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Mac Software Review: TechTool Pro 4.6.1

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Micromat TechTool Pro 4.6.1 Mac
Mac software review

In the mid-1990s, two of the most popular Mac utility software titles were Norton Utilities (Symantec) and Now Utilities (Now Software). Soon, Now Utilities disappeared from the Mac software market. But Norton Utilities survived the rest of the decade.

Norton Utilities was virtually THE system utility software for Mac users throughout the second half of the 90s. Nonetheless, some people didn’t like it. When I first started my Pd.D work in 1996, one female graduate student from Korea said she didn’t like it because Norton Utilities destroyed files. Then a new software title came out of nowhere and quickly captured the hearts of Mac users who needed a different choice for diagnosing and repairing disk problems. That was TechTool Pro.

Compared with Norton Utilities, TechTool Pro was a mere disk-problem diagnostic program equivalent to Norton Doctor, which is just one of the components of Norton Utilities. To my knowledge, TechTool Pro didn’t have a repair function at first. Anyway, Norton Utilities was succeeded by Symantec SystemWorks, but it was eventually discontinued around 2003. In contrast, TechTool Pro has expanded its region and now contains such components as disk optimization (Optimization), data recovery (Data Recovery), format & initialization (Wipe Data). Now, TechTool Pro sounds just like old Norton Utilities, doesn’t it?

By the way, a major reason why we decided to use the latest version of TechTool Pro 4 is that we actually have a serious system problem. I know the initial origin of the problem. It’s open-source multiplayer game Urban Terror. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, we started having a system shutdown – the desktop suddenly becomes dark with a message that you need to restart your Mac by holding down and releasing the start button at the back. It’s something that doesn’t occur very often, not even once a year. But we had this system shutdown almost every 2 or 3 hours after downloading customized maps. Eventually, we deleted entire game files, and the problem was gone, we thought. Then a system shutdown started occurring again a week ago. We now have a system shutdown almost every other day. And we just had it about 12 hours ago. This time, we get a system shutdown only while using web browser called Camino. Continue reading →

Mac Software Review: Ram Disk Utility Pro 1.1

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Ram Disk Utility Pro Mac
Mac software review

When Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple, Inc.) introduced System 7 nearly 15 years ago, one of the newest things was Virtual Memory. This control panel allows the user to allocate hard disk space to the system so that it can be used as if it were RAM. Another new feature was RAM Disk. It’s a control panel function which allows the user to allocate part of RAM so that it can be used as a virtual disk. Those days, I put Norton Utilities’ Disk Doctor and Speed Disk with a tiny system in RAM Disk to quickly fix disk problems and then perform defragmentation. Under System 9.1, one could not start up a system from RAM Disk any more. Also, Apple incorporated Virtual Memory and RAM Disk into a single control panel called Memory in System 9. (See Screenshot 01.)

So what happened to RAM Disk under OS X? When I eventually switched to OS X several years ago, I was disappointed to know that the new system didn’t support RAM Disk. But there are several freeware and shareware titles that let you create a virtual disk out of RAM. One such Mac freeware title is Esp�rance DV (hereafter, Esperance DV) by Michael Parrot. Esperance DV is a mere PreferencePane, which is accessible by System Preferences. (See Screenshot 02.) Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since June, 2006. Perhaps, it doesn’t require an update. Anyway, we don’t know if Esperance DV runs under 10.5 Leopard. What else is available? And we’ve found Ram Disk Utility Pro. Continue reading →

Microsoft Releases Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 Update and Office 2004 for Mac 11.4.1 Update

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Microsoft Office






TOKYO (MacHouse) – Yesterday, Microsoft released Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 Update and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.4.1 Update. According to Microsoft, Office 2008 12.0.1 Update “fixes critical issues in Office 2008, including issues that might cause Office 2008 applications to stop responding or quit unexpectedly.” And the company says that Office 2004 for Mac 11.4.1 “fixes a vulnerability that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.”






Click on the button for more information on Microsoft Office 2008 12.0.1 Update. VTC
Click on the button for more information on Microsoft Office 2004 11.4.1 Update. VTC

Learning Graphic Editing Basics with Adobe Fireworks CS3 06

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Adobe Fireworks CS3

Learning Graphic Editing Basics with Adobe Fireworks CS3 06: Using Fireworks’ Batch Process

Many scientific and economic analysis software programs (GAUSS, Shazam, RATS, CATS, SAS…) support batch process. A batch process is also called macro. It’s a function that you can use to apply multiple commands to process a large data set. Another prominent software program that supports batch process is Microsoft Excel. Microsoft introduced Excel 5.0 in the mid-1990s. Microsoft incorporated Visual Basics into Excel 5.0, which eventually led to the death of once-dominent spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3.

Anyway, one of the major differences between Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop is that the former title supports batch process. (Adobe Photoshop CS3 now supports batch process.) For example, if you have several dozen PNG-formatted files and just want to change the format of those files to JPEG, you can apply Fireworks’ batch process to them at a time. You definitely don’t want to open each file and save it in JPEG, do you?

This 6-minute video tutorial shows how to use Adobe Fireworks CS3’s batch process. At first, we use it to change the format of 15 PNG-formatted graphic files to JPEG. Another example we show in the tutorial is to change resolutions and put files upside all at a time.

Key words: PNG, Batch Process, Export, Add, Custom, Edit, JPEG, Quality, Save Script, Same location as original file, Batch, Scale, Scale to Size, Commands, Rotate 180, Save Script, Custom location Continue reading →