Meeting Notes - May 16, 2001

By: Mikio Moriyasu - Revised: 2006-10-05 devin


What's New by James Reynolds

James' discussion touched on the subjects listed below.
  • Mac OS X News: Tips, tricks, and bug fixes.
  • Macs in schools: A website aimed at educating school administrators about the pros and cons of Macs and PCs.
  • Leaving Us: Discontinued applications and services.
  • Notable New Software: Updates, bugs, & the complete Version Tracker lists.
  • Hardware News: New iBooks, discontinued G4 model, and warranty news.
  • Retail News: Apple's financial outlook and the Apple Stores.
  • WWDC 2001: Who's going, what meetings they are attending, and a call for questions or issues that you want brought up with Apple. Please let us know by Friday 5-18-01 here.
If you would like additional information on a specific subject, please click on the desired subject heading. To see James's complete presentation, please click here.

Mac Volume Purchase by Richard Glaser

Richard discussed the upcoming volume purchase of Macs and raised the following questions for Mac Managers to consider:

What is the cost per machine?
  • The Task Force has set a $1500 limit per machine.
  • For a campuswide global purchase, what do you believe should be the cost per machine?
  • Close to 1500
What should the configuration cost be?
  • Try for configuration $400-$500 less than standard educational list price.
  • What Components Are Needed?
    • Video Card
    • Zip Drive
    • More RAM
    • Bigger HD
    • SCSI Card
    • Modem
What should the reception date?
  • Should be wait until the product announcements at MacWorld on July 17-20.
    • Is waiting this long worth the risk in terms of budget spending deadlines?
    • Is waiting this long worth the risk in terms of receiving and installing all of the new hardware before the start of fall semester?
  • When would you like to receive the machines?
    • Mid June
    • July
    • August
Price comparisons on key components.
  • 3rd Party RAM
    • Vendors
  • Monitors
    • Vendors and Brands
      • Sony
      • Viewsonic
      • Others
  • PC
    • Component price comparison
    • Warranty Issues
    • One year on site or 3 year limited
  • Others
    • Processor Speed
    • Differences between last year's configuration PC's & Mac's. This years and last years Mac's will not be that different in comparison to PC's. We should point this out as justification for lower Apple pricing.
Miscellaneous Issues
  • Total number of machines
    • 200
    • 300
    • More
  • Should they be bundled with OS X
    • Sooner or later most will update
    • This way we have the licenses.
Coordinate a statewide volume purchase with other institutions to cut costs.
  • Other U of U Departments
  • BYU
  • USU
  • Weber
  • SUU
More details to come.
  • Have contacted Apple Bookstore.
  • Will meet once these discussed issues have been revolved.
  • Will contact other institutions on statewide purchase.
  • Will email details to campus list as we get them.
Questions, Suggestions, Comments

Contact Richard Glaser here.

Alternate Mac Servers By Steve Harper

Steve presented an overview of Netatalk which is an implementation of the AppleTalk Protocol Suite for *nix systems. Netatalk includes support for routing AppleTalk, serving Unix and AFS file systems over AFP (AppleShare), serving UNIX printers, and accessing AppleTalk printers over PAP. It also provides A number of other minor printing and debugging utilities.

Steve's discussion provided a general overview of Netatalk and touched on key background information as well as installation, implementation and configuration issues. His entire presentation is available in a handout that can be download as a PDF file.


If you have any questions or comments regarding the above information, you can contact Steve at <S.harper@m.cc.utah.edu>.

Media Cleaner Pro By Paul Burrows from KUED Media Solutions

Paul produces multimedia presentations for various campus clients for a variety of platforms, and media player/recorder applications.

Paul began by providing some basic information on creating digital media. He emphasized the importance of understanding media "architectures" which are shells that allows you to produce digital media. The three most important are QuickTime, Real System, Windows Media, and MPEG. This information as well as demonstrations and samples of work that has been done by KUED Media Solutions can be found at the following website:

http://stream.uen.org/medsol/digvid/index.html

Media Cleaner Pro, or Cleaner 5 as it is now called, was created by Terran Software but has since been bought out by Media 100 Inc. It is a video compression application that allows the user to take raw video footage that has been digitized and transform it into a smaller file so that it can be delivered via the web or on a CD-ROM.

Here is a brief list of the features of Cleaner 5 that Paul highlighted during his discussion:
  • Cleaner 5 can process any video footage that has been edited using Adobe Premier, Apple Final Cut Pro, or Media 100.
  • The application has the richest suite of interactive authoring capabilities and can be used to build a high degree of interactivity into any video. Specific elements included the insertion of "triggers" that pause the video, open up other videos, or open up HTML pages.
  • Cleaner 5 can conduct batch processing of multiple video files.
  • It can work with MP3 audio files.
  • It has filters and features that are not available in Adobe Premier or Apple Final Cut Pro.
  • Cleaner 5 has a built in FTP software for direct FTP to a website.
  • It can write MPEG 1 or MPEG 2 Codec.
  • The application has a interview feature that queries you about what you want to do with your raw video and then adjusts its settings accordingly.
For additional information on Cleaner 5 including a detailed list of features as well as basic operational information which Paul used for his presentation, please visit the Cleaner 5 product page by selecting the link given below.

http://www.media100.com/terran/products/cleaner/index.html

If you have any questions or comments regarding the above information, Digital or Web Video, or KUED Media Solutions, you can contact Paul at <pburrows@media.utah.edu>.

Alternate Web Browsers by Mike Kimball

Mike presented information on the following three alternate web browsers to Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
  • iCab
  • Opera
  • OmniWeb
His discussion touched on significant differences between the three and their pros and cons based on his experience. If you would like additional information on one of the browsers, please click on the desired subject heading. To see Mike's complete presentation, please click here.

Other Issues

Due to the number of presentations scheduled for this meeting, all presenters were asked to keep their discussions informative but short. This is reflected in these notes. Even with the shortened presentation time, however, the length of the meeting forced "Mac OS X Security Basics" by James Reynolds to be cancelled. Due to the importance of this subject, James' presentation will be rescheduled for a future Mac Managers Meeting.