This is a pretty niche problem, but it’s been eating away at me gradually for the past few weeks, so I did some tinkering and found that by simply switching my router’s wireless channel from “Automatic” to “Manual” and selecting Channel 6, I was able to get full wireless back on my MacBook Pro.

Doing this on an Airport Extreme (or Time Capsule, or Airport Express) is as simple as opening the Airport Utility, going to Manual Setup, and adjusting the Channel setting. Your router will have to restart to apply the settings, but once it’s back up, you should be good to go.

For information on accessing Linksys routers, see our previous article about Wireless Security.

Don’t ask me why this works, or why this is even a problem in the first place. Apple hasn’t said anything officially regarding this issue, but it seems to be affecting a number of users.

Fix: Apple’s Mini DisplayPort Wireless Internet Connection Problem is a post from Techerator.com.

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Why use ShareTool?

Let’s say you have a Mac at home and a Mac at work, or maybe you travel a lot and can’t take all your files (like your music) with you. ShareTool provides the perfect solution for these problems: it allows a person to access his/her home computer from any place with an internet connection.

ShareTool's iTunes sharing

For example, I keep my relatively large music library on a Mac Mini at home. I work on an iMac at work. I can’t transfer all my music to my work computer and then worry about it being synced, kept up-to-date, etc. – so I turn on ShareTool at home, turn on ShareTool at work, and my iTunes library pops up under ‘Shared’.

The real beauty of ShareTool is how invisible it is. Once you’re connected, everything shows up on your Mac exactly like you are connected directly to that remote network.

Not just music

Bonjour Services on the Mac

While ShareTool is great for iTunes sharing, that’s not the only thing it’s good at. Any Bonjour services that are enabled on your home computer are accessible to ShareTool (via System Preferences>Sharing).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed a file on my home computer while I’m at work or away on vacation. ShareTool makes file sharing as simple as mounting an external drive since it adds the home computer right into the sidebar of Finder.

Screen sharing is also available through ShareTool and it’s a joy to use. One click and you’re controlling your home computer. This feature is also very useful for a quick preview of larger files.

While ShareTool may not transfer files as intelligently as software like Dropbox, it’s great to be able to browse my entire desktop at any time.

Negatives

While I don’t have much to complain about with ShareTool, there are a few downsides. My biggest gripe is that the host computer needs to remain on for it to be useful. This is a rather obvious point but it does mean more electricity usage. There are some options for remote waking of computers, but I haven’t had a chance to fool around with those.  Luckily for me the Mac Mini is so power efficient I haven’t noticed an increase in my electric bill.

The only other thing I have a slight issue with is the need for ShareTool to be installed on each computer that’s being used. It’s not just a process that runs on the home computer; a ShareTool license must be purchased for each unique Mac. For their part, Yazsoft does a pretty good job of offering bundles for ShareTool and their other Mac apps (SpeedDownload for faster downloads, and Playback to enable media sharing with PS3, Xbox 360, or other UPnP devices).

Conclusion

If easy sharing between Macs is what you need, ShareTool is the way to go. It’s cheap, easy, and works really well. At $20 for one license or $30 for a bundle of 2, this program is a bargain.

What other Mac apps do you use for screen sharing? Let us know in the comments.

ShareTool Offers Super Easy File Sharing on a Mac is a post from Techerator.com.

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Some Mildly Important Info:

If you’re looking for a really ridiculously detailed review of Snow Leopard, by all means please check out Ars Technica’s review. It’s a whopping 23 pages long and covers everything you would ever want to know.

My review will not be like that…at all. In fact, I wouldn’t even be qualified to talk about some of the deep, gutsy portions of the OS they go into. But here’s a little info about me so you understand where I’m coming from:

I’m a graphic designer. I own two MacBook Pros (the 1st and 2nd generations), a Mac Mini, and I use an iMac at work. I’ve been using a Mac since 2005, when Tiger was the default OS. I tend to run my Macs pretty hard, using the Adobe Creative Suite 4 daily.

The Actual Review:

There’s not much in terms of new features, which will make this review short and sweet. The focus on Apple’s part was to really clean up the OS under the hood and make it a truly 64-bit system. We’ll start there.

Cleaning Up

Snow Leopard is smaller and faster, thanks in part to Apple ditching support for PowerPC processors. It’s unfortunate, but if you’re still using a G4 or G5, welcome to 2009. Apple touts its new install will give you back up to 7GB of hard drive space. This is mostly correct, but as it turns out, Apple changed the rules of the game a bit and is calculating hard drive space in the same way the hard drive manufacturers do. So, instead of a 600GB hard drive being seen by the OS as 560GB, it’s now seen as 600GB. It’s kind of arbitrary, and it’s nice that Apple is now aligned with hard drive manufacturers, but I’m sure there will be some backlash. For more info, see this link.

64-Bit, sorta

Snow Leopard is now 64-bit! Unfortunately, that doesn’t really matter too much right now. There aren’t a whole lot of programs that will be running natively, and in fact, Snow Leopard itself doesn’t even boot into 64-bit mode by default (hold down 6 and 4 while starting up to do that). It’s a step in the right direction, to be sure, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer to reap the benefits.

Exposé

This is one of the best new things about Snow Leopard – Exposé finally has some attention paid to it. Snow Leopard now gives you the ability to click and hold on a dock icon, and it will run Exposé for windows of just that app. And to top it off, Exposé finally arranges icons in a grid-like way, instead of the haphazard flying windows from previous versions.

QuickTime

QuickTime X is better. It’s sleeker, faster, and gives you some editing capabilities, as well as the option to upload videos directly to YouTube. Cool.

Google Integration

I’ve used things like Spanning Sync and Google’s Collaboration to sync things like my Gmail and Google Calendars, but now finally Apple allows you to natively sync your Google Contacts and Google Calendars with Address Book and iCal, respectively. It works like it should.

Printers

I just purchased a new laser printer last night, plugged it in, and it worked. Now, this used to happen anyway, but Leopard previously used a generic printer driver to communicate. Now, Snow Leopard fetches the correct printer driver from the almighty Interwebs and installs it automatically. This feature has been around for a long time on Windows (going back to XP), but it always seemed a little clunky to me with all the extraneous little pop-ups throughout the installation process. This is streamlined, and to be honest, I didn’t even know it was happening. I plugged in, went to print something, and my printer was there in the list and ready to go.

Accessing printers over a network is just as easy. Any time you access a print dialog box, Snow Leopard lists available printers for you (even the printers that aren’t installed on your computer). If you choose a shared printer that you’ve never used before, your Mac simply finds the correct driver, installs it, and you’re ready to go.

Some Other Stuff

Apple’s Snow Leopard site touts some other new features: MS Exchange support, faster startup and shutdown, quicker Time Machine backups, etc.

Bad Things

I’ll be honest, I haven’t run into any nightmare situations since installing. The one problem I did have was with fonts. I use a third-party font manager, Linotype Font Xplorer. That program does a little tinkering with font locations, so when Snow Leopard reinstalled all the system fonts, I was getting a lot of duplicates or missing font errors. It only took me about 10 minutes to fix, but keep that in mind if you’re a designer-type or someone who uses some third-party programs to manage system assets like fonts.

The End

Other than that, I’m pretty happy with how things are running since I upgraded. The transition was seamless and, in my opinion, well worth the $49 I spent on the Family Pack. The $29 option is quite reasonable as well, especially considering the performance enhancements. As I said earlier, there aren’t many new features, but a lot of care went into refining what was already a great OS.

My only question is: what will Apple do with their OS now? Will Snow Leopard just keep getting refined or will there be a game-changing OS in the not-too-distant future? Let us know what you think in the comments.

A Not-So-In-Depth Review of Apple’s Snow Leopard is a post from Techerator.com.

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Today’s voicemail service could learn a thing or two from the simplicity of the answering machine. That’s where YouMail comes in. Read on to see how this new service is changing the voicemail game.

I heard about YouMail through the wonderful Lifehacker blog. I decided to check it out, and I’m glad I did. In less than 5 minutes, I was set up to use YouMail voicemail instead of the default Verizon offering.

The list of features that YouMail offers is too long to list here, so I’m just going to rattle off some of the things that were important to me.

1. YouMail does not require a new number.
2. YouMail makes it easy on the caller (message, beep, done).
3. YouMail can send emails or texts when you get a new voicemail. (including an attached mp3, if you so desire)
4. YouMail allows custom messages for different people.
5. YouMail allows uploaded mp3s for your voicemail messages.
6. YouMail is free*

So it’s pretty awesome, in my opinion. I’ve really just started using it, so I’ll provide an update down the road to see how I like it in a month or so.

* The only thing YouMail charges for is message transcription. For a reasonable price, real people will listen to your message and transcribe it. The results are much better than a computer (as long as you trust the YouMail transcribers).

Do you use a custom voicemail service? Tell us about it below.

YouMail – Voicemail Done Right is a post from Techerator.com.

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While this is by no means a comprehensive guide to permanently repairing the Mighty Mouse (talk to Apple for that), it will at least reconnect the Bluetooth device so it can be used.

Courtesy Apple Inc.

1. Once the mouse stops, CMD-Tab until Finder is your active application.
2. Press FN-CTRL-F2 simultaneously to highlight the Apple logo on your menu bar. Release the three keys.
3. Navigate down to ‘System Preferences’ with the keyboard’s arrow keys and hit Return.
4. If the search box is not already highlighted, use your TAB key to select it.
5. Type ‘Bluetooth’ and hit Return.

Oddly, once the Bluetooth menu is accessed, the Mighty Mouse should reconnect and work properly. I’ve had to use this process a few times recently, but I’m hoping Apple will be fixing the problem via Software Updates in the near future.

Are you having any trouble with your peripherals? Do you have other solutions? Let us know in the comments.

How To: Fix Your Wireless Mighty Mouse’s Bluetooth Connection is a post from Techerator.com.

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