Router config Mac help!

[francis]

Hi Phil

Tiger doesn't want to play with my old USB modem (to be fair, Speedtouch has always had poor reviews but it's still a bit annoying). So I've had to go out and buy a router (http://www.linksys.com/support/support.asp?spid=68) and have got as far as plugging it in but that's about as far as I can get (I can't even browse to 192.168.1.1).

How do I get the thing working?!

[francis]

Update: found this (http://homepage.mac.com/car1son/initial_linksys_setup_x2.html) which is some help but the subnet mask is 255.255.0.0 and there's no IP address for assigned for the router.

[francis]

Meh, don't worry about it. After a goodly amount of coffee and swearing I need to buy a different router. Back to PC World...

[Phil]

yeah, sorry Francis, I've been out of the loop for a while - University network isn't letting me onto websitearchitecture.net for some reason...

anyway, sounds like you've got it figured out.

I note that Apple have released Bonjour for Windows (http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bonjourforwindows_readme.html) - their zero effort networking solution (formerly Rendezvous). Might be an interesting and easier to share Mac / PC stuff.

[francis]

Cheers Phil. Yep, not knowing anything about routers and following some (poor) advice, I bougt the first thing off the shelf. That being a router with no modem. Still, all up and running with a Netgear router now.

Now that I've got all my softwarre in and running on my Mini, I'm finding that it can't cope with having, say, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, DW, iTunes, Mail, Firefox and, say, Word open at the same time. Which, to be fair, is probably right, especially with Adobe's ever-increasing bloat. So, it's time to blow some inheritance on something powerful. I'm thinking 64 bit. What I want is to not have to wait for anything, to not have to worry amount memory. What are the G5s like? I'm thinking 64 bit machine with a load of extra RAM in there will do the trick. I want something that I can justfy spending the money on because I won't be needing to upgrade it (including RAM, hard drive, processor etc) for a good few years.

Don't know if you've got Tiger yet, but Safari is insanely fast. I'm also liking the new 'anything scripted on Cocoa can have stuff looked up in Tiger's in-built dictionary' functionality. Don't know if you've seen it, but right-click a word in Safari and do 'look up in dictionary'. Nice! Also, I don't know if this was in Panther or not, but Safari has a spell checker for form fields!

Oh, and Spotlight (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/) is amazing and so fast. I guess it's like Google desktop search without the spyware. Windows users will love this when it comes their way in late 2006 :devil:

I see you're listening to the Engineers album. That's got to be one of my finds for this year, they're very good and deserve to be bigger than they are at the moment. Definitely one of the better new UK groups.

[Phil]

Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, DW, iTunes, Mail, Firefox and, say, Word open at the same time
!

Sound like you need Gigs of RAM.

We've got a Dual 2Ghz G5 and a few 1.8 Singles. The Dual is miles faster - if you've got the cash (which we didn't when we got the singles) then go for a dual - they're up to 2.7Ghz now.

The 64 bit thing is always a bit of a swiz, yes the G5 is 64 bit, and Tiger is kind of a half and half 64/32 bit OS, but there's no full 64 bits consumer apps (some Photoshop plugins take advantage of it, etc etc). And I have to say that wretched spinning basketball still appears on the Dual G5 now and then - i'd love to see it banished.

Am still waiting for my Tiger - can't wait to pile into those widgets, though i reckon my poor old G3 iBook is going to suffer.

Engineers - quality album, and I'm off to see them tonight! Should be more of a stroke-chin gig than a full on mosher I think

[francis]

Originally posted by Phil@May 9 2005, 6:13 pm
Sound like you need Gigs of RAM.
I was thinking about going for 2 gigs of RAM. The dual is fair pricey, but I might just have to do it - it's slightly above what I wanted to spend, but if it keeps the spinning disc away for a good while, then that's me happy. There's a significant different in buying 2x1gig of RAM and 4x512meg of RAM - what kind of performance hit am I likely to get through having 4 RAM slots instead of 2 - any ideas?

Widgets are excellent, but make sure you keep up to date with the news (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/72440/tiger-widget-vulnerability-highlighted.html). It was very confusing to find that Safari had auto-installed Widgets on my machine after downloading them. Strange when they've tightened up other areas (you can't copy and paste passwords into the OS authentication diaglogue, for example (http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details#dict-urls)), but they leave a potential security hole in like that.

RSS feeds in Safari are superb, but a full-on Firefox-like Live Bookmarks would be nice (you just get a count of the amount of unread posts rather than post titles). Still, it's really well done. And, w00t, Dave Hyatt has, in the last few days, got it to pass the Acid2 Test (http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view.php?id=258586), beating every other browser out there. Now we just need it live!

I nearly went to that Engineers gig but have been to a fair few gigs of late and need to save pennies.

[francis]

Well, I did it thanks to blowing some inheritance money. G5 dual 2gig processor, 2 gig of RAM, 256 meg graphics card, Bluetooth + Airport Extreme ready. It's large, it's heavy and it shifts like no other machine I've ever used - I've love to see how fast a dual 2.7 machine is as this is soooo slick. Transferring files was an absolute dream - just sling a Firewire cable between the Mini and the G5, wait 1/2 an hour and come back to find my G5 looking identical in every way to my Mini. Email, applications, files, dock, everything installed and ready to go. Nice!

[Phil]

nice! and you get that dual layer dvd rewriter, too.

does this mean there's now a mac mini going cheap ;)

[francis]

Oh yeah, I got the dual layer DVD writer as well. First refusal on the Mini goes to my parents, but if they don't want it (I think they're after a laptop), then yeah there's one Mini going cheap. It came with Panther but I've got a Tiger upgrade as well if you want. I'll know in a few days if you want it. It's got 512meg of RAM, an 80gig hard drive, Airport Extreme and Bluetooth ready.

[francis]

Phil, if you're into games, it looks like XBox 360 games will run on G5s (http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5)