Several Mac Questions For The Apple Philes.

[jyl]

OK, a couple of Apple/Mac questions for the faithful . . . I'm just not as up to date with things Mac as I used to be, so have to ask for help. Thanks.

(1) I'm thinking of getting an Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) 11n, and upgrading all my Macs to 11n. But my work laptop is 11g, the TiVO uses 11g, and house guests usually have 11g. I don't want my 11n network slowed down by 11g devices. Can I keep my old Airport Base Station (ABS) 11g running, and essentially have two WLAN networks going at the same time? I'd set the 11n AEBS to permit only my Macs, and leave the 11g ABS open. I have Comcast cable internet if that makes a difference. I figured I could buy a cheap router to connect both AEBS and ABS to the Comcast cable modem.

(2) Will iChat videochat work with other videochat services that run under Windows?

(3) As part of upgrading my Macs, I was going to install Leopard on all of them. Is the current Leopard okay (stable, etc), or should I wait for the next rev?

(4) Is Time Machine good enough as a backup/restore solution? Will it work with an external hard drive connected to the AEBS' USB port? I used to use Retrospect which would automatically make a complete image of my hard drive every other week, and even if my hard drive crashed I could load the image to a fresh drive and be back in business as if I'd never left. Will the Time Machine/AEBS/external drive combo do that?

[stomachmonkey]

1) Yes you will ned to put a router in between and create two LANS.

2) While iChat has gotten better with the release of Leopard you might want to look at Adium, free open-source and the current messaging front runner on Macs.

3) I had one issue with my Leopard upgrade, two of my external firewire drives lost their partitions, or so I thought. I had restored one but the other was giving me fits. Had a utility that was only 10.4 compliant. I booted into a 10.4 image to run it and the drives popped right up by themselves. Rebooted into Leopard and all was fine.

4) Time machine will be just fine. Prior to TM I relied on SuperDuper.

[Ronbo]

1 & 2: Can't help.
3: I've had no issues with Leopard. Very stable for me.
4: Time Machine works great, although I don't believe it makes a bootable image. You'd still need to install the OS from the DVD on a full restore. I also think I read somewhere that it won't work on a HD connected to the Airport Base Station, but as mine is connected direct to my Mac I'm not positive on this.

[jyl]

Thanks, all.

I went out yesterday and picked up a AEBS 11n, and Leopard. Ordered bigger hard drives for the Macs too.

Did some looking, seems like Apple originally said Time Machine would work on AEBS-connected drives, but recently removed that language from the website and people have mixed results trying to do it. Well, I figure its a feature they'll get right in a couple revs.

The home systems need help, but I'm not liking the look of the new iMac (the "black eye" or "raccoon eye" thing). So, just going to upgrade not replace. Anyway, am holding my wallet waiting for 3G iPhone, thinner notebook, and (just maybe) son of Newton. So not spending as much w/ Apple as in most years.

[Neilk]

Apple... please give us 15" ibook. I don't want to spend 2k for a 15" laptop. I just can't do 13". I have a backup laptop with a 14" screen and it's too small.

[Moses]

Originally Posted by Neilk

Apple... please give us 15" ibook. I don't want to spend 2k for a 15" laptop. I just can't do 13". I have a backup laptop with a 14" screen and it's too small.

That's the missing piece from the Apple lineup.

[kstar]

A super slim 12" inch "Pro" model is rumored and would be my guess for the "missing piece", FWIW.

***edit: With a flash drive and priced ~ $1500.

Best,

Kurt