Cameron Incoll

I picked up a copy of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on Saturday morning, and set out to upgrade our three Macs in the afternoon. All three installs went without a hitch on our 17″ iMac, 15″ MacBook Pro and our 13″ MacBook. I found this Macworld article helpful in preparing me for my first Mac OS X upgrade experience.

For my MacBook Pro, I did the most preparation, by:

1. Performing a complete data backup
2. disabling some login items
3. removing unwanted (or dodgey) preference pane applications
4. verifying the hard drive
5. checking application compatibility
6. checking preference pane application compatibility

For the MacBook, I did a cursory check, and a complete data backup.

For the iMac, I just inserted the disk and upgraded away. There was no data on this anyway - it’s all on our ReadyNAS NV+ network storage.

Removed applications

I removed the following from my MacBook Pro after doing a check using Google for Leopard compatibility:

• efssmartd
• Application Enhancer, and ClearDock
• ExtFSManager
• Flip4MacWMV
• LockTight
• DesktopplePro

The following startup items / applications remained:

• Growl
• Skype
• Quicksilver
• HardwareGrowler
• iTunesHelper
• Adium
• SpanningSync
• Chronosync
• Synergy

Based on the reports of the installation hanging after the reboot, I’m glad that I went to this trouble and removed the Application Enhancer app!

There are now some useful articles about application compatibility for Leopard, as well as some that describe some workarounds.

After the upgrade the following applications needed to be reinstalled or reconfigured:

• Parallels - reinstall
• Synergy - reinstall and reconfigure (plus fix firewall settings)
• Skype - reinstall after Skype stopped and wouldn’t start again - EDIT: you can get the Skype 2.7 beta via this link at skype.com as the 2.6 version seemed to have the problem of stopping and not being able to restart after a period of time.
• Printers - all my printers disappeared and needed to be reinstalled

The only minor issue that I had with the MacBook Pro, was that the Installation could not find my hard disk… but booting off the DVD allows you to run Disk Utility, which reassured me that it hadn’t disappeared, and also let me do another Disk Verification. Once this completed successfully, the install application found the HDD fine.

Upgrade Method and times

Upgrade method

• iMac - Upgrade
• MacBook Pro - Archive and Install (preserve User and Network Settings)
• MacBook - Upgrade

Times

• iMac - 31 minutes after DVD verified
• MacBook Pro - 37 minutes after DVD verified (which took 30 minutes
• MacBook - 47 minutes after DVD verified (which took 33 minutes)

I also had a problem later with the NDAS driver on my iMac that allows me to read the drive in my MediaGate media player connected to my Telly. This driver caused a kernel panic whenever the MediaGate was detected over the network. Restarting in safe mode and uninstalling the driver fixed the issue, but I have not yet attempted to reinstall or find a Leopard compatible version.

Leopard is very impressive - I am very pleased with everything so far.

A bit over a year ago I decided that I’d better take some action about our contributions to pollution and production of green house gases. So the first thing that I did was investigate my options for our electricity supply.

It was clear that there were two things that we needed to do - the first was plainly reduce our consumption, and the second was to source our electricity from a renewable resource. My personal preference for the latter was solar - given that we have lots of sun to go around, and plenty here in Australia.

We reduced our consumption by changing our lights from incandescent to compact fluorescent, and most significantly, by just turning things off. Our lights, our equipment, our computers. All of these run less now.

I also adjusted the heating down one degree, and set the automatic timer to come on later in the morning, switch off during the day and switch off earlier at night. Our lounge room has a family supply of blankets that we all snuggle under at night when we read or watch telly.

To cope with summer, we installed overhead fans, rather than relying on our air conditioner. On really hot days we still use the air conditioner, but we run it at 26 or 27 degrees celcius, rather than the usual 22. It still feels warm inside, but it is cooler that outside, especially on a day in the high 30s. Sometimes to make it feel cooler, I’ll go outside to warm up and come back inside to the relative coolness.

Even with the Australian Government rebate for the installation of Solar Panels, we’d need to outlay a heap of cash to go completely self sufficient at home, so I instead opted to source our electricity from a green energy provider. I chose Origin Energy’s Green Power 100% Solar option, and although it is more expensive to buy per kWh, our bill is only slightly up because we have lowered our consumption as well.

An other thing that we have on our plans are the insulation of our walls - we live in an old weather board house, and the thin walls let so much heat in and heat out. The old boards need to be replaced, so when we do that job, we’ll also insulate as best as we can.

The final thing that we are doing is voting at this year’s federal election. And I am really looking forward to doing that.

This post is part of Blog Action Day - using the blogosphere to help raise more attention to the challenges facing our environment.

Mum and Dad are touring north-west Queensland in their 4wd and Kimberly camper. Mum’s started blogging the trip and every now and then when they can get a connection on their wireless broadband modem, they upload a new entry. If you’re interested in touring Queensland via 4wd and seeing some truely remote Australia, you should check out their blog.

It sounds like they are having a wonderful time, although some of the driving sounds a bit rough and tiring. Apparently the destinations make all the travel worthwhile!

Now this is what I’m talking about. Something that deals directly with the fact that peripheral manufacturers don’t produce network capable drivers for their usb products anymore (eg Canon).

This device from Belkin, the Network USB Hub, allows direct connection to usb devices over a network, as if they are attached directly to your computer.

The problem that I have at the moment is that many new devices, like my new Canon Multifunction printer (MP530) come with drivers that only support direct usb access. So plugging the printer into the my network print server is useless, especially for functions other than printing, like scanning or faxing.

Now all I need is for it to be released, and for the Mac drivers to become available.

My sister, Nadine, has started detailing her current trip to India - she’s in Ganeshpuri which is 2 hours out of Mumbai. Her description of the journey and her arrival at Ganeshpuri sounds wonderful.

Her blog is at nadine.incoll.org