I just read your last article in ATPM, and I wanted to give some news from a Belgian reader. I am located between the German and Dutch frontiers, and be sure that there are a lot of Mac freaks here! I personaly own serveral Macintoshes, and try to create a group of Mac users.

It’s funny that I will soon come to Chicago, for a training course for the company that just hired me. I wish you good luck in your new business.

—Pierre-Yves

You’ve said what I’ve been preaching—without much success. Sometimes I wonder at how obtuse my fellow workers can be—the last time the office moved, the majority were switched over to PCs. About a dozen of us remained on Macs. When we got to the new office, the PCs (and our Macs) were sitting, dead, on our desks. It took me 30 minutes—some galah had stowed the cables in the wrong box!—to have all the Macs and our printers up and running (and I’m the statistician in the crew!). Some of the PCs are still not working, a fortnight later—and I’m sick and tired of having to share my Mac with idiots who don’t know how to use a one-button mouse, because that’s the only way they have of getting their work done. Will management take note? Not on yer Nellie!

—George Carrington

I was reading with no small amount of amusement your article detailing what could be called the ‘efficient simplicity’ of Macs.

I recently flogged everything vaguely IBM compatible I ever had, and grabbed myself a Cube. Bye Bye Win2K/98 dual boot, hello Mac OS 9.1 (X on order through up-to-date, still waiting). Here I was, comparing 9.1 to 98, when in fact it crashes about as much as Win2K. Admittedly, the first thing I did was lash half-a-gig of RAM in it—it ran like a dog with 64 MB and VM—but I never turn the damn thing off—just put it to sleep (and watch my room glow as I drop off).

Having been at the point where 98 forgets what a CD drive is (it’s a real/protected mode drivers thing) and been ferreting around looking for drivers to make my modem work properly, I understand what you’re saying. I took my Cube out of the box. I plugged it in. I attached a network cable, gave it my proxy settings and an IP address and blammo—there I was. Admittedly, our home Win2K server needed a bit of coaxing to give up it’s filesharing joys to me, but that’s Microsoft’s fault, not Apple’s.

In short, I now do on my Cube exactly what I did on my PC—and I’ve only had the thing about two months. I would never go back to the layered garbage of 98, nor would I want to run Win2K as my primary OS. Macs are easier to keep running, period.

—Simon King

P.S. After I sold my PC and bought my Cube, my housemate became besotted with it. After a few days of him wandering into my room and saying “I want one of those” I told him to go and buy his own. He did.

I’m having trouble using music CDs that I’ve burned. They work fine in my computer and in my home system. When I try to listen to them on my car CD player, sometimes they play, sometimes not. Store bought CDs work just fine. Any ideas?

—Tim

I recently took my new iBook on the road. I was happy to be able to use iTunes with the car stereo, but encountered a small obstacle. Is there any way to keep the iBook on when closed? With it open it just presents too much of a target in a disorganized car.

—James

I love the printer but the default settings cause the printouts to be too red. I can go to a screen and adjust, but on an individual picture basis. Does anyone know how to set the defaults for the printer? Does anyone have this same color balance problem? Is it just me and I should have the thing repaired?

For the record I am using it hooked up to the TV and the memory stick for input, which was captured on my Sony DCRTRV20 camera.

—Kathryn Wagner

Hello, I have started a Backyard Football league. The league currently has 12 members and is growing. If anybody has played Backyard Football on the Internet, you know that it is very challenging. That is why I created a BYF league so that the best players can compete against each other. My coach name on JRSN is Kingkai. If you want to know more information about my league, just e-mail me at Conker251@aol.com.

Check out my league Web site. Or, you can simply go to my club Web site.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you will be able to play in my BYF league.

—Brian Jones

My B&W G3 350 tower is aging, and I’m fast running out of HD space (currently have two 11 GB drives). I thought I’d give myself some breathing room, and purchased a Maxtor 40 GB ATA hard drive.

I set its jumpers up to be master drive and set the old master drive (an IBM) up as a slave drive. I formatted it Mac OS HFS+ (extended) and checked everything with Disk First Aid, TechTool Pro, and DiskWarrior. Then I installed OS 9.0 from CD. So far, so good.

Now the bad news: upon restart, total chaos. I get the little folder with the blinking question mark. After a bit, it gives the happy Mac and starts up except…I always get the “system error occurred”—usually bus error or illegal instruction.

What the heck did I do wrong? Can anyone help? I thought this was going to be a 30-minute thing—so I allowed an hour. :) It’s toast.

—Steve BohneFrom: Edward Goss <egoss@atpm.com> Subject: Re: FW: jumper settings on hard drive