Shortly I will ask her to install a new hard drive in the G4 and I will sell it to help pay for the new MacBook because it does have a lot of life left in it. If were not for the fact that Snow Leopard will be out shortly I could have kept it awhile longer. Snow Leopard will require computers with the intel chip and I will not be able to test software without the new MacBook.
Long story to get to this tip. There are a couple of Widgets that I routinely use and I was in the process of downloading them to the new machine when I saw a new one that looked interesting and decided to download it as well. Bad decision!
Widgets are made by individuals which means they are not always as perfect as we would like them to be. This one would not work and caused my new machine to freeze up. I needed to get rid of it which is hard to to when you machine is frozen.
I restarted the machine. Clicked on the dashboard icon on my Dock. You can also use F12 if you have that key set for that in the Exposé and Spaces System Preferences Pane. Then I clicked on the big plus sign in the round circle that appeared. When I did that, I had a button option that said "manage widgets".
A new window opened. At the bottom of this window is the button that lets you go out and look for new widgets. But listed within the window are all the widgets that you currently have. On the left are boxes that you can click or unclick. If you unclick them, they stay in place, but don't show up in your active list of widgets.
If you have downloaded any widgets, like the bad one I downloaded, you will find a red circle with a minus sign inside it, next to each of them. To delete them from your computer, just click on that red circle and they will be deleted. You will be asked if you are sure you want to delete them.
Here is a secret not many people know. You can actually delete widgets that came with your system. Say you could not care less about ski reports and don't want it taking up room. Here is how you do it.
Go to your hard drive > Library > Widgets. (It doesn't matter if it is in list, column, or icon view.) Find the widget you want to remove and drag it to the trash to permanently remove it.
That's it. Have fun.
Nancy
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( 2.9 / 60 )When you type in words that should be in your Spell Checker's dictionary you can quickly add them. Goodness knows I run into this all the time with a last name of Gravley. All the spell checker programs want to change it to Gravely since that is a recognized word. I'm sure that there are many others out there who have the same kind of problem.
In fact what reminded me to include this tip was listening to an interview of the actor Liev Schreiber who said he bought a Mac because Microsoft kept automatically changing his name from Liev to Live every time he typed it. Don't you just love it.
Anyhow, this is very easy to do. If you have a one button mouse, hold down the control key and click on the word. If you have a two button mouse, right click on the word. A contextual menu will open. Choose Learn Spelling from the menu.
That's all there is to it, but it will save you hours of time. Well, unless you are using Microsoft. This trick doesn't work in Microsoft. In Microsoft you have to click on the word, choose Tools > Spelling & Grammar > Add Word.
It's Microsoft. Everything takes 3 extra steps.
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( 3 / 42 )There are so many things you can not do on your Mac without your administrative password - like sign on when you are logged off, install software, unlock anything that is locked, add or delete accounts - little things like that.
You think you will never forget that all important password. But what happens if you do. Or if your spouse dies suddenly and all your financial records are on his or her Mac and you don't know how to access them. Or you purchased a second-hand Mac and can't get into it.
Well, you can very easily create a new admin password if you have the installer OS X disc that came with your Mac. If you don't you can try and borrow a set, or look on ebay for a set. They have to match perfectly. Disks for a PowerBook G4 will not work on an iBook G4.
Just to make it harder for thieves, don't store your system disks with your Mac.
Important note: Your Keychain entries will be lost following this procedure. If you are able to do so, open each entry, make sure the password info shows, and print out a copy so that you don't lose that precious information while you are creating a new password.
Here are the steps:
Get your original Mac OS X Installer disc and insert in the CD-ROM drive.
Restart your Mac, holding down the "C" key.
Go to the Installer menu and choose "Reset Password". When the dialog window opens, choose which disk you want to access and type in a new user name and password. Make sure you choose the account you need to rescue, not the root account. Depending on your current operating system, you may only be asked to enter the password. Click the Save button.
Quit the Reset Password dialog and quit the Installer program. Your computer will restart and you should be all set.
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( 2.9 / 40 )This is a two-fer. Or even a three-fer depending on what equipment you have. While making one change you get to make others for free.
I find the little AOL running man to be annoying. If a person doesn't select an image for their iChat ID, iChat defaults to that little AOL icon. Depending on how many iChat contacts you have, you can have a bunch of them. Ah, but you don't have to. You are in charge. You can put your own images in. They will only be in place on your machine so you can be as "selective" as you want to be.
Open iChat, and open your Buddy List (Command +1) if it doesn't open automatically. Control-click on the name you want to work with. They don't have to be on line. When the window opens, click on Show Profile > Address Card Tab.
Drag and drop the picture or icon you want to use and click the box next to "Always Use This Picture" checkbox. Here is the card for my friend Craig.
Oh yeah, and that two-fer? Click the button that says "Show in Address Book" and that same picture will be added to the person's V-card in your address book, and if you use Bento, it will be added there as well. And, if you have an iPhone, it will be added there as well.
This only works from this direction. You can't add an image in Address Book and have it automatically show up in iChat.
Nancy
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( 2.9 / 58 )Sometimes you want to search for something based on the kind of document it is. For instance, recently I needed to find all the Keynote documents I had on my Mac because I needed a specific slide show I had made and I couldn't find it anywhere. (Couldn't remember what I had named it either, but that is a tale for another day.)
Here is a quick way to do it. Open Spotlight and enter kind: followed by the application you are interested in. For my recent search I entered kind:keynote. When I did so, all the slide shows I had saved on my computer popped up on the Spotlight list and I found the one I needed, stored in a sub folder where it did not belong. You can use the kind: feature to search other kinds of things as well.
Nancy
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