Just 15 to 20 minutes, we introduced a tutorial showing how to use USB devices and customize the icon of the Windows partition. The following package contains 12 icons that we created in conjunction with such tutorial. Original graphics used in creating these icons comes from Microsoft PressPass – Image Gallery. (See References for the link.)
It’s been a week since we welcomed a new employee with an aluminum framework. Accordingly, we have done several accomplishments with his help. We installed a Windows partition through Boot Camp and then installed Windows XP. We played PC games including Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Farcry, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, World in Conflict, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion… Thanks, iMac! Hmm… There is something missing on our desktop. (See Screenshot 01.) What is it!? Ohh… I know what it is. It’s the icon of the Windows partition. It’s a generic icon that comes with Mac OS. And we want to install a customized icon on this partition. How?
 Screenshot 01 – Source: MacHouse |
All I need is a removable device. Preferably, I need a USB device. What device and why? I need a device through which both Mac OS and Windows OS can read data without an additional driver. Let’s see what I have.
 Screenshot 02 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 03 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 04 – Source: MacHouse |
I also have a cheap MP3 player, which I could use because it has internal Flash memory accessible with a USB cable. This time, I won’t use it, though.
 Screenshot 05 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 06 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 07 – Source: MacHouse |
Let’s first use a USB memory stick, which we reviewed some 15 hours ago. I created 12 icons just for this operation. So let me copy an icon from No. 10 as shown in Screenshot 05 and paste it on USB MEMORY. (Also see Screenshot 06.) Then? I just need to switch to Windows. Continue reading
More than 15 years ago, Apple introduced System 7. It was an unprecedented operating system, compared with its predecessor System 6.0.8, that came with many new software features. One of them is RAM Disk. RAM Disk allows the user to create a volatile, virtual disk where you can store data. Mac OS X doesn’t support RAM Disk. But there are several freeware/shareware solutions for creating RAM Disk under OS X. One advantage of using a virtual disk is its fast Read/Write speeds. One major disadvantage is… Of course, it’s volatile. If a Mac suffers a sudden system error, you can lose entire data stored in a virtual disk.
If you don’t want to allocate a small share of fast, random access memory, there’s a different way of creating a virtual disk at low cost. How about using a USB memory stick? Prices for USB memory sticks are quite affordable these days. You can find a 16-GB USB memory stick for $50 to 60. And we purchased A-DATA USB Flash Drive PD9. In fact, it’s our first experience in using a USB memory stick. And our initial, innocent questions were
One major reason why we wanted to test a USB memory stick is to find a good data storage medium for swapping data between Mac OS and Windows through Boot Camp. And the USB memory stick can be a good candidate because its memory is not volatile. And many USB memory sticks are compatible with both Mac OS and Windows without an additional hardware driver. Continue reading
TOKYO (MacHouse) – Exactly one month ago from today, Apple, Inc. released Security Update 2008-004. Today, the company released the latest security update. Security Update 2008-005 applies to Mac OS X 10.4.11, Mac OS X 10.5.4, Mac OS X Server 10.4 and Mac OS X Server 10.5. According to the company, this security update covers vulnerability issues for such OS X components and applications including Disk Utility, OpenSSL, PHP 5, QuickLook and more.
Click on the button for more information on Security Update 2008-005. 
So we are using Windows XP through Apple’s Boot Camp. PC games including Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Far Cry and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth run with no problem on our iMac Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz at all.
 Screenshot 01: Game screenshot from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare |
 Screenshot 02: Game screenshot from Farcry |
 Screenshot 03: Game screenshot from The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth |
Soon after we installed Windows XP, we started thinking about the best way of swapping files between Mac and Windows partitions. Fortunately, we have a lot of CD-RW and DVD-RW + disks. So we can just put Windows files and burn discs on Mac easily. But exchanging data in this way is kind of time-consuming. Is there an easy software solution for exchanging data between Mac and Windows?
Basically, a Windows operating system installed on your Mac’s internal hard disk drive cannot read data written on the Mac format. One software title that will let you read Mac data is MacDrive from Mediafour. With MacDrive, you can have real-time access to Mac data installed on media drives while using a Windows operating system. Hmm… Sounds good… Before using MacDrive 7, our innocent questions were
So let’s see how MacDrive 7 works while we answer these simple questions one by one. Continue reading