A few questions for my new mac book...

lisalopez

Just wondering if anyone out there can help. I just got a new macbook last month and I am loving it. It had tiger installed on it. I was still using panther on my ibook. Just wondering when I upgrade with the leopard cd's apple included, do I need to do anything other than follow the instructions? I have been using the tiger for a month now and have some songs , emails on it. Just wondered if everything I have would go onto the leopard?
On my desktop there is a hard drive icon, does anyone know how to remove it off the desktop?
I set up my mail like before only this time I cannot put my hotmail on the mail app. only the account I have from my service provider. It didn't have a icon to click for POP accounts when setting up. Is there a way around this?
Also I set my boyfriend up with a separate managed account. Before I was able to click which programs I wanted him to have now the only option I had was something about parental options. Is there a way around this like before?
Lastly, when I go onto the stickies I get three different ones coming up on my screen with colours. Does anyone know how to have only one come up at a time, and more come up when I need them?
If anyone knows any of the answers to this it would be great. I have been on hold with apple care and hung up as each time I called I waited over 20 minutes. Probably due to the Christmas purchases. Thought I would try on here.
Thanks so much in advance!!!!
Lisa

cap10subtext

The number one recommendation on this forum seems to be backup everything before upgrading. From Tiger to Leopard this is easy and just takes a couple hours:
1) Buy, connect, and format an external hard drive (as big or bigger than your macbook drive).
2) Back it up by "cloning" it with superduper (it's free to use that feature).
SuperDuper!

If you do a basic install everything should still be there.

Most users on this forum will recommend you back up and then do an archive and install or an erase and install of leopard. It'll probably make your computer more reliable and the move to leopard very comfortable. Then you can go to Migration Assistant in Applications/Utilities and it'll reimport your settings from the copy on your external drive. Once you've done that and you are confident you like Tiger and you have your stuff you can erase the drive and use it for Time Machine in Leopard.

"From the Apple help file:
To choose which items should appear on the desktop:
Click the desktop—the background area of your screen.
Choose Finder > Preferences and click General.
Remove the checkmark from items you don’t want to see on the desktop.
You will still see them in Finder windows."

I'm not sure I understand but in Mail/preferences under the accounts Tab you can set up an new POP account. I don't know how to do anything with hotmail.

System Preferences/accounts then click on the lock and enter your password to change account settings.

Try using the Help menu in the finder if no one else knows how to help with your sticky concern (you'll love the way it works in leopard). Hope this helps.

Pat McCrotch

Hi, I'd like to chime in and give a few extra recommendations.

Like cap10 said YOU MUST GET AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE AND BACKUP! My current macbook HD is broken right now and I'm writing to you from a bootable copy on an external drive! The first time my HD (hard drive) failed, I lost everything: pictures, music, contacts, university projects etc. Now, for the second time, my hard drive has failed and apple is replacing my whole computer. I couldn't care less because I've been using time maching (a backup software included with Leopard) with my external hard drive and when I'm going to receive my new Macbook, I'm going to plug it into my external HD and pick up right where I left off! It's so worth it, you'll never experience the disappointment of data loss. Computer parts can always be replaced, important phone numbers sometimes can not.

Doing a version upgrade (moving from Tiger to Leopard) is a pretty big move for your computer; if anything goes wrong during the installation (power outage for example) you can be left with a computer that has no operating system to run on , which is why the previous poster recommends you backup with superduper!

I used to use superduper! but I would recommend CCC, Carbon Copy Cloner. It's free just like superduper! except it is recognised as Tiger and Leopard compatible. Superduper! will make reliable backups of your Tiger run Mac, but is not considered fully compatible with Leopard for the moment. Here's what you should do:

1) Buy an external hard drive of at least 200 Gigabytes by a reputable brand. I recommend the Porsche line of the brand LaCie (it is both economical and reliable) but there are also other good brands. Make sure that the external drive has a FIREWIRE connection and not USB 2. USB isn't bad and some harddrives have both USB and firewire but you will get much better performance from a firewire drive so I really stress this point. Firewire might be slightly more expensive (maybe a difference of 20-30$) but it is very much worth it.

2) Once you have connected your external drive, open "disk utility" which is located in your utilities folder. In the left hand column make, sure you select your external harddrive and NOT your Mac HD and then chose the option "partition". Here you will have the option to partition your external harddrive into two or more separate parts. I recommend the following: Make one partition the size of your internal hard drive (which you can know by just clicking on it in in the left hand column in disk utility) and give all the rest of the space to the other partition. It is also very important to select HFS+ (with journaling) as the format. This is the same format your internal hard drive uses and this will allow your external drive to behave just like your internal one (and it's the best format to use with your mac anyway). Note that partitioning a drive erases all the information on it, so make sure to partition your drive before you start sending files to it.

2) In disk utility, click on your Mac HD and select "repair permissions".

3) Download Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and run the program. In CCC select your Mac HD as the "source" and the partition you made on your external HD that has the same size as your hard drive (henceforth referred to as partition A) as your target disk. Make sure that you tick the "erase target volume" box. This is no big deal because partition A should be empty anyway and this will not affect files stored on the other partition on your external drive. Click the Clone button in the bottom right corner (you will be asked to type the administrator password). The process can take upwards of an hour depending on the size of your drive. What CCC does is basically copy all the contents of your Mac hard drive to partition A, making them identical.

4) Once that is done, try testing your bootable clone. I recommend changing your desktop background so that you can easily tell the difference from your internal HD and it's clone located in partition A. To do so, simply restart your computer with your external HD connected and on and hold down the option (alt) key after you hear the chime when your computer restarts. If everything worked, you should be presented with two pictures of drives, one being your Mac HD and the other Partition A. Select partition A and hit enter. Your computer should now boot and be running exlusively from your external drive! Your internal Mac HD should appear as an external drive on your desktop and you should be able to click it and browse its contents as you would an external drive.

5) Now that you have a backup copy that works, shut down your computer, turn of your external HD and disconnect it and reboot your computer normally, without holding any keys down. Once booted, insert your Mac OS X Leopard DVD in your computer and click on the install Mac OS X icon. Here you will be asked if you want to do an upgrade install but I would click on the "change options" button on the bottom and select "erase and install" from the options. An upgrade install just basically installs new files over your existing system and upgrades it to Leopard. I don't recommend this; many users have experienced problems with this type of installation. I myself freed up more than 5 Gigs of hard disk space just by doing a complete "erase and install", which consists of your internal hard drive being wiped clean of all data and having OS X Leopard installed from scratch. This can seem drastic or dangerous but it really isn't because if something doesn't work, you can always boot from your clone in partition A as described in step 4. After selecting erase and install, your computer will tell you it has to restart to continue. Say Ok and again you will be asked for the administrator password. Make sure you keep your computer connected to power during the install process so you are not running from the battery. The install should take about 1H to 2H. Once you get it rolling, you don't need to answer any questions so it's ok to leave the room and go do something else while everything gets installed.

6) Once the install is done, you will have a neat animation and then you will have to answer a bunch of question (regarding language, your name etc). Answer all that stuff. Once you are done, connect your external HD and turn it on, it should appear automatically on your desktop. From the utilities folder select "migration assistant" and tell it to migrate your programs and your preferences and select Partition A as the source. It will transfer all your stuff over from your previous Tiger system. Once that is done, select "disk utility" from the utilities folder, select your Mac HD and select "repair permissions". You will get some error messages but these are normal and everyone gets them in Leopard, it is a known issue, so don't worry.

7) Once that is done you might want to set up the "other" partition (NOT partition A) to work with time machine (located in system preferences). This will take a while and will backup all your files automatically. After you can also run software update to update your operating system and other programs. Voilà you should have a completely functional Leopard system and you always have a Clone of your previous Tiger system in partition A, should anything ever go wrong during the installation. Once you feel comfortable that you don't need Tiger anymore, you can go ahead and repeat step 4 and creating a clone of your Leopard system over your old Tiger Clone.

lisalopez

WOW! Thank you all for taking the time to answer my questions. Is the backup to save the software Tiger? Apple preloaded my mac book with Tiger. All that I have on the macbook is just some emails and songs. The songs I can get again, and the emails are saved still on my old ibook. So I am just wondering is the back up to protect what I have already on the system? I was just thinking of the cost of buying an external hard drive vs. what I have on the computer. Unless it is to save Tiger that was pre-installed. But I think apple would have to send me another copy?
I cannot seem to be able to put user restrictions even when clicking on the lock for other users. It just comes up with Parental controls. Before you could click on all the applications that you wanted or not wanted the other users to have. I am wondering if this is a new thing? I will keep looking for the POP account on the mail settings to add my hotmail but I still cannot find it. I did read something about not being able to have hotmail on the mail app when I googled it which would make sense as it is microsoft. The strange thing is when I go to safari it won't even let me log into hotmail let alone add it to my apps.
Thanks again for all your time in helping me, it is very much appreciated!!

cap10subtext

Yes and no. You should have Tiger on the disks that came with your computer. It is to save you hassle of reinstalling everything should something go wrong. If you honestly don't care about anything but those emails and songs then just burn them to a DVD, do a clean install of leopard and re-import those things in Leopard. BUT there are a lot of little things (user preferences, passwords, settings) that most people don't think about so when they upgrade they can't (for example) remember their most commonly used passwords.

True. I used to think the same thing... But if you have even ONE thing on your computer you'd be devistated or annoyed not to have anymore (someone's phone number, a story you're writing, some photos) the drive pays for itself.

The only other thing I can think to ask is if you have the box "allow user to administer this computer" checked. If you do then you wont have the same options of restricting their access.

It think the problem is with the version of Safari. Go into the menu Safari>About Safari and if it says Version 2.(something) then you need to update to version 3. It's a free update in Tiger (Apple - Safari 3 Public Beta) and comes standard in Leopard.

Pat McCrotch

My purpose for backing up with a clone was to a have a working copy of Tiger I could fall back on as well as protecting my data. If what you have on your computer isn't worth much, then backing up before you upgrade might not be necessary.

If Tiger was preloaded on you Macbook, you should have the Tiger installation disks in the little box that came with your notebook. Trust me. Get an external hard drive. Like that, no matter what happens to your computer (loss, theft, hardware failure), you can still have all your valuable data. My macbook has had so many hardware problems that mac is going to send me a new computer. Thanks to time machine, as soon as I get my new Macbook, it'll be just like it was an hour before my hard drive failed. I'll probably even still the browsing history of my web browsers. Pretty convenient if you ask me.

As far as I know, Hotmail is not compatible with apple mail which is one of the many reasons I'm switching to gmail. Hotmail also doesn't always work well with Safari. If you experience more problems, I recommend downloading Mozilla Firefox. When safari isn't compatible with something, usually firefox will work.

lisalopez

I will try all of this and just wanted to thank you both so much for all your help!!! This is another reason why I love mac so much, everyone is so helpful and friendly.
Thanks!!!!
Lisa