IOGear MediaShair (Updated)

    A few days ago I ordered the IOGear MediaShare from Aamazon. When it arrived, I did a quick setup and test to make sure everything was working. Work it did. 

Printing from iOS

    iOS is a tricky beast. It shows you just enough to entice you, then slaps you in the face with its built-in limitations. Printing should be a fairly simple task, and for the most part it is, if you follow the correct steps.

    You probably (without even realizing it) went the easy route and chose a printer that is AirPrint compatible. There are actually a lot of these on the official list. Just about any home printer you buy from either Brother or Canon will do, sort of. Getting the printer is the easy part.

    After doing my do diligence I decided on the Canon MG6620 Printer. Not a spectacular printer, or fast, but the ink lasts an amazingly long time and it does print double sided. So I hooked it up and got the iMac and MacBook Pro working easy as pie. Even connecting the printer to the wireless network was easy.

    Then I tried to print from an iPhone. "No printer found" was the message I got. I tried a second iPhone. "No printer found". Then I thought, I just got a new iPad Pro and surely this will work. "No printer found". I was getting very frustrated.

    As it turns out, you need an app. Both Brother and Canon make their printer apps available for free in the App Store, but it would have been nice knowing I needed them.

    Setting up the app was easy enough. Once connected to the printer you can close the app and, as far as I can tell anyway, you never need to re-open it. All of your apps that print, such Pages or Microsoft Word, print just fine without needing to open the Canon Printer App.

    Wile a bit annoying, the apps themselves are very small and I can put them away in folder and forget about them until I need to do something else with it. I do, however, need to leave the app installed in order to print.

    This is not a big deal while I am at home, but if I am at a friends house, or somewhere else while out-and-about I may have to find an appropriate app for whatever printer is available. I have come to think of these apps as iOS printer drivers. Since not everyone who uses iOS needs to print from it, I will just assume that Apple left that part out to save space since they still sell (and I have no idea why) a 16GB phone.

    That's all there really is to it. So go ahead and buy the home printer you want, just make sure it is both AirPrint compatible and the manufacturer has an app for it. 

Game of Operating Systems

    I know I know. I really need to make updates to this blog a lot more regularly. However, it has been a bit crazy at my house. I won't go into details here about all of it. What I will go into details about is George R. R. Martin, the creator of Game of Thrones and what he uses to write.

    Back on May 14th the interwebs were all a buzz because Mr. Martin said he still used a DOS machine and a DOS word processor called Word Star to create all of his works. Why would someone do that? Before we get into that, first I suppose I should let you know what DOS is.

    I grew up on Microsoft DOS, which is an acronym for "Disk Operating System". It is command line only, single use only and is very limited in what it can do. It is still in use today. "IF" you have a floppy drive, or if you so choose you can get a USB floppy drive and create a startup disk from within windows. This disk will run a stripped down version of the previous editions of DOS. It can be handy for flashing your BIOS, system rescue, or just because you can.

    Now, just because I said DOS is limited, doesn't mean it isn't capable. It actually has some features that you can't get in a modern version of anything from Microsoft, such as the "UNDELETE" command. That's right, you used to be able to recover accidentally deleted files. It actually works quite well. Even though it was command line only, that didn't stop developers from making graphical shells for DOS, or even games. DOOM, Castle Wolfenstien, all of the classic greats in fact were written for DOS.

    Another advantage of running DOS is stability. You can run a DOS for months, even years without a system crash. The fact is, without all of the overhead of a GUI, and the various drivers from different manufactures, that vary widely in quality, DOS is rock solid. You would be very hard pressed to break it.

    Speed is another advantage. Think about it. This Operating System was designed to be fast on a 25 year old processor. On a new system it is blazing. Even the cheapest, used, laptop you can pickup today will run it with no problem at speeds that are much faster that it was designed to run at. When you press a key, stuff happens. It's just fast.

    Finally, security. How many people today run DOS? Not many. That means for the most part your files are secure, because none of the modern software can read your document format. Most of the virus's and malware written today are written in Java. There is no Java for DOS.

    However, it is more than 25 years old, and does have its limitations. Such as a 2 Gigabyte limit on Hard Drive Size. Being limited to only the first 64 Megabytes of Ram, not that you'll ever need more than that in DOS. Hardware support is also extremely limited and you won't be able to access a Hard Drive that is formatted for NTFS (such as your windows install) without additional software.

    Now before you go on a rant about these limitations, keep in mind that I am talking about real DOS. Not the stripped down version that is to help you recover windows. Starting with Windows 95, DOS became version 7.0 and with each new iteration Microsoft has stripped more and more of it away because it simply isn't needed anymore. The last "REAL" version of DOS, one with all of the utilities and functionality you would ever need from a command line Operating System was Version 6.22, and is in my opinion one of the greatest Operating Systems to ever exists.

    If you want to try DOS for yourself, you can sometimes find copies on floppy disk at the local thrift store, or if you can google for the disk images, although that may lead to legal questions. Your morality is your own.

    As for Word Star and Mr. Martin? Well, as it turns out, Official Copies of Word Star are actually hard to come by, and with good reason. The people that still use Word Star are nearly as fanatical about it as Mac users are about Apple. You can still purchase a copy, which I would recommend if you really want to use it. However, a long time ago Microsoft released Microsoft Word for DOS 5.5 for free. It is still available for download and works very well.

    If you do use Microsoft Word for DOS, keep in mind that modern version of Word cannot read the documents you creates unless you save them RTF format. The original DOC format is no longer supported by Microsoft, though I have heard you can get a converter file. I have yet to test it.

    In my next post, I will go into more details about Microsoft Word 5.5 and why it could be a solution for some.

    Until next time ... 

AirPrint from any printer

    A few days ago I started to look for ways to print from iPhone 4S. I am not really sure why, it just seemed like something I should be able to do. As it turns out Apple want's you to use only those printers that support "AirPrint". As with everything Apple related, there is always another way. I found two.

Commodore Amiga is back ... well, not really

    Today I read an interesting article that peaked my interest. It seems that Commodore USA, LLC is producing a new line of Commodore and Amiga branded computers. As a former Amiga user, I was initially wary of the news. You see, the death throws that costumed the original Commodore company took a very long time. For years no one was certain if there would be support or not. That is until the company was liquidated and sold for spare parts. Until now ... sort of ...

Setting up Time Machine and Netatalk 2.2.2 on Ubuntu 11.10

    This was the biggest pain to setup and get working that I have yet encountered with Ubuntu 11.10. There is a small mountain information available on the internet on how to do this, yet none if it worked. I followed all of the guides and searched "man pages" for almost two weeks before I found the the proverbial keys to the kingdom. What follows is everything I learned from weeks of trial and error.

Your smart phone may be your new PC

This is not going to be your typical rundown of who has what, or who does this or that better. No, this is something a bit less ... tangible. It is time for some speculation. Specifically, is Android poised to wipe the virtual walls of the internet with iOS?

Upgrade MacBook Pro Hard Drive

    Yesterday I finished upgrading the Hard Drive in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro. The hard drive I chose was the Western Digital 1TB Scorpio Blue. Trust me when I say that a full Terabyte huge, and coming from a mere 320 gigs, its like moving from an apartment into a new house.

    As with all things digital, especially computers, there is always those few pieces of information that never seem to make it in to the "how-to"'s of the internet. This certainly was no different. I did however get it done, after a few failed attempts that is.

    Before we go any further, I should mention that there are two ways to accomplish a Hard Drive upgrade. The first is easy, but takes forever. Its just a matter of swapping the drives and re-installing everything from scratch. Put any backed-up documents or photo's back in and your done. But what about your setting? All of the pages that your browser auto logs you into? Your desktop background? Screen Saver and music? Yes, you can backup and restore all of those things, but it takes a lot of time. There is, however, a better way.

Ubuntu, an affordable media server

    Ubuntu is a Linux operating system that is both free and open source. It is also a great way to serve media to your home network and even your television for next to no money. 

Apple ... I want to like them ...

     Apple released iBooks 2 and iBooks Author the other day, and after my initial "wow" effect wore off, I am left feeling rather disappointed. Not in the capabilities of the software, or even the idea. Far from it. In fact I applaud Apple for trying to skull drag our broken public education system out of a nearly centuries old system that is not only broken but continues to fail most American children every day.

iPhone 4S, it really is about user experience

    Yesterday, I was finally able to upgrade my phone. My old phone was a Motorola Droid 2 Global. I have made several post's about my Droid and it really was a great phone. It did everything it was suppose to do and looked good doing it. The google market place is full of free apps for both work and play. I will miss that phone, sort of ...

10 Reasons Why Custom ROMs suck

     Yes, you can install a custom rom, and many are very close to being a great alternative, but none are their yet. You can even add new features. But the pain and stress just isn't worth it. These are my top 10 reasons for my frustrations at the entire "Custom ROM" community for the Google Android operating system.

Ice Cream Sandwich on Droid 2 Global

    Today, I took the plunge and tried a custom ROM for my Motorola Droid 2 Global. Yes, it is an older phone and yes I am eligible for an upgrade in 10 days. With this being the new year, I figured, what the heck, lets go for it.

Teaching yourself to write software

    I have been programming off and on again for around twenty years now. There is just something that I really find exciting about making a machine do exactly what I tell it to do. Of course that is often a problem as well. A computer cannot guess at your intentions or motives. Right or wrong, it will do exactly what it is told, nothing more. For the most part, my experience has been primarily in Microsoft Windows.

USB Video, Fact or Fiction?

    In my last post I wrote about ordering myself a USB Video Display Adapter. Well, as it happens, it has arrived and I have taken the plunge and opened the box. In the next few paragraphs I will attempt to go over both the pro's and the con's of such a device.

Christmas is the time for wishes to come true ...

    Today, a decision was made for me. Well, that is to say, a solution presented itself. Just in time for Christmas too. First a word about using the word Christmas.

    I am not Walmart. I am not Amazon. I do not even call myself "Christian" and my beliefs are my own. I do, however, say "Merry Christmas." Christmas is more than a religious holiday, it is an American Cultural holiday and has been for a very long time. So, I will not say things like: Merry XMas or Happy Holidays or any other such nonsense. If this offends you, then that is your problem. Deal with it.

I am so done with Windows

    I got up early this morning thinking I was going to have a really good day. Yes it was raining and a bit chilly, but it was also the start of my five day weekend. Longest paid weekend I have ever had, I love the holidays.

    Before the clock showed seven this morning I got a call from a frantic co-worker. Apparently he inadvertently installed a driver for a keyboard with the wrong language for yet another co-worker. At this point I should mention his job is working on Windows based computers. The normal solution is of course, just uninstall the driver and install the correct version. Of course if was that simple I wouldn't have anything to blog about.

    The uninstaller removed the files but not the registry entries. Now every time he tries to install the correct drivers it just asks him to uninstall the old one first. He even tried to re-install the first set of drivers in an attempt to re-run the uninstaller again. Now he has to spend his day manually scanning and searching through thousands of registry entries in an attempt to find the one that is holding things up. I do not envy him at all.

    I have been in his position many times and I remember the countless hours of frustration and stress I spent on various Windows machines trying to get something to work the way it was suppose to. Driver issues are probably the worst. This is especially true when working with hardware from a smaller, less-known company that may or may not have the best quality driver programmers at their disposal. These smaller companies usually cannot afford to offer the best support and the user base is either nonexistent for help or so overly technical that any help they may offer is rendered useless.

    While I do pity my co-worker and I do genuinely feel bad for him, I can't help but look upon this as a reminder as to why I switch to a Macintosh. I have not had to restart my computer (as of this writing) for 11 days and 19 hours. Not too bad. While I do not consider myself an Apple "FanBoy" (I love my Android phone) I do really like the fact that my computer just works.

    I hope my co-worker can fix the problem and get his friends computer working before the weekend starts. I am just glad that, for once, its not me in the hot seat.