Oh man! I never really thought that I would write those words. For well over an hour this morning, I’ve been trying to print to the old LaserJet 4M+ from this MBP. No go. I kept getting a

“Attempting to connect to host 192.168.1.104 for printer
Network host ‘192.168.1.104′ is busy; will retry in 30 seconds”

message. It seems that this is a common problem or it’s a recurring problem because I’ve found through Google numerous posts about this going back years!

I’ve tried resetting the printing system in OS X a couple of times, pausing and deleting printer jobs, trying different apps and so on. Nothing worked. And I certainly was not going to buy a new printer just because Apple couldn’t get its act together regarding network printing. So, I remembered a site that I used a couple of years back called iFelix and which I had posted about and fired up a WinXP machine. The instructions are meant for 10.4 but there seem to be less steps with 10.5 which is a good thing. So, I am now once again printing through SAMBA.

It’s not the best solution but it’s better than alternatives such as buying a new printer, upgrading the firmware on the router to handle AppleTalk, etc.

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Very recently it came to my attention, via Fusion’s warning that it could not do any more backups due to a lack of disk space, that my MBP’s 250 gig hard drive was quickly running out of room. How could this be? I rarely download torrents and I could not see where I could be generating so many files in so short a period. After a bit of searching, along with the use of a program called GrandPerspective, it became clear that it was Fusion that was taking up a huge amount of room to the tune of 58 gigs!

As an aside, GrandPerspective is very easy to use and uses a colour-coded map to show groupings of files and folders and how much space they use.

58 gigs was obviously very shocking since I had thought that I only allocated 40 gigs to Fusion and that it was a hard limit. Good thing I had earlier purchased a Take Control ebook from Tidbits Publishing called Take Control of VMware Fusion 2. It’s an excellent book that’s easy to read with good explanations of what does what and why certain actions should be taken. In it, Kissel talks about how to shrink a virtual disk which is where virtual machines store their data. It turns out that every time I save a file, delete a file, save a game, delete a game, and Fusion does a “snapshot” of itself, the virtual disk grows bigger. Obviously, major shrinkage will have to now occur or else Fusion’s virtual disk will take over the whole system.

So, the steps are:

1. (This is recommended) First, go into the WinXP environment and defrag the hard drive.
2. Shut down (don’t suspend) the Windows by choosing Virtual Machine -> Shut Down Guest.
3. Delete all snapshots by choosing Virtual Machine -> Snapshots and this includes not only the ones done by yourself but by Fusion too. You cannot delete the “running” state snapshot but that’s ok.
4. Go to Virtual Machine -> Settings and select Hard Disks.
5. Select the hard disk that you want to shrink and click on Clean Up Disk.

Ok, the steps may sound pretty easy but I encountered a couple of problems which are probably my fault. First, the defragging of the hard drive process encountered a problem when Fusion ran a backup. I don’t know what happened but it then could not continue with the defragging process because it could not find a certain file. This became a nightmare of trying to shut down the virtual machine and restarting it and finally I had to use the rollback function to go back to an early snapshot of the system and start again.

I never did do a complete HD defrag as I continued with the deleting snapshot step. Each snapshot can take up to a gig of space and Fusion takes quite a while to first delete and then clean up files. I’ve found that Fusion took a long time with the later snapshots but speeded up quite nicely with the earliest ones. I suspect that this may have to do with the size of the snapshots with the later ones being much larger. In all, this process took about four hours as I periodically came back to the MBP to check.

The last step of shrinking the virtual disk took Fusion about an hour and was a lot simpler. It’s a good idea not to become alarmed if Fusion seems to hang or take a long time doing something. It’s only when you do a Option+Open Apple+Esc and find that it’s no longer responding that it’s time to force-quit Fusion, which I had to do a few times. So, after several hours, Fusion is now 30 gigs smaller in size in a process that Kissel recommends being done every couple of months.

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It may be telling about the service that I am posting this a day AFTER using VIA Rail’s Wi-Fi service on the train that brought me to Montreal. I’ve heard about the service years ago when it was first being set up but never tried it since it was initially offered only to VIA1 passengers. When booking this latest trip, I found out that it was now generally available to everyone but for those who are not VIA1 passengers there is a fee involved.

At first, I was intrigued since I did not want to pay $8.95 for a day’s usage but, in the end, the attractions of keeping in touch with people, email, online music, catching up on articles, etc. was too much and I sprung for the service. Once on board, it was very simple to log on and we were on our way…both the train and the service.

Things got rocky first for the train as it had to slow down here and there. Ended up late by about half an hour which is about par for VIA. The Internet service quickly followed suit when I found out that streaming online music was simply not possible. The iTunes program kept buffering every few seconds and Youtube videos could only stutter.

Programs such as instant messaging, email and browsing forums and online articles fared better since they were “bursty” in terms of data traffic. That did not save them once the service started disconnecting itself. A bit of the disconnecting was my fault since I did not realize that the log-in window provided should not be shut down and that the service does try to keep the connection going for a bit as the router or server on board the train does “cache” before uploading via the satellite link. When it gives up, it will tell you.

I had originally thought that the service was using some sort of CDMA or GPRS or whatever technology it is when cell towers are used for transmitting data packets. I don’t think we have 3G in Canada just yet. Anyways, it is a satellite service because one of the error messages that came up said satellite upload. Pretty clear there!

That may also explain why the service was so slow and intermittent; I believe that clouds have a way of interfering with the satellite signal and yesterday was very cloudy. In the end, I gave up just sitting there trying to reconnect and read a magazine.

After that experience, I would say that I would NOT use the VIA Rail Internet service unless I know that the sky is clear all the way though the trip, even then I would have to be extremely desperate or have too much time on my hands.

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Whew! Just about done, I think. Yesterday morning, I decided to finally start setting up the little guy and proceeded to open up his guts in order to install 2 sticks of 2 gig ram I had picked up on sale at Best Buy. Unfortunately, it seems that Apple really really tightens the screws holding down the faceplate over the memory slots. I tried using a straight-blade screwdriver from an eyeglass repair kit but the tip snapped off.

Geeze! Ok, a setback but not that big of a deal. Ran over to Canadian Tire a few hours later to get a Phillips #00 screwdriver and after much hemming and hawing picked up a large screwdriver set for a very good price. From the looks of it, I can now work assemble anything and everything that Ikea has. Ran home, opened up the MBP’s guts and installed the ram. Decided to let it charge for several hours before going any further.

After dinner, I decided to start the process of moving everything over and letting Setup Assistant do its magic while I slept. I figured that it would need at least two hours to move everything over using FW400. The MBP has FW800 but my G4 only has FW400. I am very happy that LaCie included all sorts of cables with the Quadra drive so it was a simple matter of unplugging and replugging.

Setback when I pressed the power button on the MBP and it started making a series of three loud and long beeps! Uh oh. Panic time. I immediately looked online for suggestions and it seemed to be either bad ram or bad logic board. Uh oh. I popped in the old Apple ram and I still got the same result! Thinking it’s time for another shower. I checked again and discovered that the ram might not be seated properly. I also discovered that if you did NOT seat and tighten very well the faceplate, the battery might not flip up enough when you unclip it to take it out. You need to have it flip up enough to lever it out of its groove. Grrr..after much pushing down and massaging the plate, I got the battery out and reinstalled the memory. Turn it back on…

Yay! I get the multilingual Welcome scene. Soon after it’s time to enter Target Disk Mode so that I can use Setup Assistant to move everything over from the old computer to the new MBP. Oops…another setback. You’re supposed to restart the old machine and hold down the “T” key while doing so. Unfortunately, because I am using an Apple Extended II keyboard hooked up to the G4’s old USB keyboard, the G4 did not recognize the “T” signal and so it just went on to the log-in screen. More puzzlement this time around than panic. More searching on the Apple support pages before figuring out that the Extended II might be the problem and it was.

So, TDM and the transfer was on! The MBP indicated that it would take over two hours so I decided to just let it run, shower and crash since all of this was making serious inroads to my sleep-time.

I’d like to say that I was woken up by the dawn’s lengthening rays but the truth was it was a hungry cat pawing at my face. Ok, after feeding the felines, I shut down the MBP and flipped it over for more surgery. Reinstalled the new 2 gig sticks and, with some trepidation, hit the Power button. Success! Oh wait…setback…the Apple Extended II keyboard was not recognized right off the bat but the OS had me pressing a couple of keys on it before it finally decided it was some sort of generic 101-key keyboard. How ironic..you’d think that Apple would have its OS recognize one of its most popular keyboards!

Next step was to set up the Boot Camp partition so I can install Windows XP or Vista or whatever in the future. Since I had no clue as to how big of a partition I would need I simply went with the 32 gigs that Boot Camp suggested. This was probably the easiest thing done throughout this whole episode. I then proceeded to hook up various peripherals to the MBP which right now means about seven items - one power cord, two mice, one SD card reader, monitor, keyboard, headphones, and a LaCie Quadra HD. The MBP looks more like a hub than it does a laptop.

Ok, now, getting on to the Internet in order to download updates for the system. Checking Network under System Preferences shows that Airport does not seem to detect my wireless network although the laptop is almost sitting on top of the wireless LAN router. This is a good thing because it means that the router’s wireless SSID is not being broadcasted. I also see at least half a dozen other wireless networks around the place which is down from the dozen that my Thinkpad had detected a couple of years ago. The most likely explanation for this is that the MBP’s aluminum skin is impeding it from detecting more signals. Another thing to note is that all of the other wireless networks are now locked down; two to three years ago, this was not the case.

I decided to plug in an Ethernet cable instead of futzing around with Airport for now and was able to get on to the Internet within seconds. I was not absolutely positive that Airport’s not-detecting my WLAN was the result of the wireless SSID not being broadcasted. The fact that I could get on to the Internet so quickly with the Ethernet was very reassuring since it also meant that once Airport picked up my WLAN I really shouldn’t have any further difficulties getting online. I looked into how to mirror the MBP on to my widescreen LCD and then looked up how to use it while the MBP had its lid down. Very nice once I fiddled around with the display settings but the entire process is also awkward enough that I am loathe to disconnect the MBP now. You have to follow the steps precisely or you’d end up fruitlessly clicking away at the mouse or keyboard trying to wake the laptop.

Ok, so, time to try the Airport connection once again. I typed in the name and password of the wireless network into the Network setting and, I have to admit I was really hoping it would work since I could not tell if my wireless LAN was actually running or not. But, I was online once again in seconds. I later decided to have the router’s wireless SSID be broadcasted in case any friends come over with a laptop and needed connectivity. Highly unlikely but you never know. So, Airport was running and it was time to run Software Update which entailed downloading a couple of hundred megs of updates. Time for breakfast.

Updates went really well afterwards but this entire process took a good five hours of futzing around. Of course, now that I know what to do I’m pretty sure that I can get it down to less than half the time. The real stumbling block here was the mucked-up memory installation which made me sweat for a bit with visions of fighting the crowd over at the Apple Genius Bar but that’s all.

System is VERY fast and it’s a grand to see in Activity Monitor that there are no Page Ins/Page Outs at all, courtesy of the memory upgrade.

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A brand new matte 2.5GHz MacBook Pro! Yes! With last week’s introduction of the new all-aluminum unibody MBPs, every Apple dealer is trying to get rid of the Penryn models that were introduced early this year. The University of Toronto’s computer store were blowing these hot little babies out for C$1649 plus tax while everyone else was blowing them out for substantially more; Future Shop has them for about C1899 and the online Apple store has them as refurbs (if you can get them) for C$1599. Woohoo! I really scored thanks to likeminded pennypinchers on the RedFlagDeals’ website.

The old PowerMac G4 933 is now well over six years old and is showing its age. It currently runs the Panther version of OS X well enough but to upgrade to the latest 10.5 would probably not be cost-effective. It can do it but other factors such as portability and the ability to run the occasional Windows’ game along with a lowish price makes this the best time to move on over to a MBP.

The only problem is that I am going to be extremely busy for the next month or so so I don’t know when I will even be able to open it up.

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For those of you who are curious, I am still off the bike. My wrist has healed enough that I can type with the right hand to some extent. Right now, I am not too sure if the current ache/pain is the result of the injury or of not using my wrist enough.

There is still no way that I can put any significant pressure on the wrist which means that cycling is going to have to be dropped for the next little while. I was having high hopes for this coming weekend but really not too sure.

On another note, I may be looking into getting a stationary trainer so I can put in some mileage during the winter months. It’s always a shock to the system when you first go out and cycle after several months of sitting around. It would also help to allow me to get up and going faster after the snows melt.

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For those of use who do a LOT of typing a keyboard is a tool that may be as important as the software or the monitor that we use. When I first heard about the Tactile Pro I was really excited because I hated the mushy feel of the Apple keyboard that came with my PowerMac. I wanted something with a bit of response and that felt comfortable. I read a LOT of reviews from various review sites and customers on the Amazon.com site that were almost universal in their praise for the new keyboard. Almost universal in that I knew that there was a slight problem with some of the lettering being rubbed off.

I still went ahead in Dec. ‘05 and spent about a hundred bucks on a new Tactile Pro which was a real bargain at the time since it was selling for about 50% more in the US. Initially, it lived up to its hype and it was great to be able to blaze through what I needed to do but earlier this year I sat down and realized that a litany of problems had shown up. They include:

• Caps Lock key lighting up intermittently when pressed on or off.
• Up Arrow key may or may not be responsive when pressed.
• Letter “e” key failed to work (nonresponsive) a few times.
• At least six of the keys have had their “printed” characters rubbed off.

There are probably others but, frankly, this sort of thing is unacceptable even coming from a cheapo ‘board. I’ve heard that Matias will replace the ‘board but with a v.2, which from the one review I’ve found on Amazon is not really a step up. More tellingly, the new version only has a 1-yr warranty versus the 5-yr warranty with this version. Hrmmm…

I’ve decided (and it’s one reason for this review) that I am going to purchase a new keyboard but only one that has had some “legs” in the marketplace. I think that, in this case, rushing a bit on the purchase based on people’s first initial impressions has lead to one of the worst purchases I’ve ever made. To that end, I am leaning towards a Microsoft Ergo 4000 which has been out for over three years and still getting great reviews.

I’m also considering an older IBM Model M keyboard which is a real solid piece of work and ones in good shape still fetch a nice price along with Apple’s Extended II keyboard. Hrmmm…

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Bummer…just found out that July 25th was the grand opening of the first flagship Apple Store in Canada in Montreal. My record is not looking very good so far…been to Yorkdale, Sherway, and Eaton Centre. Missed out on a total of four others but the flagship opening was a real blow.

Of course, going with a gimpy wrist would have made it that much more difficult but I like a challenge.

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About a month ago, I picked up a new Canon Powershot G9 digital camera and it’s really interesting how when you buy what I call a “lead” or “keystone” product there’s always a whole universe of accessories or attendant products for it. Sometimes, it’s not so noticeable as when you buy a personal computer or a bike but at other times it really is such as when you buy a Palm Pilot (Palm III in my case) and you get your styli, your screen protectors, your cases and so on. Or when you buy an iPod and you have your speakers, your cases and so on.

Once again, I’m seeing this with the G9 where I’ve just ordered a Gordy string wrist strap (I hate the neck strap since it always seems to be all over the place and you never know where the camera is when you’re grabbing for it in a bag or jacket pocket.) and a couple of lens adapters, filter, grip and so on in order to protect and enhance the camera’s usability from Lensmate. You think to yourself when you’re choosing a nice digital point and shoot camera that you’re not going to spend a lot more but then the bill starts spiraling upwards as you tack on the goodies. I guess there is just that much more incentive to move beyond cat pics.

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A couple of days ago I stopped by Best Buy at Bay & Dundas to return something and on the way out noticed a new bin that accepts batteries! Yep, BB along with a company called Greentec is now offering recycling services for batteries, cartridges, and so on. Interestingly enough, they will also take back CDs and DVDs. That’s pretty impressive since I’ve always felt guilty about throwing away all of those AOL CDs.

So, I am not sure how widespread this collaboration is but it’s nice to know that there is an option to schlepping all the way to MEC on King.

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