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On December 12, we’re giving away an 11″ MacBook Air–a $999.99 value–to one lucky Small Dog Electronics newsletter subscriber!
This contest is open to current and new newsletter subscribers, but you must visit “*Smalldog.com/contest*”:http://www.smalldog.com/contest/ to enter and view complete contest details.
“*Sign up to win*”:http://www.smalldog.com/contest/ and spread the word!
As Don mentioned, Apple will be holding an iPhone event next Tuesday, October 4. As usual, Small Dog will be bringing you all the news on Apple’s announcement as soon as it happens.
Be sure to tune in to our “*blog*,”:http://blog.smalldog.com/ “*Twitter feed*”:https://twitter.com/#!/hellosmalldog and “*Facebook page*”:http://www.facebook.com/smalldogelectronics for news and commentary on the future of iPhone! Coverage begins at 1pm EST. We can hardly wait!
Recently we set up the “*Edifier Prisma 2.1*”:http://i.smalldog.com/product/79057/edifier-prisma-gem-blue system as the speakers in the Waitsfield store. For a small, stylish and affordable system, the Edifier Prisma has great sound, even when filling a larger area such as a showroom. The system has two small satellite speakers that look like triangles with the tops cut off and a pyramid-shaped subwoofer for better bass response.
The subwoofer is a down-firing 5″ sub with a control for the amount of bass you want. The satellites can handle very high volumes without much in loss of quality. These speakers are great for gaming, use with an entertainment center or just as basic computer speakers. The physical design of the subwoofer and the satellites is very unique and makes these speakers look like a far-more expensive system. They have the sound behind them to back that up as well.
The physical design of the Edifier Prisma is very appealing, and “*with many different color options*,”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=edifier+prisma the system will fit in with most any style you want in your home. All connections go into one very contained area that makes it so there isn’t much of a mess from cables. With only three connections, it’s very easy to set up the system right out of the box: power and audio out cables go to the two satellites and audio in goes to your computer or whatever your sound is being generated from.
The system also comes with a volume control knob that is wired into the subwoofer. This is great as it gives you a little more versatility in how you set up your system. It is also nice because it gives you more of a controlled sense of volume.
Overall the sound that this system puts out is very nice for the price. At $129.99, you’re looking at a great value. High-quality sound at a low price–never anything wrong with that! Also with Edifier’s one-year warranty, you’re covered if anything goes wrong during the first year of owning the system.
Moving your photos off-site, so to speak, is something that I am a big fan of, and I’ve wanted to write about it for a while now. This tip is especially helpful for those who work with large photo files–they can be a pain for smaller capacity hard drives (like a MacBook Air, etc.).
* Open *User > Pictures* and find the “iPhoto Library” file (This file is actually a packaged file; *do not open* it because you will want to move the entire directory.)
* Next, move the iPhoto Library package to your external drive–it will copy over, so be patient–it could take a while!
Once it’s finished copying, tell iPhoto where to find it:
* Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto
* Find the iPhoto Library in the list or click on Other Library to manually navigate to the new location
* Click “Choose” and you will then pair the application with your new location
It’s a great tip if you’d like to have your photos live in the area with more more hard drive space. Don’t forget to back up, though…
_Dear Friends,_
The leaves are changing colors, and while we have had a nice warm week, the temperatures are expected to dip to more seasonable autumn highs and lows this weekend. Grace has been making applesauce from the apples in our yard and from the apples we picked at the Shelburne Orchard with the grandkids. I am thinking of pruning my trees, including the one here at the office that seems to be getting too big.
Most of the main roads have reopened here in Vermont after Hurricane Irene knocked the Green Mountain state for a loop. There is an awful lot of road and bridge work yet to do, and so many businesses and home owners are working hard to get their places back in shape before the onset of winter.
It is no secret that Apple is holding an iPhone event next week, and we are excited to see the newest members of the iPhone family. I have a call with AT&T to talk about the new iPhone next week, too. We are an AT&T dealer and offer the iPhone, as well as other AT&T products, in all of our retail locations. I’ll report on the new phone next week before I head back out on the road to Miami and China.
Amazon announced new Kindle e-readers this week, and their seven-inch tablets are an interesting new entry into the tablet market. One thing is very clear: they are not iPads and not much competition for the iPad. The iPad maintains such a head start in terms of design, features and performance that it is going to be tough for anyone to really catch up. It is great to have some cheap imitations on the low end of the market so that the iPad can stand alone as the true tablet computing platform. More than almost any other feature of the iPad, it is the integration with iTunes and the App Store that make the iPad such a useful tool. I do not see the demise of the personal computer, but I do see a proliferation of many smart devices that will be tools for our lives. It is hard to remember the days before iPhone; already, it is such a critical part of my life. Science fiction becomes reality in so many ways as we see the progression of technology.
We say a fond goodbye to Katie Wilhite this week as she leaves Small Dog Electronics to pursue the next steps in her career. Katie has been one of the rising stars at Small Dog since the day about 5 years ago that I hired her as a retail staffer for our new S. Burlington store. She rose quickly to be the assistant manager and later the manager of that store. Last year when we decided to open the Manchester, NH store, it was a “no-brainer” to choose Katie to head up that task. She built a beautiful store for us and hired an awesome team for our first store outside of Vermont. Katie would always greet every customer with a big smile and a welcome and went beyond the ordinary to set the standard for extraordinary customer service that is the mission of Small Dog Electronics. We wish Katie the very best in her next adventure–we are gonna miss her.
A flaw was recently discovered in OS X Lion that allows any user on the Mac to extract a file containing an administrative…
Apple’s Migration Assistant is a great way to transfer your files from one Mac to another. It (usually) is able to seamlessly move your programs, documents and settings over with a minimum of fuss, relying either on FireWire, USB, Ethernet or AirPort. For some of us, though–particularly those of us who upgrade all the time–we might find ourselves having issues that get worse with each transfer.
This is particularly true with non-Apple programs. The iApps like iPhoto, iMovie, etc. tend to transfer over just fine. But others, like Microsoft Office and various other third-party applications, simply do not like being transferred with the assistant.
Perhaps you’re someone who is always looking for the latest software gizmo, downloading apps small and large from the Internet and the App Store. Odds are you’ve used very few of these apps past the evaluation period; if they’re free apps, odds are you haven’t opened them in a long time.
In today’s world, where your new Mac will come with at least a 320-gigabyte hard drive and up to 8 terabytes built-in, it’s not strictly necessary to conserve disk space. But, wouldn’t it be nice to open your Applications folder on a brand new computer and not be reminded of your old computer? Why wait longer for the window to open and the icons to draw, when you can simply elect to not transfer your applications when you use the Migration Assistant?
When I get my next computer, I won’t be migrating my programs. Instead, I’m going to install the applications I need, and only when I find myself needing them. Really, I don’t need a menu bar item telling me the temperature of a fan sensor, the half-dozen alarm clock apps I didn’t like don’t need to be there, and who uses Microsoft Messenger anyway?
A flaw was recently discovered in OS X Lion that allows any user on the Mac to extract a file containing an administrative user’s password. As with past versions of OS X, user passwords are encrypted and stored securely as “shadow files” within the computer’s hard drive. Those files can then only be accessed by that specific user, or administrators, with proper authentication. The flaw with this procedure in Lion is that these files can be accessed by any user on the Mac. So, a Standard or heavily restricted user could potentially obtain an encrypted file containing an Administrator’s password from which the password can be extracted.
The necessity of local access is what restricts this issue the most. The hacker would need to have physical access to your machine. Hopefully this goes without saying, but allowing a potentially dishonest person unsupervised physical access to your machine is never a good idea. Properly securing your Mac by turning off Automatic Login, using strong passwords (letters, numbers, and characters) and even requiring a password immediately after your system has it’s screen saver going, which can be done in the Security Preference pane, are some simple yet substantial security measures.
It is also possible for the hacker to remotely log into the Mac and grab these password files, but this would require conscious configuration on the Mac owner’s part, as well as the hacker’s knowledge of a valid username and password.
I’m confident that Apple will release a Lion Software Update soon enough to correct this issue. In the meantime, however, it is a good idea to utilize the aforementioned security steps, and always keep in mind: there’s no security like physical security.
I upgraded my workstation Friday night to Lion, and have been living with it since then. Up until now, I’d only just played around on showroom computers and clicked around while resolving customers’ issues in the tech room. Since I transitioned to it on my own computer, I’ve had some trouble getting used to the new interface and gestures.
I’m still not completely up to speed with all the new features, and some of the new gestures have me somewhat stumped. For example, in Mail under previous versions of MacOS X, one could two-finger swipe to go from one mail message to the next. This same gesturing would allow you to swipe between conversations in iChat. Now, that two finger swipe defaults to moving between spaces. I haven’t taken the time quite yet to investigate how to change these things to better suit me, but I’m sure the options exist. That’s an article for next week.
The two finger swipe still allows you to go back and forward in Safari, which is tremendously useful; in fact, the animation under Lion as you go back and forward is very slick, and webpages back and forward appear almost instantly under Lion. It’s much better than in previous versions.
A specific problem I’ve had in Mail is the new layout. It doesn’t suit me just yet, and perhaps next weekend, when I don’t need to be working at my most efficient, I’ll give it another try. But poking around in the Mail preferences, under Viewing, I located a checkbox to go back to Classic view. Once I clicked that, I was presented with my old friend. You can revert to Classic view by navigating to *Mail > Preferences > Viewing > Classic Layout*.
What are your favorite new features in Lion?
Happy Tuesday,
The leaves are changing quickly here in Vermont. Just last week there was little color to be seen in central Vermont, except for higher elevations, but by the end of the weekend fiery oranges and reds could be seen everywhere. It’s a wonderful time of year to visit Vermont, and our brave little state could sure use the commerce after the calamitous flooding late last month.
Most of our roads and bridges are open again, so unfettered travel is possible through 99% of the state. Now and again we see customers take detours from planned routes to visit our stores in their travels. Just the other day a customer from Ohio stopped by the Waitsfield store, asking to speak with me–he’d been a Tech Tails reader for more than ten years. It takes a special kind of company and a special kind of customer for that interaction to happen, and it’s heartwarming to be a part of it.
We have two new additions to our technical services team. Lance Putnam and Michael Burl are getting up to speed in our South Burlington facility, and I know they’ll both bloom into highly productive members of the team. Come by and say hi!
As always, thanks for reading, and keep in touch.
Matt
“matt@smalldog.com”:mailto:matt@smalldog.com
With Lion’s debut, Apple ushered in a new login screen that not only looks different but allows for a customized message. The latter…