Blog | Donald Perreault

MailSteward, Mini Review

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 04:56:39 -0400

For many years I have been searching for a convenient way to archive my Mac OS X Email. I believe that I have finally found the solution in a program called MailSteward. MailSteward allows the user to select any combination of mailboxes to import into the MailSteward database. MailSteward provides easy access to archived mail and sophisticated searching. MailSteward allows the user to tag and categorize the archived mail and even imports tags from MailTags. I suggest you give MailSteward a try, you won't be disappointed.

File Sharing Utilities

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:10:05 -0500

Transferring or sharing large files to another computer or person that is not on a local network can be an arduous task. I have found two utilities that simplify this task. FileChute is an application thats sole purpose is to quickly and effortlessly share files and folders between multiple Macs across your LAN via a drag & drop interface. Fetch is and FTP/SFTP client that requires you to connect into an FTP space or web space, put the file onto the remote server and then send a link to the people who the file is intended for. Both utilities perform flawlessly and are highly recommended. I personally prefer Fetch for its FTP/SFTP abilities and its WebView feature.

4 DISK STRIPED RAID IN MY MAC PRO

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:50:35 -0500

Last Thursday I added two more 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA Hard Drive's to my Mac Pro for the purpose of creating a 4 Disk Striped RAID. Creating the RAID was time consuming but effortless. I zeroed all 4 drives before creating the RAID using Apple's Disk Utility, then I copied the backup of my StartUp drive to the RAID using SuperDuper, rebooted and performed some disk benchmarking as seen here.

ScreenSavers

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 11:10:53 -0500

I found a really cool ScreenSaver called LotsaWater. Up until today my favorite ScreenSaver was Marine Aquarium.

Online Shopping

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 14:52:44 -0500

I rarely buy anything online or locally before I research the product on the web. I generally search for the best price available and if possible a retailer that comes recommended by a Merchant Review website.

However, no matter how much research you do, there are those unscrupulous companies that will take advantage of the consumer whenever possible. Unfortunately I found out the hard way that Alpine Home Air Products is one such company. Last week I placed an order for a pair of 20x25x5 furnace filters. At the end of the checkout process (see screenshot of transaction) a window popped up and told me 'Your cart is empty. Checkout is not available'. I found this error strange because you could clearly see that my cart was not empty. So before placing the order again, I waited several minutes to be sure that I did not receive a confirmation email before ordering again. When a confirmation never arrived I proceeded to place the same order for the Furnace Filters again.

The next day I received two separate emails with different order numbers confirming shipment of the Furnace Filters. I promptly notified Alpine Home Air Products of the error and was immediately issued an RMA# to return one set of the filters at my expense. Alpine is not crediting me for their error, I am going to be charged $8.08 for shipping the filters to my home and then I have to return the filters at an additional expense to myself.

I understand web development is complicated and errors are inevitable but when a merchant makes an error the consumer should not be held financially responsible for that error.

For this reason I recommend that if you are in the market for furnace filters I recommend buying elsewhere.

Is Camino better than Safari?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:05:55 -0500

For some reason, maybe it has to do with the fact that I spend much of my time on the internet, I am in constant search for the perfect web browser, does it even exist? Every time a new browser is released I download it and put it to the test and every time for one reason or another I always end up reverting back to Safari. My main gripe with Safari is that it is slow and crashes frequently. This week The Camino Project released their new open source web browser Camino 1.0. Camino combines an impressive visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine. The only browser available that combines the rendering power of Gecko with the Aqua user interface, Camino 1.0 offers superior integration with the Mac platform and a focused feature set. Among Camino’s signature features are elegant tabbed browsing, an enhanced bookmarks manager, and built-in ad-blocking. I have been using Camino 1.0 for a few days now and I have to say I am really impressed. The feature set has worked flawlessly thus far and Camino is certainly much faster than Safari. I do not have one reason to revert back to Safari as of yet, Camino Rules!

Tab browsing from the Finder

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:42:32 -0500

Anyone looking for a comprehensive file browser for Mac OS X, ought to take a look at Pathfinder 4. Path Finder is an innovative file browser and manager with powerful tools to make you more productive on Mac OS X. IMO Path Finder is the best Finder substitute available today. One of Path Finders most useful feature for me is the tabbed file browsing, similar to the tab web browsing in Safari. Another similar to Safari feature is Path Finders bookmark bar for bookmarking your most frequented directories or files. Path Finder has Stuffit Engine integration meaning you can quickly and easily compress and decompress many file compression formats from within Path Finder. Path Finder has a built in text editor and PDF viewer. I am hooked on Path Finder and suggest you and give Path Finder a try. Path Finder 4 is available as a feature-complete demo for 21 days at http://www.cocoatech.com

Vermont Teddy Bear

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:33:23 -0500

I have a lung disease and over the years I have spent my share of time in the hospital. Every single day that I spend in the hospital my wife travels 40 miles each way and spends her whole day by my side. This year on Valentines Day I wanted to show my appreciation by getting her something other than just a Valentines Day card. I heard the Vermont Teddy Bear Company advertisement on the Howard Stern show several times this past month, so I decided to check out the teddy bears at VTB. I was unpleasantly surprised at the high price of VTB's Teddy Bears but my wife is certainly worth every penny. I placed the order for the teddy bear on February 9th, 2006 with a guaranteed delivery for the February 13th or 14th. Well, February 14th has come and gone and the teddy bear has yet to arrive. I have been unsuccessfully trying to contact Vermont Teddy Bear Company for the past three hours and the phone is busy. What a disappointment, I really wanted to surprise my wife with a token of my appreciation and VTB fucked it up.

Survivor Winner in trouble with IRS

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 16:21:04 -0500

On January 18th 2005 Richard Hatch, the first winner of the TV show Survivor was charged with failing to report his $1 million dollar winnings to the Internal Revenue Service in 2000 and filing a false tax return in 2001. Convicted of the felony charges on January 25th 2006, Hatch could face a maximum of five years in prison for each count and could be hit with a $250,000 fine. Hatch is being held without bail until his sentencing on April 25th, a sentence that could send him to prison for the next 13 years.

I am a huge fan of Survivor and Richard Hatch was probably my least favorite winner of the popular TV show. However, as much as I dislike Richard Hatch, a maximum sentence of up to 13 years seems excessive and unjust for the crime. First time convicted bank robbers and child molesters are often sentenced to much less time in prison. Richard Hatch did not rob anyone, he just failed to pay his fair share of taxes on the money he legally earned. Doesn't this sentence seem excessive? Is the sentence excessive because the crime is against the Federal Government? I certainly do!

Netflix Sucks!

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 16:09:01 -0500

I have been a loyal customer of Netflix.com for a couple years now. I have been so thrilled with the Netflix service that I often would promote the service to my friends and even gave my mother a gift subscription to the Netflix service. Late last year I noticed a drastic slowdown in service. Originally I had attributed the slowdown to the Xmas season but the service did not speed up after Xmas. I emailed Netflix.com customer service on two occasions complaining of the slowdown in service. The first email went unanswered and on the second I received the following response:

Hello Donald,

Thanks for your message.

I am very sorry about the inconvenience. Please be assured that Netflix delivery delays are very uncommon. If you're experiencing repeated delays with returning DVDs, we would suggest mailing them from a different location such as the post office.

You may report any difficulties with shipments using the Report Shipping Problem page.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,

Albert,

Netflix Customer Service

I was livid today when I read the article at CNN news regarding Netflix throttling the accounts of heavy renters. I immediately canceled my account and joined Blockbuster.com's online rental service. I can only hope that other netflix.com subscribers will not tolerate this rental racism and cancel their account at netflix.com.

Uninstallers

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:22:01 -0500

Around six weeks ago I received an email from Matterform informing me of their new product, Yank. Yank is an application uninstaller that uses Matterform’s new Sonar technology to log file system changes in real time, making Yank the first Mac program that can completely uninstall any software, regardless of the way it was installed. I had really never considered using an uninstaller for removal of an application. Normally, I would just drag the program file to the trash and then empty the trash. Due to the complexity of many applications developers are forced to use a program installer to install their applications, making sure that all the support files are installed into their proper locations. Many of these program installers install multiple files in multiple locations and folders throughout the users file system. These support files remain in these folders long after you have deleted the application. Matterform claims that these now unneeded program support files accumulate on the hard drive, consuming disk space and possibly degrading system security and performance.