is located in Missouri, using the Olivia 16/500 mode.

I did a write up over on Survival Preps, here:

Backyard Digital Radio Practice

I also did a separate post on configuring a Mac to use the Easy Digi, FT-817ND, and Fldigi:

Configuring Fldigi on a Mac for use with an Easy Digi Radio Interface

Using Fldigi on a Mac to Control an Icom 7200

Ray, W3PRR, asked me for help on configuring Fldigi running on a Mac with OS 10.9.4 so that it can control an Icom 7200 radio. Here’s how I did it:

1. Get yourself a plain USB-A to USB-B cable, as used with most recent computer printers. This one at Amazon will work fine. The IC7200 has a built in sound card, and the USB cable will provide both rig control and audio input/output through the one cable.

2. Make sure the OS is up to date by running OS X’s Software Update.

3. You need to install the driver for the Silicon Labs CP210 USB-to-UART bridge, which is what provides the brains for the USB-B port on the back of the radio. You can download that here.

Note: Do not connect the radio to your Mac when you install the driver. Connect the radio after you install and reboot the Mac.

4. Download and install the Hamlib radio control libraries.

5. Download and install the latest version of Fldigi.

6. Connect and power on the radio to your computer using the USB cable. Make sure that the radio is in Data mode, and make sure that Data mode is set to U, so that it accepts audio and CAT commands through the USB port. See page 43 of the Icom 7200 Instruction Manual for details.

7.In Fldigi, under Configuration > Audio > Devices, select PortAudio, then USB Audio CODEC for both Capture and Playback. Click Save before you move to the next step.



Note: If the radio is not connected and powered on, the USB Audio CODEC option will not be visible.

8. Under Configuration > Rig use these settings.



Click Initialize, then Save, then Close.

At this point you should be able to see activity in the Fldigi waterfall (ASSuming there is anyone on frequency), and you should be able to transmit from within the program. The 20M PSK31 calling frequncy, 14.070 MHz, is a good frequency to use for testing because it tends to be active.

New MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro I’ve been using at work since 2009 has been getting long in the tooth. It’s still usable but running apps like MS Office, it has noticeable lag. Since it’s out of warranty I was able to put in for a new machine.

Of the standard builds we can order one is a 13” MacBook Pro, non-Retina model, with a 750 GB hard disk, onboard Ethernet, and a SuperDrive (DVD burner). My old MBP has a 15” screen but I use a 24” external monitor at work, so I figured I’d save a little weight and go for the 13” model to make it nicer to schelp back and forth.

Well, a couple weeks passed and I got informed that my new machine was ready. Instead of ordering the machine I asked for, someone in the purchasing department ordered me the 13” MBP with Retina display, 2.9 GHz Core i7 CPU, and a 256 Gb SSD.

OK.

This model comes with two Thunderbolt ports, two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader.s

There’s no SuperDrive or onboard Ethernet. I did get ahold of a Thunderbolt to Gig-E adapter, and we have a USB DVD burner at work, so I’m OK there. I’ll have to keep an eye on disk usage, but I had a Western Digital 640 GB USB drive laying around at home that I added to my bag, so that I can offload stuff I don’t use a lot.

The new machine is fast. Really fast. Redonculously fast. A cold boot to the login screen takes about 5 or 6 seconds. Word and Excel launch almost instantly. Outlook takes a bit longer but it’s bloated compared even to Word and Excel.

It was also setup with Parallels Desktop and a Windows 7 VM, which runs much faster than the Windows 7 VM in VirtualBox on my old machine. My primary uses for the Windows VM will be accessing MSDN and running Visio, which unfortunately isn’t available for Mac OS X.

Battery life is great. I haven’t really wrung it out but when fully charged it shows about 9 hours remaining. Depending on usage I could probably go all day if I happened to leave my power supply home.

I figure it’ll last me about four years.

SkyDrive for Mac Issue and Resolution

I have been using Microsoft's free SkyDrive cloud file storage and synchronization service for a couple of months now, and up until last week it ran very smoothly. I've been able to easily sync files between my MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.7 Lion, and my PC running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Last week the service stopped working on my Mac, and I kept getting an error about having to choose my SkyDrive folder. When I tried to do so I encountered an error complaining that SkyDrive cannot use a folder on a case-sensitive volume.

I double-checked my Mac's hard disk, and sure enough, it was partitioned as a single volume, using the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" file system. This is not case sensitive. Repairing permissions didn't fix the error.

After much googling, I ran across several other folks who've encountered the same error message, one of which indicated that running Apple's Software update resolved the issue. Specifically, there is a Mac OS 10.7.4 Supplemental Update, the description of which is

This update addresses an issue where certain new APIs for file access are not present on some systems.

So, with SkyDrive uninstalled from the Mac, I ran Software Update and installed this patch, along with several others. When it finished I restarted the system just to be on the safe side.

After getting back to my desktop I ran the SkyDrive installer and it was able to complete without issues.

So, if you start getting weird error messages from the Mac SkyDrive client incorrectly complaining about a case sensitive file system, run Software Update from the Apple menu.

Evernote

A main use for my iPad is for note taking in meetings. I've looked at a few applications and have come to like Evernote.  The killer feature as I see it is that it automatically syncs notes via the cloud between my iPad, MacBook Pro, and iPhone.   Your notes can also be viewed online in a web browser.  This way I can access my notes pretty much wherever I am, since I always have at least my phone.  You can also have notes that are local-only, i.e., not synced across the Internet.

Among other things, I plan to start putting my technical reference notes into Evernote so I can easily find them, and so I can access them no matter where I am.

One caveat is that notes are not encrypted, so be careful about putting sensitive data on synced notes. Evernote does allow you to encrypt text within a note, but not the entire note.  Even so, I do not plan on putting online the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my accounts, usernames, and passwords. That will stay inside a TrueCrypt volume.

Another feature with which I'm experimenting is sharing notes.  This can be useful for groups.  So far, the one shared note I've created is Black Powder Revolver Notes, which I've shared with a friend who just picked up his first caplock revolver.

A basic Evernote account is free, while a Premium account is $5/month or $45/year.  Both allow you an unlimited number of notes in your account, but the free account is limited to 60 MB of uploads per month, and the max note size is 25 MB.  The figures for Premium accounts are 1 GB uploads per month and 50 MB per note.  The free version also has some limits on the types of files you can upload. You can see the full list of differences here.

Evernote is a handy program, especially for tech professionals. I recommend giving it a look.

UNetbootin

Unetbootin is a nifty open source utility for creating bootable USB flash drives of various Linux and BSD distributions. Such drives are useful for installing an OS on a machine which doesn't have an optical drive.  I've also found that doing an OS install from a flash drive is usually faster than doing it off a CD or DVD since disk read/write is faster.

Up until recently UNetbootin ran on either Windows or Linux. I noticed this morning that there's now an  OS X version.  I grabbed it and I'm now creating a bootable flash drive with Ubuntu 10.04 Server LTS on it for an upcoming project.

Incidentally, this is a good use for small flash drives you get as promos. The 1 GB unit I'm currently using was used to distribute the course materials for the PBI Intellectual Property Law Institute I attended last month.

It's possible to create a bootable flash drive for installing Windows, but doing so requires different tools. I'll tackle that in another post.

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

Sunday night my work email account got migrated from an Exchange 2003 server to a bright, shiny, new Exchange 2010 box.  One downside to this is that WebDAVS access is no longer supported, so Monday morning I had to upgrade Entourage 2008 to Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition.  This went pretty smoothly.

In general I've been pretty pleased with Office 2008.  I'm a light user of Word and Excel, and a very light user of PowerPoint (i.e., I only open up PPT when I can't avoid it).  My primary app in Office was Entourage for my email and calendar.  With WebDAVS enabled I was able to securely check my email without having to use our VPN.  Compared with Outlook on Windows, Entourage's support for shared calendaring is somewhat lacking.  Also, I was unable to search our Global Address Book without either being on the corporate network or being VPNed in.

Monday afternoon in the day I got access to Office 2011 and installed it on my MacBook Pro.  The biggest change between 2008 and 2011 is that Entourage has been replaced by Outlook, an application missing from the Mac since Office 2001, IIRC.

Back before I moved to a Mac for my primary platform, I loathed Outlook on Windows.   In prior positions I've supported Outlook 97, 98, and 2000.  I've used those versions as well as 2002 (AKA Outlook XP).  For me it was always a slow, buggy app with an interface I didn't particularly like.

But so far Outlook 2011 is mostly working well.  We've noticed one bug when trying to schedule meetings when a participant is still on the Exchange 2003 server.  Specifically, the times shown on that person's calendar will be off by an hour.  Until everyone is migrated I'll just use Outlook Web Mail for scheduling meetings.

One thing I thought was interesting was that Office 2011 installed alongside 2008.  This is a very good feature, allowing easy rollback.  The Office for Mac team also did a good job with the migration features for Entourage to Outlook.  Outlook imported my Entourage profile seamlessly, including the server configuration and account info.  It took about 10 minutes to import my profile and setup connectivity to the server.

Outlook allows me to search our Global Address List remotely even if I'm not VPNed in.  This will be nice.

Another feature greatly anticipated by many people wanting to switch from Windows but stuck because they rely on Outlook was the lack of an easy way to migrate emails from Outlook .PST files.  Well, Outlook 2011 can read .PSTs, though it stores messages, contacts, etc. in a different format.  This will be useful for a few of my coworkers.

As for the interface, either the Outlook Mac interface is greatly improved cf. the last version I used on Windows, or my reaction to it has mellowed.  It's actually pretty decent.  Likewise, the rest of the Office apps share the "ribbon" interface introduced with Office 2007.  A lot of folks hated the ribbon but I actually like it.  So far I haven't used either Excel or Word very much so I don't know how they'll compare with the 2008 versions.

I'll post follow ups if I run into any weirdness.

Firefox 4 Beta 6

Today I installed Firefox 4 Beta 6 on my MacBook Pro and a Dell Precision Workstation running Windows 7 Enterprise.

My initial impressions are favorable.  The user interface has been revised and is now somewhat Google Chromeish.  The default toolbars are minimalist and tabs are displayed on top the address bar, rather than below it.  I prefer having the tabs below the address bar so I'm happy to see that it remains an option.

Compared with Firefox 3.6, FF4B6 seems to load pages faster on both OS 10.6 and Win7.  This may in part be due to some of my extensions not being supported in FF4 yet.  However, FF4 is supposed to offer speed improvements.

I used FF4B6 for most of the day and didn't run into any noticeable issues.  We'll see how it goes with more use but so far I'm pleased with it.

Some Mac Consulting Today

This morning I went over to a client's home to do some work on his Macs.

He has an older Intel iMac which was still running OS 10.4 Tiger.  He was without a backup system for it, so the last time I was there I recommended he upgrade it to OS 10.6 Snow Leopard and getting a USB hard disk to setup as a Time Machine drive.

The first thing I did after arriving was to connect the Western Digital Elements 640 GB USB drive, copy over the Documents, Desktop, Pictures, and iTunes folders.  (It's a bad idea to upgrade an OS without first backing up all of your data.  Upgrades often go awry.)  Once everything copied over, which took about 40 minutes, I popped in the Snow Leopard disk and rebooted into the OS X installer.

After about 45 minutes the iMac was upgraded to OS 10.6.3, so I then ran Software Update and grabbed the 10.6.4 update, along with several other updates.  This took another 20 minutes or so.

With that squared away I reconnected the WD hard disk and configured Time Machine to use it as a backup disk.

While the iMac was getting backed up before the upgrade I took a look at his Mac Mini.

The Mini had been setup to do Time Machine backups to a Western Digital My Book external drive via FireWire 800.  It looks like the drive is toast, since when I was there a couple weeks ago I'd reformatted it.  Time Machine worked OK for about 4 days then started failing.  Today, it kept crashing the Finder when I connected it.  I even connected it to my MacBook Pro and reformatted it, but it still gave errors.  He's going to try to return it and get another USB or FireWire disk.

Finally, while there I also installed a hand-me-up 8 GB iPod Touch from his daughter to the Mini, and upgraded the firmware from 3.x to 4.1.

Not a bad way to spend a few hours and make some extra money.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud-based file backup, storage, and sharing site which uses Amazon's S3 service as the backend.  I've recently started using it as a way to keep certain files and folders automatically synced between my MacBook Pro and Hobbit, my MSI netbook.

You can access a Dropbox account via a web browser or applications which install on Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.  So far, I'm using the OS X and Ubuntu versions and they work very smoothly.  On a Mac you can access your Dropbox folder just like any other folder in the Finder.  On Ubuntu, I'm using the Nautilus file manager plugin.

If you allow the Dropbox app to run automatically when you login, it will automatically sync the local folder with the one in the cloud.  If you have Dropbox installed on more than one computer it will automatically sync the folder across all of them.

The free, basic Dropbox account gives you 2 GB of storage.  Additional storage is available for a monthly fee.  {shameless plug}Also, if you sign up by clicking the links in this post or in my sidebar to the right, I'll get an additional 250 MB of space (up to 8 GB), and you'll get additional space, too.{/shameless plug}