Oh, and by the way

You're a member of the BFP? Wow. Small world.

Doesn't happen every time. Right, so when does it happen...

So, in other words, your network isn't configured correctly, you won't leave it alone to time out and keep faffing about, and eventually the computer has to catch up.

If you're using WiFi for large files, then get a decent router - my Belkin used to time out often due to the sheer crapness of the WiFi signal and throughput. Make sure machines have static IP addresses. Configure Samba on the Mac if you're sharing with Windows machines - my network is stable enough that my G5, which is on WiFi with a Linksys router, can stream video to my Xbox via Samba, utterly reliably.

Static IPs are the most important thing here, as unix remembers addresses for mounted filesystems and if you're not using any sort of name server, and not using AppleTalk (which you aren't, if you are using Windows machines too - unless you have PCMacLan installed).

And when it does give you a beachball in finder, leave it alone and let it time out. You can't tell me XP doesn't do the same thing, I know it does, and it's very much worse at maintaining dynamic networks.

Richard

I raise you Solaris 10 :o)

Solaris is barely 'complete' for many users, though. And have you seen the price of Sun workstations?!

Richard

British Freelance Photographers. Hence the large folders of verly large photos.

There's nothing wrong with the network configuration I've been setting up networks for businesses for the best (or worst) part of a decade, it works fine in Linux, windows and even Be. Hence the me pinning the blame on the only OS that causes problems.

Hmm how dose opening a folder class as "faffing"?

All wired apart from the laptops so it's 100mbps full duplex between the file servers and the Macs.

IP addresses are assigned by DHCP (apart from the servers who are static) but bound to the NIC MAC addresses so they always get the same address. (This is mainly for the computers who get moved to another network on a regular basis)

I'll try giving the Macs static IPs see if that helps.

I don't get the beach ball when it crashes or it's not up for more than a couple of seconds before it goes down.

They aren't that bad 2nd hand but make sure you get one with a monitor as a lot of there systems use a proprietary form of connection (just like the mini-DIV fitted to new Macbooks and the new Intel Mac Mini) so you need to get a Sun monitor and they are still fetching a lot. They are still a cool thing to have around if you like me love to collect computer bits particularly old or unusual ones.

Please, stop talking about computers, it's really painful.

The modern Sun workstations are $900 AMD single-core s**te with 8Mb graphics, or $3000 dual core stuff not much better than $1500 Alienware/Dell stuff. Even used, they're a waste of time.

Sun used 13W3, then 15-pin and DVI as far as I'm aware. 13W3 is nothing like mini-DVI (which is only an intermediate connector, the computer comes with adaptors for DVI and VGA, or just VGA in some cases) and wasn't proprietary to Sun in any way, shape or form - loads of workstation manufacturers used them, as did some Apple graphics card manufacturers.

Any machine with a 13W3 is going to be pretty old now, and you don't need to 'get a Sun monitor' - adaptors exist.

Richard (yes. I collect old computer bits. See website).

I know what the BFP is (and the it's Bureau of Freelance Photographers). If you took out the reduced-rate subscription for their associated mag, you might notice a familiar name under "technical editor" and "advertising sales". If you don't take the mag - why not! It's cheap :P

Sorry. I just thought that this perhaps needed some clarification, before you decided to also tell me what photos are.

Newbie.

Well, since I have a RiscOS, Mac OS 9, Apple GS/OS (an operating system for the 16-bit variation of the Apple II), BeOS when it behaves, OS X, Windows, Linux and 'other' network here, with no problems with OS X - and have never had problems with OS X that can't be traced to a specific, and usually daft, error...

So having double-clicked the old shortcut, you just leave it alone when it doesn't respond?

That eliminates that.

If they always get the same address, then it shouldn't be the issue.

Probably won't make a difference.

No beachball, just crashes? Something is very wrong here.

Regardless; you claim to be having a bad experience with your setup - this is NOT the normal behaviour for Macs. Claiming that the Mac is inferior based on this experience is wrong and demonstrates not much experience of computers in general. I've had a lot of problems with one Windows installation, but I don't dismiss all Windows 2000 systems as 'crap'; my complaints about XP are somewhat more sophisticated.

Of course, as a photographer, you should recognise that the Mac has many advantages, not least of which is integrated, reliable, consistent colour management ;)

Richard

New balls please !!!

Eh?

Douglas Payne wrote in news:4h5do0F1p8qf2U1 @individual.net:

It's like watching tennis, this thread. ;-)

Safari sucks, Firefox is OK though. I use an apple mighty mous on my PC

Safari works 99% of the time.

Unless 'tested on all browsers' means a site has been tested on all variants of Exploder..... in which case, Opera usually does the job.

I might get a scroll-wheel mouse for the old Tonkabook that's residing in my 'office', as I use that with an external keyboard and mouse. When I'm using my G4 iBook, I don't notice the missing button or scroll wheel.

I read usenet on a VIC-20. It only has a 40 character display.

Just to confirm that's the only slightly annoying thing on my iBook.. no right button but it does scrolling from the pad so it's no hardship to tap "control" it's not far away.

I picked up one of them funky Apple mice for the Powermac that has a scroll ball for 360degree scrolling and touch sensitive buttons, think it has four in all and it looks like it has none.

As for Safari being crap, it's better than Internet Explorer is but then I don't use that, I use Camino on my Macs....

Any ideas why they took the power button off the keyboard? just curious as my old iMac 333 has one and the original keyboard for the powermac had one too but the pro keyboards don't......

I'll tell you what it could be if it's not bollocks.... all my Macs seem to be fairly picky on ram chips, they have to be perfectly within spec, my old iMac 15" LCD was a perfect example. To be fair though, my iBook and the Powermac seem to work with any chip I've put in so that's probably just the older machines.

Tim

Richard

It wasn't part of the USB specification, apparently - at least, that's what I've been told. There was some technical excuse for it, though I reckon it can't have been that pressing. I don't have a keyboard of that age to see if they still power up a modern Mac.

Keyboard power is something I got used to with my Mac II, and soft-power (machine can switch itself off) was on the original Lisa.

Richard

The Intel machines are faster if you use matched pairs of RAM, and I have had one duff PowerBook - a 12" - that even Apple gave up on figuring out what was wrong and gave me a 15" model to replace it. I suspected the RAM I'd bought, but they tried replacing all sorts of parts and it still crashed, so I think the logic board RAM was bad.

Never saw the point of the 12" PowerBook anyway; iBooks are more robust.

Richard