With just two weeks before Finals begin, many Graduating Seniors are starting to think about Graduation Gift ideas because with hard work comes benefits.  Of course, since the Apple Area is conveniently located here on the campus, Apple products are right up there as a desired gift.

At the top of the Apple list is… (Drum Roll Please)

…the 13”Retina Display MacBook Pro with 256GB drive

This is considered to be the perfect combination of the exceptionally lightweight 13” MacBook Air and the ever popular 13”MacBook Pro.  The difference though with the Retina Display Mac is that the picture display is like art- beautiful, vibrant and crisp; the pictures pop right out at you.  These now have the 8GB Memory (a temporary storage used for anything open- including doc’s, pic’s, apps, music, or downloads that you are currently working on awaiting a saving to hard drive).  What having 8GB of Memory means to you is that now you can get more work done at once.  Twice the research, run any program that requires more Memory, enjoy watching movies, play any game, even video editing- is all possible without getting the spinning wheel of “wait”.

Next on the wish list is the iPad with Retina Display because of how great the display is for graphics- for your movies, pictures and games, slide-shows or giving a presentation at work. This iPad is the perfect companion as a multi-tasking tool for the Graduate going off to work in any of the professional fields.  You have access to email, doc’s, music, movies, internet for research and so much more with the touch of your fingertips- on a screen large enough to work on and beautiful too.

Last on this wish list is the iPod Classic which has made a comeback in popularity because of its music, video and photo storage capacity. At the 160GB large storage, it is considered  perfect for morning runs, workouts in the gym, or commuting to work and back. 

Friday Quick Tips- Saving valuable time

When you have the chance, preferably when you first get your new Mac or Apple device, create an iCloud account.  Now, you don’t have to sync all of your devices to get up-to-date with all of your content.  iCloud is designed to make available to all of your Apple Devices all of the iCloud compatible content and apps you want to save and share.  Contacts, mail, music, document, reminders, notes & even photos can all be stored in iCloud and shared with all of your devices.  Think of the time this will save you.  Below are two links that will help answer questions and assist with setting up your iCloud  account.

iCloud info Link

iCloud Support Link

We recently received scary news that there has been an outbreak of Laptop fires across campus.  There was a warning included which stated that leaving a laptop on a bed or a couch restricts the airflow in the computer which can cause the computer to overheat. Do not leave your laptop on unattended; please work with it on a hard surface like a table.
This is a very important warning to pay attention to.

I would like to offer another warning regarding laptop fires.  When purchasing a charger adapter for your computer, make sure you are not saving some money and getting a cheap one from the internet.  A few students have approached me in the past making sure I warn other students that these cheap imitations have “burned up” their Mac.  Your Mac is worth upwards of $1000, take good care of it.  Insurance does not cover your computer if, by saving yourself some money, you burn the Mac up with a cheap power adapter.  I have seen many students walk away after I tell them the cost of a replacement power adapter from Apple is $79, they tell me they can purchase it cheaper online.   If you see one for less, be warned, it is probably an imitation!  I did some research on power adapters for other brands of computers and they are all relatively that much money.  Do your research and make sure you are getting the correct adapter that will not cause your battery and/or computer to overheat.  Don’t buy cheap!

We value your lives that is why we are warning you with emphasis!

We recently received scary news that there has been an outbreak of Laptop fires across campus.  There was a warning included which stated that leaving a laptop on a bed or a couch restricts the airflow in the computer which can cause the computer to overheat. Do not leave your laptop on unattended; please work with it on a hard surface like a table.
This is a very important warning to pay attention to.

I would like to offer another warning regarding laptop fires.  When purchasing a charger adapter for your computer, make sure you are not saving some money and getting a cheap one from the internet.  A few students have approached me in the past making sure I warn other students that these cheap imitations have “burned up” their Mac.  Your Mac is worth upwards of $1000, take good care of it.  Insurance does not cover your computer if, by saving yourself some money, you burn the Mac up with a cheap power adapter.  I have seen many students walk away after I tell them the cost of a replacement power adapter from Apple is $79, they tell me they can purchase it cheaper online.   If you see one for less, be warned, it is probably an imitation!  I did some research on power adapters for other brands of computers and they are all relatively that much money.  Do your research and make sure you are getting the correct adapter that will not cause your battery and/or computer to overheat.  Don’t buy cheap!

We value your lives that is why we are warning you with emphasis!

The first thing I want to remind everyone about is how important it is to Back Up your computer.  I have seen so many people leaving with tears in their eyes when the Tech explains to them that all those long hours of research and writing pages for a thesis, mid-terms or finals is gone because the hard drive failed.  BACK UP your computer or just back up the work you do not want lost if the hard drive fails.

Here at the Apple Campus Store, we have noticed an increase lately in the complaints from Students, Faculty and Staff about how slow their Mac is running.  More often than not, it is an easy fix and not necessarily your hard drive failing.  Thank goodness! There are some things you can do to prevent the “Spinning Wheel of Death” that rainbow spinning circle that appears in the middle of a download or while opening an application.  This freeze stops all work you can do on your computer.  Some people restart their Mac after it crashes only to find their Mac won’t turn on past a gray screen.

One of those things you can do to prevent this from happening is free up some of your hard drive space.  After you have backed up your computer, delete some old unwanted documents, movies that you save elsewhere, or even applications you never use.  Some people even have multiple copies of photos.  Get rid of all the duplicates because graphics take up more space than regular data does.

Another way we can help prevent our Mac from slowing down or freezing is to do some spring cleaning of your browser cache.

• For internet Explorer 8 or 9  click tools menu at top of page, click Delete Browsing History, then unselect Preserve Favorites Website data, but make sure Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, and History are selected.  Then click delete.
• For Firefox- click tools, then click Clear All History… Make sure Browsing & downloading History, Cookies, and Cache are all selected then click clear now.
• For Chrome- type   chrome://settings/clearBrowserData  into the browser bar.  Make sure to select Clear Browsing History, Clear Download History, Delete Cache and other site and plug-in data. Then from Obliterate… select From the Beginning of time from the dropdown menu. Then click Clear Browsing data.
• Finally for Internet Explorer 7 click on Tools at top and select Delete Browsing History, then delete Cache, then Delete Cookies, and finally delete History.

Do this once a month to keep these browsers working better.

Another easy preventative to a slow Mac is to run Repair Permissions from your Disk Utility. Simply go into Finder (pictured at left) and look for Applications on left side then on right- scroll down to bottom and click arrow beside Utilities. Then scroll down again and click Disk Utilities.  A window will appear that will allow you to choose which Hard Drive you want the Permissions repaired in.  Click the correct one and at the top of that window, make sure  First Aid is selected and click Repair Permissions.

I am including a link to check out from Apple Support about Repair Disk Permissions below.

Apple Support-Disk Utility’s Repair Disk Permissions

One of those benefits is the educational pricing on computers and software.  As many of you may know, Apple offers great educational pricing on their Mac’s and as a Middlebury Full Year Student, you get free MS Office on that new Mac and educational pricing on Adobe products like Creative Suite 6, normally priced at over $1200 and for students is $449.00 in the College Bookstore.  Also educationally priced here at the Middlebury College Bookstore is AppleCare for your Mac which is from over $50 to over $100 in savings compared to prices at the Apple Store.

Friday Mac Quick Tip

I was recently updating Flash Player on one of our Demo Mac’s to view some You Tube videos.  The update was in the form of a download of course, and I then had to search the system for the download file.

I then discovered that my Mac is 10.8.3 also known as Mountain Lion, but the demo that I was using at the time was 10.6.8, also known as Snow Leopard.  I was used to my Mac with Mountain Lion which has the Downloads Folder right in the Favorites Folder in Finder. On the Mac’s with Snow Leopard, you will notice there is no Favorites folder as shown in the photo above.  Therefore no easy to find Downloads folder.

However, there is a way for that downloads folder to appear on the list in your Places folder in Finder.  Click on your computer name which will appear in the Places folder just below “Desktop”.  Find the Downloads file on the list that appears in the box on the right and drag this over to the Places folder. Now you can easily locate the downloads you just added in your easy-to-find Downloads folder!

Nominations should be accompanied by a nomination form, found here, and must be received by Friday, March 22.

The award ceremony will be held Sunday, May 5 at the Annual Meeting and Dinner of the Friends of the Middlebury College Museum of Art.

For further information, please contact Emmie Donadio, chief Curator, at (802) 443-2240 or donadio@middlebury.edu.

Often times, taking the time to move your hand from the keyboard over to the mouse or down to scroll with the trackpad can make a project seem to take longer than it should. Here are some more Keyboard Shortcuts that can make your life easier while working on your Mac.

You can view all the windows you have open or hide them by clicking F11.  Then you can go to previous open window Command-Shift-Accent (‘)  or go to next open window with Command-Accent (‘).

Command-Shift-Control-3 lets you Capture a screen to clipboard or Command-Shift-Control-4 to Capture a selection to clipboard and then Command-V to paste clipboard content at the insertion point (where cursor is).

If you use Voiceover, here are some good shortcuts:

Command-F5 or FN-Command-F5  to Turn Voiceover on or off.  Option-Control-F7or Fn-Option-Control-F7 to Display Voiceover Menu.

If you are working in a program such as Adobe Photoshop, you can use Command-Option-T to Show or Hide Toolbar.

Some of the more often used and favorite shortcuts that I use include:

Command-M to Minimize a window or Command-Option-M to Minimize all windows.

To Print Screen, I use Command-P.

Command-Colon(:)  lets you Display the Spelling Window and Command-Semicolon(;) helps you Find Misspelled Words in the document.

I hope these shortcuts are very useful and aid you in your endeavor of a more fluid approach to working with your Mac.  I am including a link to even more Mac shortcuts below.

Apple Shortcuts

The Student Employment Office Web page has been updated to reflect this summer’s procedures and policies http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/business/seo/summer.

Please familiarize yourself with these policies so you are well informed and can provide information to the student(s) you hire.

Mac Family

The College Bookstore would like to welcome all of the incoming students! Congratulations on a job well done in getting here!

We want to let both students and parents know about the educational savings the students get here at the College Bookstore on Mac’s as well as AppleCare and other Apple merchandise like the Time Capsule which is a Wireless external hard drive that backs up automatically so students never loose there important work or photos!

There are extra savings to be had for purchasing your Mac with us.  Purchase a $1000 Panther Gift Card that you can use toward the purchase of your Mac and receive the additional $50 from Panther Points up front on the Panther Gift Card which would then be worth $1050.  That is good dollar sense!

Along with receiving the educational pricing on the Mac and other Apple merchandise, the student receives a free download of Microsoft Office as well. Just another benefit the Middlebury College provides.

The iPad is a light-weight alternative to bringing your Mac to class.  You can take notes, check email, write your papers and give a presentation by hooking up directly to overhead projectors with them.   We have many selections including the iPad Mini which was the hottest new item for the 2012 Year.

Look for more student appreciation events in the future.

News for our Apple Authorized Tech, Ark Lemal-

We are seeing many laptops coming in with water and/or “sticky substance” damage which could have been prevented by purchasing a keyboard cover to help reduce the possibility of liquid getting at your keyboard when cramming for finals.

Ark Lemal’s hours will remain Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons this semester.

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