Well Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac has been out for awhile now and overall it is a good thing.  First of all it has been a long time coming as it was one of the few big programs left for the Mac that had not been update for the Intel chip on the current Macs.  It also brings to the forefront the new “.docx” format that Office for PC is also using in their 2007 version.  Now this new format can also cause problems as not everyone has upgraded yet and old versions cannot display docx files.  But it will eventually switch over.  Office 2008 is not without it’s flaws, though.  The original installer has some issues with how it writes permissions to the files on your computer (this was later fixed in an update) Also it seems to be a little slow to me loading up.  It’s probably because it’s pretty bloated.  And of course, the price is still up there, unless you can gets your hands on the educational version.

Well here comes OpenOffice 3.0 for the Mac.  OpenOffice is an opensource (free) version of “Office” that has been around for awhile.  Only recently have they gotten it fully native working on the Mac.  It provides 95% of the same features of Office with no cost to you.  I am happy with it so far, and it loads up pretty fast!  It is still officially beta but seems to work pretty well and should come into full release not too long from now.  It does only work on Intel macs, but there is another option called NeoOffice that can be used on a PPC mac.

You can get it from here:

http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/

Have you ever noticed that some web pages take a very long time to load up or even not load at all?  Even if you are supposed to have high speed Internet?  Well one cause can be a problem with the way your computer looks up the names to web pages.  It uses a service called DNS.  Well some times this information does not get passed down correctly.

OpenDNS is a service you can use where you enter in some different DNS numbers in your network settings than what you would normally be using from your provider.  Even if you do not currently have any problems, it can speed up your browsing.  Check it out at www.opendns.com or give us a call and we can help you get it set up on your Mac.

Do you use iCal? Have you ever used the free Google Calendar? Did you know that there is now a way to sync them together? iCal is great but you need to pay for .mac or set up a Server to sync it and share between users and computers.

Google, known for providing many great free online services, has a great calendar service that allows you to set up multi-user sharing and editing. You get a lot of features for free that are similar to a program such as Now Up To Date. We have several clients in Utah that use Google calendar and love it. The only problem is that you have to have an active internet connection to use it so if you are on a laptop on the road and do not have internet then you are out of luck.

Spanning Sync is a program that will allow you to sync your iCal with google calendar. Some benefits include:

- Full access to your calendar on both iCal and google calander.

- Pay a one time fee to see your iCal on mutiple computers and online.

- Allow multiple people to edit the same calendar in iCal.

Let us know if you have any questions on how this works. We can show you a demo and give you consulting on getting it set up.

April 25 & 26 is the yearly Salt Lake Business to Business expo. We will be there this year with a booth in area #407. Come stop by if you would like. Entrance to the expo is free, just bring your business cards!

Check it out at:

http://www.saltlakechamber.org/events/expo/

Training is a big thing when you are new to a Mac. Even though Mac’s are generally easy to use (at least compared to a PC) there are those that might not quite understand how to post your first blog, or those that might be new to a computer all together. How can you get this training? Well there are many good options – in order of cost and complexity:

- Every Apple program made (including the desktop) and many other programs actually have a pretty good help menu built into them. Don’t forget to try it out, there is actually a good amount of information in there.

- If you have a .mac account with Apple, you can log in and access the Learning Center – a good resource for info.

- If you purchase Pro Care at the Apple Store, you can have access to one-on-one training for many Apple products and technologies

- If you would like one-on-one location at your location on most anything to do with the Mac, give us a call and we can help out with that. As a Utah Macintosh Consultant we have the knowledge to help you out.

- Salt Lake is now home to the first Apple Authorized Training Center in Utah. This is at the University of Utah. They provide some basic classes and have some intermediate level classes that teach you how to really use your Mac and support it all the way up to the server level. Check it out at:

http://continue.utah.edu/edtech/apple.php

Have fun learning!

We at Kingsley Macintosh Consulting (now) recommend Font Agent Pro Font Explorer X as a font management program of choice. However lately there have been some great strides in the other programs and this article describes differences between the programs:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/fontmanagers.ars

If you have any questions about fonts, font problems, or how to set up a better font management system, please give us a call.

Merry Christmas to all. For those of you getting new Mac’s or iPods have fun! Here is to hoping that next year will be great. I just read that many companies in Utah are expecting to hire more in 2007. With more employees come more computers. Lets hope that the trends continue and that more of those computers turn into Macs!

For those of you that have one of the new Intel Macs, now is your chance to download and try the public beta of Photoshop CS3. Slated to come out early next year, Adobe has released this version early for anyone to try out. This means that it may have a few bugs, but it will run faster on your intel mac rather than running CS2.

Check it out at: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/photoshopcs3/

For all of you that might be interested in some Photoshop training, there is a session coming up on January 24 at the Best Western Garden Inn in Salt Lake City. You can choose either the basics track or the advance track. Go to www.compumaster.net for more info or contact us.