SweetMacTips

Oooh boy, printers are one area that you’ll get death matches over. Myself, I like HP and Canon. They’ve never done me wrong. I despise Epson. 

Others will swear by Epson and say HP or Canon are shite. It’s all jaded by personal experience.

For driver support, you can’t go wrong with HP. Apple builds them into the OS and keeps them up to date, which is very nice. 

For AirPrint, HP has a good selection of products, thought it looks like you’re into the All-in-one type printer/scanner/fax etc unit.

Myself, I have a (3 year old?) HP Photosmart. It does print,scan,fax and copy, has wifi (802.11g), separate ink tanks (CMYK,PC,PM), a duplexer, an auto document feeder (very nice for multi-page scan or fax), wireless fax and a photo tray (for separate 4x6 photo paper).

I think I picked it up for about $250 from Staples at the time (and got $50 knocked off because I recycled my old printer with them).

While it seems like a bit of a hefty investment for a printer, I have had zero issues with it. The ink is also reasonably priced and you can find an entire set of the ink on eBay for ~$35. (In a pinch you can find ink for ~$11 each retail.)

Now that I’ve had it for 3+ years, the per-year cost really starts nose-diving the longer I keep it. If you go cheap and get a $99 printer, you may end up replacing it in a year. It can add up.

Moral of the story: don’t cheap out. Get a nice one that will last some time.

Desktop: iMac

Portable: MacBook Air

Also, check out my feature on How to Buy a Mac.

You’re looking for AirServer for Mac :)

You may want to take a look at Mira. It lets you add all kinds of actions and application controls.

CAUTION: You’re about to enter the world of audio and video codecs and containers. Be prepared to be confused. It’s ok. Eventually it will soak in.

avi and mov are just containers. They hold the actual media streams (audio, video and even subtitles) that make up your movie file. Each stream can be encoded with a different codec (codec means ‘encode/decode.’)

So, let’s take two movie files, Movie.avi and Movie.mov. Movie.avi’s video could be in Windows Media and its audio could be in MP3. Movie.mov’s video could be in MPEG-4 and its audio could be in AAC. Same video name (except for extension) but totally different codecs.

On the flip side, you could have Movie.avi and Movie.mov and they could have the exact same codecs used. They could both use MPEG4 for video and MP3 for audio - a pretty standard combination. So in this case the only thing different is the container.

Confused yet?

What you actually need to do is Export with QuickTime 7 Pro and set the video and audio codecs. If you’re changing video codecs (called ‘transcoding’ when you go from one codec to another) be prepared for a wait. 

This is why it’s a really good idea to ensure you know what kind of files your video camera is going to generate. My Canon HF200 shoots full 1080P High Definition. It’s a good thing I can immediately edit the video that comes off of it on my Mac, otherwise I’d be waiting days for multi-gigabyte clips to be transcoded.

I’ve always been very happy with the Apple Airport base stations, even though they’re a bit more expensive than your usual Linksys or D-Link. The one thing that I don’t like about the Apple ones though is that you have to use a utility app to configure and update them as opposed to a web interface. But, they’ve been so bullet-proof for me that I rarely have to go in there anyway.

I don’t have any Windows machines on my wifi, but at any moment I may have an AppleTV (soon to be two), two iMacs, two iPhones, two iPod Touches, a MacBook, a MacBook Pro and 3 Nintendo DSes on the wifi and it’s never hiccuped through streaming, downloading and over-the-network Time Machine backups to the attached USB hard drive. All of these give the network a smattering of A, B, G and N traffic in both 2.4 the 5Ghz ranges.

That thing’s been the core of my network and it’s a rock star. Buy one.

According to MacRumors’ buyer’s guide, wait (if you can stand to). We’re just over the average length between refreshes now and seeing what kind of power bumps the MacBook Pros just got (quad-core i7!) I think it’ll do you some good to keep that cash in your pocket to see what super-valued power and sleek looks Jobs & Co is going to bring.

It’s likely your MacBook’s display data cable. This is a common problem with the MacBooks. iFixIt has them ($39.95). Search around iFixIt to find the appropriate tear-down guide for your particular MacBook.

If you’ve got the 4.2.1 IPSW on hand, hold the option key (or shift on Windows) while clicking the Restore button in iTunes. This will prompt to to use an alternate IPSW (such as a jailbroken or back-rev one). 

It’s all down to if you can wait. Apple’s not released any details regarding price or actual release date. They’ve only said it’ll be out “Summer 2011.” If that means July or September, that’s anyone’s guess. 

If you’re a student and can hold off, I would. Apple will likely make their “Back to School” rebate for a free iPod touch available again and you can score yourself a new iPod and Lion just for waiting.

I don’t see Apple updating the MacBook Pro again before back to school (and Lion) season so that’s not really a good reason to wait.

Hope I helped :)