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Re: Is my son's logic board dead? (White MacBook) - 10 years ago

Yeah, that's what I figured. Now, the question is whether to bring it to an Apple Store to look at or to an authorized service center.

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Is my son's logic board dead? (White MacBook) - 10 years ago

QuoteChakravartin How long did you give it to chime a second time when attempting to zap PRAM? Have you used that display adapter and monitor with that MacBook before? I held it for about 20 or 30 seconds. I have used the display adapter and monitor with that MacBook in the past several months ago.

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Is my son's logic board dead? (White MacBook) - 10 years ago

My son has a White MacBook with the following specs: 2.0gHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM. When started, the display flashes a little part of the time and other times it does nothing. The startup tone is heard and the SuperDrive can be heard but nothing happens after that. Here's what I've tested. I connected an external monitor to the MacBook to see if it was just a display issue but nothing

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Canon 60D or 7D? - 10 years ago

I have a 7D as my main camera and a 60D as my backup. The 60D is a fine camera but pRICE cUBE is dead on. The focusing system on the 7D was the reason I finally upgraded from my Rebel XTi bodies. Now that I'm used to having the extra focus points, the 60D frustrates me at times when there isn't a focus point where I want one. In addition, there is one other really nice thing to the 7D focusing

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: inexpensive tablets - 10 years ago

Every time I considered an inexpensive tablet, I would read a review that would explain why it was a piece of junk. I finally decided on a refurbished Kindle Fire (bought during the 1-day sale when they were $139.) I like it a lot. It's not an iPad but I knew that going into it. If there was any way to run my Square credit card reader on it, it would take care of all my needs. It's not perfect

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: White MacBook 4GB to 6GB RAM - Noticeable difference? - 10 years ago

Okay, I got the 4GB module today and installed it. Here's what I'm finding. My Mac is running noticeably faster and Photoshop is definitely running faster. I wanted to check to see how much RAM is allocated to Photoshop and found where I should be able to get another speed boost. I found that Photoshop was only recognizing 2100MB of RAM as being available. That's when I remembered that the Noisew

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: White MacBook 4GB to 6GB RAM - Noticeable difference? - 10 years ago

I decided to give the extra RAM a try. It's not too expensive an upgrade so I went ahead and ordered it. The SSD upgrade would have been lots more expensive. I'll post my thoughts after I install it. (Should be here Thursday.) Michael

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: White MacBook 4GB to 6GB RAM - Noticeable difference? - 10 years ago

Wow, lots to think about. While I've thought about purchasing a Mac Mini to get the boost in processing power, I'm not in a position to sell my MacBook. I do photography at locations and have to be able to download the photos from the CF cards to my MacBook while there. I do want to keep shooting RAW. I photograph a lot of live entertainment events (I'm a professional magician for my full-t

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: White MacBook 4GB to 6GB RAM - Noticeable difference? - 10 years ago

Quotesekker SSD will speed up file opening times. PS is also a hog - so if you are using a decent-sized file, it'll always use a scratch disk. If I had a choice between a machine with 8 GB RAM plus a hard drive versus a 4GB RAM plus a 256GB SSD (with 100 GB free), I'd take the SSD any day for a serious PS project where the file is 100 MB plus lots of layers and a full history. If you are ju

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: White MacBook 4GB to 6GB RAM - Noticeable difference? - 10 years ago

My hard drive is 320GB. It's currently 2/3 full but I'm about to move the photos to a 1TB external FireWire drive. I do shoot RAW primarily. My interest is in reducing the time it takes for me to process in Photoshop. Every time I open a RAW image, It takes about 3-4 seconds for an image to open up in Camera Raw from Bridge and that's using the mRAW setting on my Canon 7D (approximately 10 megapi

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

White MacBook 4GB to 6GB RAM - Noticeable difference? - 10 years ago

I have a 2008 White MacBook 2.4 gHz, with 4GB RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive. I use Photoshop quite regularly and am noticing some lagging when running certain actions, as well as when working with Adobe Camera Raw. I know a new MacBook Pro with an i5 or i7 processor would be a huge help (my son has the 13" MacBook Pro from last summer with an i5 processor and it blows the doors off my Mac

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Adobe InDesign & Photoshop Activation - 11 years ago

Well, at least it's comforting to know that Adobe worked with you on it.

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Adobe InDesign & Photoshop Activation - 11 years ago

My MacBook is having some repair work done on it. Since I knew I would be without for a few weeks, I made a second clone of my hard drive on an external to operate on my sons' MacBooks and my wife's MacBook Pro. I wasn't sure whether Adobe's activation system takes into account what computer you are on or if it looks for something in the system. I called them up and asked if I needed to deacti

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Great Smokey Mountain Photo part 2 - 11 years ago

You are correct. Those buildings in the background are in Gatlinburg. The most visible one is the Park Vista Hotel. (I live in Knoxville and have been here for 40 years. Get to got to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg on a regular basis.) One small note. It's actually the Smoky Mountains. There's no e in it.

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: MacBook Needs Repair - How to Secure Files? - 11 years ago

QuoteBlack Can't you just access mikey's porn files by taking the hard drive out? LOL! No porn but this is quite interesting. I've never had to worry about this before because I use to own a G5 tower and I did all my own repair work on it but I sold it to be able to pay for the MacBook (had to get an Intel processor.) I am still thinking that doing another back up (actually, I clone the dr

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

MacBook Needs Repair - How to Secure Files? - 11 years ago

My 2 1/2 year-old MacBook appears to have a dying CD/DVD drive. It started having trouble reading DVDs and then wouldn't eject one of them. I had to restart several times and finally it came out. The same DVDs are working fine in my wife's MacBook Pro. (The one that got stuck was working fine last night in my MacBook.) Anyway, I have an extended warranty through Best Buy so I'm going to bring

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Attachment Not Showing Up In Mail.app - 12 years ago

Someone sent me a photo I requested and, when I got the email, there was no attachment showing. Then I looked at the size of the email and it was 4.4mb so I knew it was there. When I clicked on the triangle in the header for attachments, it didn't show up. Nor did it show up when I clicked on the Save drop down. So, I finally went to File>Save Attachments and it showed up there. What would

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Appleworks Database to ? - 12 years ago

I am only using my database on one computer. Unfortunately, Bento is not an option as it doesn't do mail merge. (They have a work around but it's not a true mail merge.)

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Appleworks Database to ? - 12 years ago

Okay, I know this has been brought up many times but I want to see which way people have gone from using Appleworks' database module. I have several AW databases (none that are large) that I use regularly to do mail merges with. I have a lot of template letters, as well. These are used in my business as a professional magician and part-time photographer. I do letters of agreement, simple contract

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: DSL Speeds and Multiple Users Streaming - 12 years ago

Yeah, I have cable available but I don't have cable set up at my house. (Yep, I've never had cable TV at my house.)

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

DSL Speeds and Multiple Users Streaming - 12 years ago

I am connected to the Internet using DSL. I have the 1.5Mbps speed. When my teenage kids are home, they tend to stream videos. One son will watch TV episodes on his MacBook. The other one will often be on Wii streaming Netflix videos. When they're both on, my web surfing slows way down. Today, I couldn't even get the UPS website nor the Fedex website to come up. (Yes, I'm conducting business here

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: 16 kbps for MP3 silent track? - 12 years ago

Thanks for the info deckeda. I went ahead and generated a silent track at 8K bit rate and a 22K sample rate. This created a 1.3 MB file. That's small enough for me! I tested it today and used it in a show and it worked fine. Thanks, Michael

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: 16 kbps for MP3 silent track? - 12 years ago

Quotemikebw Highly compressed silence should still be silent, you are just reducing the amount of information used to represent a flat line, but then I haven't ever tried doing that before so best to test it first. That's what I'm thinking. QuoteKen Sp. The non-noise may attract dogs from blocks away. They will show up and silently bark......and you will know the end is near.

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

16 kbps for MP3 silent track? - 12 years ago

I use a RF remote control to operate my iPod Nano for use in my magic shows. In order to keep the iPod from going to sleep, I use a 20 minute silent track between each musical track. When I first generated a 20 minute silent track with Audacity, the file was 19.4 MB in size. That seemed pretty large for silence! I started experimenting today and figured out that I could reduce the file size tr

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Anybody using Bento? Do you like it? - 13 years ago

Although I've never used it, the biggest limitation is that it doesn't do mail merge directly. (There's a convoluted process they suggest but I wasn't interested.) If a database doesn't do mail merge, it's not of much use to me.

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Appleworks Mail Merge Crashing in SL - Need alternative suggestions - 13 years ago

Okay, I knew eventually I would have to move out of Appleworks into other applications to do my work. That time has come. Since upgrading to Snow Leopard (10.6.2), Appleworks is crashing on a regular basis. I have been using the database module and mail merge for years. Now, I need an alternative. Bento doesn't do mail merge (which is useless) so I need suggestions. I've thought of converting my

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Several questions about Photoshop Elements 8 & CS2 - 13 years ago

It sounds like your issue is that your monitor is not properly calibrated. In order to make sure printed photos match what you see on your monitor, your monitor has to be properly calibrated. I use an i1 Display 2 to create a proper profile for my monitor: If you're printing your own photos, you also want to make sure you have a proper printer profile for the photo paper you are using and th

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Toast vs. OS X 10.6.1 Built-in Burning - 13 years ago

I've been living with Roxio Toast Titanium 6 for quite a while now. I have the Snow Leopard upgrade but haven't made the jump yet because of a few applications that aren't compatible. One of them is Toast Titanium 6. I don't do a lot of complex burning. Mostly, I make simple CDs and DVDs. Is there any real reason to buy Toast Titanium 10 vs. using the built-in burning ability of OS X? Thank

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Issues starting up from external Firewire drive - 13 years ago

QuoteFilliam H. Muffman Got the product numbers handy? You generally can not boot a machine with a version of the OS earlier than what came installed on it. Late 2008 MB467LL/A came with 10.5.5 White 2009 MB881LL/A came with 10.5.6 I thought of that so I had updated the OS to 10.5.8, which is what his MacBook has on it. I'll try to repair permissions on her drive tomorrow. Michael

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals

Re: Issues starting up from external Firewire drive - 13 years ago

Sorry, I was hoping that it wasn't too convoluted. The backup drive was originally formatted on a PPC Mac and was used with the iMac G4. When the iMac started acting up. I took the backup drive and cloned it to a second external drive. I then formatted the backup drive using my MacBook (using GUID file format) and then cloned my wife's stuff back onto the newly formatted external drive. Since the

by magicmikey - Tips and Deals