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My MacBook Pro has stopped re-connecting to my Airport network after sleep. I am sure this is down to the fact that I have started to use it on a WPA2 802.11n wireless network.
Checked my settings, but nothing there that seemed out of order.
A quick Google search and up comes through this site the following Apple KB article which has a solution, will try it and see what happens.
If you want to run Windows on an Intel Mac there are basically four choices.
Boot Camp
This is an either or situation, which means you are running Windows or OS X, therefore if you want to change applications you need to reboot.
Has the advantage that you are when running Windows for all intents purposes your mac is a Windows PC. This means that you get the full power of your Mac for running Windows.
You need a licensed copy of Windows XP *SP2* or Windows Vista
Comes as part of Leopard, so if you have Tiger you will need to upgrade.
Parallels and VMFusion
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
These applications create virtual Windows PCs, which allow you to run Windows (and Windows applications) at the same time as OS X and therefore you can switch between them withoout needing to reboot. There is a slight performance hit when running Windows in this way but for most people this is negligible. Also you will need a lot of RAM to run these, at leat 1GB and preferably 2GB of RAM.
Coherence mode on Parallels allows you to run Windows applications seamlessly alongside Mac applications.
Both require a Windows licence, but doesn’t need to be SP2, with Parallels you can even install and run Windows 3.1! Parallels XP support is excellent, however support for Vista is less good, so you can’t use things like Aero for example.
Crossover
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/
Allows you to run Windows applications (some but not all) within OS X and you don’t need a Windows licence as you don’t install Windows.
Downside is that it doesn’t work with all applications.
Summary
Therefore there are four choices when it comes to running Windows on a Mac. Which is best? Well that depends much more on your needs when it comes to running Windows.
Digital Photography Review has posted a review of the Fujifilm Finepix F50fd, a compact 12MP camera.
Like any sequel the F50fd was always going to suffer by comparison to its illustrious predecessor, so is Fujifilm’s new flagship compact a Godfather II or a Matrix Reloaded? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that it’s neither one or the other, but something somewhere in between.
Well better late than never I guess…
I have installed Leopard on my iMac (using an external Firewire drive rather than my main drive).
It installed fine, though I find it amusing that Apple’s “about one minute” can be longer than any other minute, maybe a Time Machine thing?
I have had a quick look and I am quite impressed. I am quite pleased with the performance on my iMac which seems much faster, certainly don’t get the lag I have been getting when changing the volume for example.
Safari 3 is much better and I might just install 10.4.11 on my other Macs to get Safari 3, like the fact I can move tabs.
File sharing looks relatively simple, but quite different to Tiger therefore new guides are essential.
Overall impressed so far.
I have finally sorted out my HP TC1100 wireless problem. I was having issues getting the TC1100 to connect to my 802.11g Airport wireless network.
I had confirmed that the Intel 2200 BG card in the Tablet supports WPA and I have updated Windows XP to support WPA as well.
The Intel 2200 BG card also supports 802.11g.
I say that as the solution was to switch the Airport Extreme from 802.11g only radio mode to 802.11b/g mode.
In this mode the TC1100 has no problem connecting to my WPA/WPA2 network!
It’s not as even though the TC1100 is connecting at 802.11b 11 Mbps speeds, as the speed shown in the connection window though fluctuating is greater than 11 Mbps!
So if you are having issues connecting to an 802.11g network with a laptop with the Intel 2200BG card, revert to b/g compatability and see if that makes a difference.
I have written a new support guide for those people who have a Windows Vista PC and are having issues getting their Vista computer connected to an Airport wireless network.
Since I sorted out my new wireless networks, my HP TC1100 Tablet PC has been having issues connecting to the 802.11g wireless network.
The 802.11g wireless network is using WPA/WPA2 encryption.
I have confirmed that the Intel 2200 BG card in the Tablet supports WPA and I have updated Windows XP to support WPA as well.
However the TC1100 fails to connect to the network. Initially I thought it was a channel 13 issue, but since changing to channel 6, I still can’t connect.
I have been through my settings and my own troubleshooting guide but still no joy.
I did mention I was having an issue with my wireless network topology and channels. I was having to use the Automatic channel setting which meant my older UFO shaped Airport Extreme decided channel 13 was best.
Well first problem I had was my HP TC1100 Tablet PC did not like channel 13 and refused to connect and co-operate.
So I knew I had to change the channel.
Well I changed the channel from Automatic (13) to channel 6 and guess what? Yes it all works fine now!
Bizarre!
I have been working on my new dual wireless network, in essence creating two wireless networks on my home network, one pure 802.11n 5GHz and a 802.11g 2.4GHz for older legacy devices.
When I initially set up my 802.11n Airport Extreme I used the 802.11n b/g 2.4GHz radio mode so that both 802.11n and 802.11b/g devices could connect. I also left the channel on Automatic and it chose channel 6.
For the 802.11g network I was going to use the older UFO shaped Airport Extreme (having given up on my Airport Express). As I configured it this evening, I had some problems getting my wireless Canon MP600R to connect to it, so I changed the channel from 11 (which is the same channel) as a neighbour’s wireless network and put it on Automatic. It chose channel 13, and I thought this is going to be problematic, as though UK wireless devices can use 13 channels on the 2.4GHz spectrum, in the US you can only choose channels 1 through 11. Some manufacturers only make a single device for both the US and UK markets, so these would not be able to connect to a wireless base station using channel 13. So I went in again and changed the channel to channel 2.
What happened next was weird, basically it stopped broadcasting.
I could see it was okay in the Airport Utility, as I was connected to the 802.11n wireless network and the older Airport Extreme was hard wired into that. However I could not see (on a few devices) the 802.11g wireless network.
I set it back to Automatic and it was there again.
I then decided to change the channel on the 802.11n Airport Extreme so that I could free up channel 6 and (hopefully) the older 802.11g Airport Extreme would then automatically choose channel 6 as its Automatic channel.
Well imagine my annoyance and surprise when I changed the channel on the 802.11n base station, it too stopped broadcasting!
Changed it back to Automatic and all was fine again.
Why I have to have Automatic as my channel choice I don’t know.
Why not one but both base stations stopped broadcasting when I chose a channel manually, I have no idea.
So for the moment I have the 802.11n network on channel 6 and the 802.11g network on channel 13.
Plan now is to turn off the 802.11n network and try and get the 802.11g Airport Extreme to choose channel 6!
Digital Photography Review has posted a review of the Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd.
Like the other 18x zoom / 8MP cameras on the market the FinePix S8000fd is a camera that tries to be all things to all men, and in some respects it succeeds, in others it shows the limitations of current compact camera technology in a very stark manner.
As with other DPReview reviews, I do like the way in which they compare the cameras they review with similar cameras, which means when it comes to making a choice you have a much better idea about what each camera can and importantly can not do.