Ask DACS
August 2011

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef.

Ask DACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. The role of moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem.

Prior to the session this month, we had a short presentation on IPv6 in recognition of World IPv6 Day which was held the day after the meeting. As a result, AskDACS was shortened. We will learn more about IPv6 in coming months.

Q – I have two iMacs, one here and one in Florida. When I travel, I back up one onto a USB hard drive. When I get to the other location, I restore that iMac from the USB drive and continue right where I left off. The problem is that the new 10.7 "Lion" version of MacOS does not include the Rosetta application. When I buy a new iMac that will have "Lion" preinstalled, will I be able to restore my backup and in the process downgrade to MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)? I need Rosetta to run many of my applications.

A - There was much discussion that quickly focused on hardware compatibility. Mac hardware released after the release of Lion will probably not be supported by Snow Leopard as the device drivers would not be included. The member came up with his own test which is to take his backup drive to the Apple Store and try to boot a new iMac from the backup hard drive.

D - I asked if it would be possible to run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine. Richard pointed out that the MacOS license prohibits running MacOS in a VM (this policy may change under Lion).

Q - While migrating several machines from Win XP to Windows 7. What is the consensus on Win7? Is the "ready for prime time"? Or should I still delay migrating?

A - The immediate response from the floor was that Win7 is now the preferred version of Windows and is as stable as XP. While XP support will continue for some time, there is no reason to delay moving to Win7 provided your hardware and software is compatible. Hardware includes your peripherals like printers and scanners. Older peripherals will not have device drivers for Vista or Win7, particularly if you move to the 64-bit version of Win7. Download and run the System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 (search in the Microsoft Download Center) to find some - but not all - upgrade problems. There were reminders of third-party tools like Laplink PC-Mover (laplink.com/pcmover) that can ease the migration process both on a single machine and between two machines.

Several people mentioned software incompatibility problems. These will not go away as Microsoft is removing more support for legacy APIs (application programming interfaces) from each new version of Windows. For example, there is no support at all for 16-bit applications from Windows 3.x or Win95. Your old 16-bit command-line utilities that worked in a CMD window on XP will not run on Win7. Older 32-bit programs may or may not run. Right-click on the application or it's shortcut to try the various compatibility settings in Win7 (held over from XP and Vista). For some applications, the only way to run them on a Win7 machine is to download and install "XP Mode" which is a virtual machine that runs a full installation of XP (available only with Win7 Professional and Ultimate). Software that runs on your current installation of XP will likely run on XP Mode, however, all this requires a machine with an extra gigabyte of RAM and plenty of processor speed. If your old machine is at all marginal, XP Mode is not really an option.

Q - Does anyone recommend a support forum for migration issues like this?

A - No one had any suggestions and amazingly no one mentioned the DACS Community Forums.

Q - What versions of Office for Macintosh will run on MacOS Lion?

A - The current version of Office is 2011. Office 2008 also runs fine. The version prior to that was Office 2004, which may be problematical. No one knew for sure but any PowerPC version would not run because there is no Rosetta in Lion.

Q - I've been having trouble with Verizon DSL. Their support said to install "Verizon Home Agent". Is that a good idea?

A - This software appears to be a wizard to set up a DSL connection the "Verizon way". As such I look at it as a shortcut for incompetent support people and do not recommend installing. How you should configure your DSL depends on the other equipment on your network, most importantly, your router. The ISP support people cannot provide support for every router on the market, so they have these programs. Generally speaking, DSL connections authenticate using PPPoE. This authentication should be managed in your router rather than the DSL modem and that means the modem must be configured for "bridge mode". These topics are beyond the scope of the discussion.

Since the member indicated that the modem was dropping out and giving slow performance and his modem is three to four years old and is likely due for replacement. We had a similar problem in the DACS Resource Center. Installing a somewhat newer DSL modem improved performance but did not solve the problem. When we installed a brand new modem supporting the latest DSL standards, everything started to work and work well. If you have poor DSL performance, ask your provider for a free replacement modem. It is their modem and they should make sure you have one that provides the level of service for which you are paying.


 
Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.
 
Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!

 

 


Click Here


DacsGear!
Mugs and more, visit CafePress to order

 

 
 
© Danbury Area Computer Society, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Web Site Terms & Conditions of Use