But we’re not there yet, and for now Rolf Nordahl HMAUS member and owner of MacMouse Club will also present some great Leopard/Snow Leopard tips and shortcuts to make you more efficient in what you want to do.

But wait, there’s more - security at home and on the road are a growing concern. More tips for this big concern this Saturday.  You want to be there!

Location:  MacMouse Club  627 South Street #105. Right side of the street, across the Fire Station.  Parking in the lot and on the street 
When:  Saturday November 20, 2010  12 p.m. – 2 p.m.  FREE.

Rolf Nordahl of MacMouse Club presents some of the features of the upcoming Lion operating system.  In addition to the usual cool things it addresses the future of computing on an everyday basis. He will also give practical tips for efficiently using your Snow Leopard or Leopard Mac. Free.  Everyone welcome. More info at http://www.hmaus.org/2010/11/lion

Location:  MacMouse Club 627 South Street, #105.

View Larger Map

May 27, 2010 Thursday 6  pm – 7:30 pm ING Direct Cafe Ali’i Room.  Directions are at hmaus.org/INGDirectCafe

Free, everyone welcome.

Mac Mini Server

Apple’s MacMini Snow Leopard Server, aka MMSLS, sounds scary and technical, but Apple calls it “A whole new kind of server. The simple kind.”  Mike Perlman has worked with Apple servers for 20 years, but the latest MacMini server marks the first time Apple has produced a solution that is cheap, relatively easy to install and maintain and is accessible with mobile devices. http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/

Mike will show you how you can use your iPhone, iPad or computer with this server so your small business or family can access, read and interact with a slew of cloud services such as:

• iCal Server
• AddressBook Server
• FileServer
• WikiServer
• Blogs
• Group calendar, wikis and blogs
• Web mail
• Server monitoring

Do you know what all this means and want to see how it’s done?  Do you not know what this means, want to know if this is something you need?  Either way, join us on Thursday, May 27 from 6 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. at ING Direct Cafe in the Interactive Orange Room (first floor).  Parking in the adjoining employee lot on Niu Street.  Bring your iPad or iPhone to follow along if you wish.  Free.
Driving and Parking instructions hmaus.org/INGDirectCafe

Free.  ING Direct Cafe 1958 Kalakaua Avenue.  Parking in back of the cafe or in Niu St. employee parking lot.  Come early to get a drink or food and get a seat!

This presentation is part of Geek Week and Mactoberfest 09.
For more information and other interesting presentations Geek Week and Mactoberfest workshops click here.

Review by Frank Petrie

Product: Xslimmer 1.7
Author: LateNiteSoft <www.xslimmer.com>
Requirements: OS X 10.3.9 minimum
Price: $14.95
Test Rig: 13″ MacBook Pro; 5GB RAM; Mac OS X 10.6

Ahh, fall is here and Snow Leopard is in the air. But before you install/upgrade, you should really do a few things first. Naturally, perform a back up – RIGHT!? But then root around your virtual attic. Are there pieces of bric-a-brac just floating around in there? No longer used applications? Stray .plists? Toss ‘em.

Then you’re ready to use Xslimmer to finish up the job and get everything ready for Snowy.

“Xslimmer not only frees space wasted by unused code, it can even increase your Mac’s performance. Some of our users have reported applications loading in almost half the time, because OS X does not need to analyze Xslimmer applications in search for the most suitable version of the code.”

Doesn’t Snowy deserve a nice clean bed?

THE JUICE

Xslimmer is great for separating Intel from PowerPC apps, giving you a heads up as to which applications will work with your new system. Also, it gives you a chance to see if any of your favorite PowerPC apps have been updated to Intel apps. You could do this manually through “About This Mac,” but it would take much longer and besides, isn’t your computer supposed to work for you?

Xslimmer also uses a downloadable blacklist, which tracks apps that do not allow themselves to be modified – to prevent piracy, usually. “Blacklisted apps will be ignored, and the list will be automatically updated as new troublesome apps are discovered.”

And you could use Xslimmer like a stealth version of Time Machine. “Xslimmer saves a copy of your originals for you, and lets it delete old backups periodically so that you don’t have to remember about them. Restore your app quickly if you suspect it does not work correctly after being slimmed down.”

And that’s just a few of the bonus features.

THE PULP

Xslimmer has a very clean GUI. Read the Help file to familiarize yourself with the Toolbar Buttons and you’ll be at it in no time. I cleaned out the flotsam on my machine in about half an hour. And my machine is littered with apps and extra code from the software reviews that I do.

Next step, will be to eventually go through my apps and weed out the 32-bit from the 64-bit. (64-bit FCE? Hint, hint.)

THE RIND

Nada.

SUMMARY

This is an absolute toolbox necessity that should be used once a month if you’re always adding apps. Even using it otherwise,  couldn’t hurt. I know that I’ll run it when I do my monthly run of Disk Warrior. And don’t forget that you can also use it for backing up your files.

For $14.95, you’d have to be one dumb cat to pass this up.

RATING : 10 of 10

©2009 Frank Petrie