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When you can’t count on HP, the Linux community is fortunately there for us Mac users.

No, there are no “HP Certified” drivers. Yes, there are Mac ones.

I pulled the information from a thread here. Thanks goes out to craigverse for the info.

Before going any further, Leopard users seem to have a very high success rate using the 1st package listed (the drivers I used). Snow Leopard users however have been met with very mixed results – some get it working, and others don’t. If you try and it doesn’t work, there are many possible side-effects: you may end up with printers permanently listed that don’t work, you may have conflicts with other installed printers, and there could be other issues.

First of all, you’ve got to download 3 programs. You can find them at  http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/hpijs. The ones you’re looking for are foo2jzs, Foomatic-RIP, and gplgs (choose the gplgs that corresponds whatever verson of OS X you happen to have).

If you’re a little lazy, I’ve zipped all 3 and uploaded them here:
MacOSX_HP_Color_LaserJet_1600_drivers.zip (drivers I used)
MacOSX_HP_Color_LaserJet_1600_drivers_new.zip (new drivers with SL support – not tested)

continue reading…

November 6, 2009 update: I’ve taken a look at Fusion 3 vs Parallels 5.

November 5, 2009 update:
Parallels 5 is now out too, which also supports DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3 (PS3.0). I’ll have to test it later.

October 30, 2009 update:
VMWare Fusion 3 has come out, which now supports DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3 (PS3.0). If you read this article earlier, you may have noticed that Mass Effect 2 didn’t run on either VMWare 2 or Parallels 4, because they only supported PS2.0. Now that Fusion has PS3.0 support, it *may* now run Mass Effect 2, although I haven’t tried it yet.

In any case, if you’re looking to purchase Fusion, make sure you get version 3 (and not the older 2.0.1), as it’s likely to play even more games.

Finally, feel free to continue reading this review – I apologize for it being insanely long (it was originally split up between 4 pages). Note however that it is now outdated. It’s still valid if you’re using Fusion 2.0.1, but if you’re using the new Fusion 3, keep in mind that your mileage may very.

I’ll try to test both of the latest versions at some point in the future.

VS
Which one is better for Windows gaming on the Mac…?

Q: I like Apple Computers, especially Mac OS X. Problem is, I also like gaming, and all the games are for Windows. I know I can dual-boot with Bootcamp, but I’d really like to be able to play from within OS X. Question is, are the emulators (or more accurately, Virtual Machines) good enough that I can play my Windows games while in OS X?

A: We’re about to find out…. continue reading…

A little hiccup on my OSX86 machine… I’d double-click the regular WoW installer, and the little animation would happen, and then… nothing.After a little searching, it appears I needed what’s known as a “Carbon Library Fix”. I’m guessing it has something to do with Rosetta being a little broken or something with the iDeneb install. In any case, I downloaded it from a korean site here (Google Translated).

I’ve provided the file here: CatbonLib_FIX.pkg.zip

Situation:

DS1 (Dark Star One) in Windows 7 Beta (x64) was crashing immediately upon trying to start it. This is the Steam version of the game, although the fix may apply in other situations.

The Ascaron Exception Dialogue pops up with a “Walhalla Exception” and says there’s been an “Ascaron Exception Error”. If you look through the Advanced tab details, you’ll see mention of D3DERR_NOTAVAILABLE and a file called dxapdirect3d.cpp .

In any case, I was able to fix it.

I’ll give credit to the post here for the info.

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Grabbed DSO for $5 through Steam over the holidays. One hiccup I found was that the rest of the Stromok system was discovered, but I couldn’t get to Odia, which is pirate infested, and hence, grants an artifact when you clear it.

As it turns out, you have to head to Cabracoy first and complete the sidequest there.

Took a bit of searching to find, but I got the info from here.

Anyone familiar with stress testing in Windows is probably familiar with Prime 95. Problem is, if you head to the mersenne.org website, you won’t find a link to a Mac OS X version.

Head to their *forums* however, and you’ll come across this thread which has links to download the latest beta version (25.6) for a few operating systems, including Mac OS X!  Only downside is the link is broken (it’s missing the .org in mersenne.org). Either fix it manually in the URL bar, or click here [ftp://mersenne/gimps/mprime256-MacOSX.tar.gz] to download it.

Just so you’re not in for a surprise… the Mac version is all text-based. No fuzzy GUI like in the windows version. Run the program and a terminal window will open. However, it’s still easy to use, and still great for stress testing your machine. If you’re in the middle of stress testing and want to cancel and go to the main menu, hit CTRL-C.

Here’s the background. I’m a Wordpad/TextEdit kinda guy. I don’t use office suites unless I have to, and the few times I do use them, I just want to get my task done and move on to something else. I’ve got to be able to find what I want quickly which means most of the options have to be easy accessable. At the same time, I hate a cluttered interface, so having every option plastered over the screen makes me less than happy. Yes, I can be both picky and tough to please.

Moving on, for my last blog entry, I had done a small benchmark and wanted to be able to present the numbers in a chart, since it’s easier to visualize differences in nice colorful bars than it is a zoo full of numbers. Before going on, if you’re a professional user who plans to use a spreadsheet every day, this review isn’t for you. I’m really just comparing something relatively basic between 3 programs. I certainly *don’t* recommend you make a multi-thousand dollar corporate purchase decision based on what I say here. If on the other hand you’re a casual home user and are just looking for the opinions/insight of some others when it comes to a spreadsheet program for the Mac, I dare say you’ve come to the right place. Just promise you’ll research what others have said too

I had 3 programs available to use:

• NeoOffice – Based on OpenOffice, an office suite tailored specifically for the Mac. Strong points are that it’s free, and apparantly excels at opening files from other office suites.
• iWork ’08 – Apple’s own set of office apps. From what I’d read, Keynote (the presentation app) is a very impressive program, but Pages and Numbers are a little weak. We’ll see. Not free, but there’s a 30 day free trial. A reasonable $79 otherwise.
• Microsoft Office 2008 – The king of office suites, and the one used in just about every office, school, and business. Quite powerful, and finally runs natively on Intel Macs. $199.95 for the Home & Student edition. Thankfully most home users won’t need the “full” Microsoft Office edition wihch weighs in at a whopping $549.95. Fortunately, Office was installed on the office machine here, so I was able to try it out too.

So what are we looking for here? continue reading…

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to slap together a Vista PC and give Microsoft’s latest Media Center a try. An HTPC is something I’ve actually thought about for awhile, and for me, something that seemed to make sense.

The nicest thing about Media Center is the all-in-one aspect of things. You can use it to watch TV, play DVD’s, watch videos from the hard drive, listen to music, and more. The down side is continue reading…

Recently, I decided it was again time to look into getting a cell phone. I’ve had many in the past on contracts/plans, but the fact is that I really never used them all that often. It’s too easy to get into the habit of using it constantly, which can cause overcharges if you go over your montly daytime minutes. That is of course why so many providers do offer “unlimited first 3/6 months of calling” on a contract. If they can get you into the habit of spending a couple hours a day on the phone, it’s going to be tough for you to throttle back your usage when the 3/6 months is over. Many people will either end up going over their allotted minutes, or will end up having to upgrade their plan to one that offers more.

Can’t blame the companies for that… it’s simply good business practice. Kind of like in the drug trade where they pull in new customers with the the “your first hit is free” line of thinking. Well not exactly the same, but you can see the similarities.

Regardless, that’s not my issue with the contract phones. My big issue is with the fees. For example, you can get a phone on a basic $20/month plan, which usually gives you something in the neighborhood of a some daytime minutes and free evenings and weekends. You might think that after taxes, you’re looking at maybe $22-23/month.

Guess again! continue reading…

Forums are great resources. If somebody got a dollar for every time I had a problem and found a solution on a forum, well… if that dollar came from my pocket, I’d be broke, and they’d be filthy rich.

Anyway, there’s one aspect of forums that really bothers me. I’ve seen this oh so many times. You’ve undoubtedly seen it as well, and it goes something like this:

Person 1: How do I …insert question here…?
Person 2: It’s been asked a hundred times. Use the search.

…and that’s it. continue reading…