Category: news

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So is it faster?

I have been using my new LaCie Poulton drive for over a week now and so far I am impressed with it. Running Leopard on it for my iMac means I now have a lot more free space over 700GB compared to the 15GB I seem to have with the original 250GB hard drive I had on the iMac.

So is it faster?

Yes!

It certainly appears to be faster, but I suspect that Leopard is also a factor as that made a difference with my MacBook Pro.

It was certainly a bit of a pain going through all my applications and re-installing them, re-activating some and finding the serial numbers of others.

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Installing Leopard

So I have my new drive, a 1TB LaCie Poulton, and though it is not as quiet as I would like (well a 7200rpm drive is still quite noisy, but at least there are no noisy fans).

So decided to install Leopard on it and use it as a boot drive for my iMac. The iMac only came with a 250GB drive which is proving problematic, I am hoping with 1TB of space that I can at least have a little more room for “stuff”.

Rather than install Leopard direct, I decided to install from the iMac install disks and then install Leopard on top of that.

Once Tiger was installed, I went straight to Leopard. Once Leopard was installed I then ran Software Update, and of course forgot to change the energy saver settings, so as before, the iMac did a Vista on me and turned itself off whilst downloading a 560MB update – for 10.5.4

I will then need to decide which software to install that I will use.

Wondering if Office 2004 is Leopard compatible (I think it is) and wondering if CS2 is? Problem with both those is that they are both not Universal applications, so both rely on Rosetta as they are PowerPC applications, and as a result are quite memory intensive.

Will certainly be installing iWork ’08 and iLife ’08 and iMovie HD ’06 as well.

Still downloading the updates.

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Quiet External Drive – LaCie Poulton 1TB

Was is only a few days ago I was blogging about noisy external drives when I happened to find myself in the Apple Store in Regent Street in London when I noticed that they had a LaCie Poulton drive on display, switched in and boy was it quiet. So quiet that even when I put my ear to it, I couldn’t hear it!

No fans.

So even though I had only popped in for a look at the Apple Store, out came the wallet and a purchase was made.

LaCie Hard Drive by Poulton

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Noisy external drives

I have always had a very noisy externa LaCie 1TB drive, so noisy that basically I put it on, transfer the files and turn it off.

I have been using an external Iomega 1TB drive recently and though it is much much quieter (I can certainly leave it on) it is still very noisy.

I do have a couple of external 40GB LaCie host powered drives and these are very quiet.

So what I am trying to find is a quiet drive, but a large quiet drive, at least 1TB in size, though 500GB would be fine as well.

Any suggestions?

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Vodafone “hides” price rises

BBC reports on criticism of Vodafone about recent “hidden” price rises.

The National Consumer Council (NCC) has criticised Vodafone for increasing mobile phonecall costs without telling its customers.

Vodafone plans to raise minimum call charges by 25%.

But a letter inserted into July’s bills stated the new price list but failed to mention they were going up.

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Want some DTP software for “free”?

No this is not some kind of dodgy eBay scam!

Scribus is an open source DTP package for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

Sounds interesting, take a look.

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…but I don’t like iMovie ‘08!

I actually quite like iMovie ’08 for certain movie projects, however I do miss certain elements of iMovie 06.

Some people really don’t like iMovie ’08 and if they have upgraded to iLife ’08 or have bought a new Mac then they won’t have the ’06 version.

However Apple have realised that not all movie projects are suited to iMovie ’08 so now you can download iMovie ’06 if you want.

iMovie HD 6, previously distributed with iLife ’06, is available for download for those who have purchased and installed iLife ’08.

Download it here.

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So what is this Flickr all about then…

I have been meaning to write a blog post on Flickr for some time now.

So what is this Flickr all about then...

Well now I don’t need to as TASI have done an excellent guide on Flickr.

This document looks at the ways you can use Flickr and some of its associated tools and services to help organise a collection of images.

Whether you have a small number of photographs you would like to share privately with a few colleagues, or a larger collection you need to make more widely available, Flickr offers a possible alternative to setting up an in-house image database.

I found it very interesting and learnt a lot from it. One interesting fact was the way in which other institutions and museums are now using Flickr to host digital collections.

You can view my Flickr images here.

Post originally appeared on e-Learning Stuff.

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When the GO!ng gets tough…

Okay despite my earlier problems and upgrade issues I am quite pleased with the GO!VIEW service.

I have downloaded a few bits and pieces.

Hustle

The quality of the Doctor Who video was quite poor, almost VHS quality, however I was more impressed with the quality of the Hustle video which was (in my opinion) as good as the quality I have managed converting EyeTV Freeview recordings.

Now I suppose there are some downsides.

According to the GO!VIEW interface, I only have access to the recordings for 29 days, however this could be just because of the “free” month, but I somehow don’t think so.

Also once transferred to the PSP, I only have 14 days in which to view the video.

The major big downside is the choice, the library of content on GO!VIEW is very limited. If it wasn’t for Hustle and Spooks I probably wouldn’t subscribe and if I watch the lot by the end of the month and there is no new content then I will certainly be cancelling my subscription.

Lets wait and see.