Graduating Seniors are suddenly realizing that their days as a students are becoming fewer rather quickly.  One student wanted things to slow down so she could really enjoy her last semester here and now that spring break is upon us, she is frantic about making every moment count.  She also wants to make sure that she receives all the benefits of being a student while she is still a student.

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!

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

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.

We gave away a brand new iPad 3rd Generation during our Student Appreciation night before the Holiday break to a very grateful Senior.  When asked if she was going to give that as a gift, she replied that she thought she would like to keep the iPad for herself.

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.

This new addition to the Apple family will be in the College Bookstore by next week.  This mini is now only 7.9 inches compared to its larger sibling which is 10 inches.  Apple wants the owner to experience the beautiful screen and enjoy all the capabilities of a regular iPad, so their screen is larger than a tablet for better viewing of movies, pictures and documents…and it is easier for reading and interacting with than on a tablet.  These new iPad mini’s also make the iPad more affordable now with the starting price of $329.00 for a 16GB WiFi only model versus the starting price of the regular iPad is $499.00 for the 16GB WiFi only model.  We can take pre-orders on them so you are guaranteed one as soon as they are in. The Holidays are Coming! Call us at 802/443-2038 for options.

We would like to welcome the Language School Students.  We also wanted to let you know about our Apple Campus Store, where you can find all you Mac needs as well as bring your Mac in for repair.  We have our Apple Authorized Tech here Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the afternoon.

You will find the latest Mac’s here next week including the featured 15″ Mac with Retina Display.

I see Students, Faculty and Staff almost every week who have lost data from a failed hard drive on their Mac or PC due to not backing up that important data- those papers, photos, theses, music, even book’s they are in the process of writing.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to utilize the free back up space we have here on campus.  It is equally important to remember to back up on a regular basis.

Since LIS worked so hard on updating Middfiles, I thought it would be a good ideas to remind Apple users how to put the Middfiles shortcut in your dock for a quick back up of all your important work.  Click on the link below to connect to the server.  Then type smb://middfiles.middlebury.edu/middfiles into the server address box.  When the Middfiles folder is up and you can see the title as Middfiles on the Middfiles folder, drag the icon next to that title to your dock next to (but not in) the trash icon in your dock.

http://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/wiki/LIS/Using_File_Servers_%28Macintosh%29

Now you are ready take on the task of backing up starting with just a click on the icon in your dock!

There are creatures of habit out there who just know what is best for their Mac to help protect it from scratches, getting dirty or gooey!  We get plenty of Mac’s in here for repair whose owners are clearly not the “creatures of habit” a fore mentioned.  The Mac’s are scratched, dented and grungy or the keyboards are encrusted with unknown particles.  These Mac’s have a shorter life and die an early, sad death.  To help preserve the life of your Mac, new or otherwise, keep it in a Neoprene or Case and get a keyboard cover to keep the crumbs out when your cramming during finals in a few weeks!

Inevitably, we get a few Students (Faculty and Staff too) who come in saddened or distressed that their Mac is “dying” during finals weeks due to issues related to liquid damage that may have been thwarted by a keyboard cover.  Often liquid can “destroy” the logic board which will rust up due to any liquid nearing it.

We sell keyboards in many colors including clear which makes it almost impossible to see one is the doing the job of saving your Mac!  Find them on the link below!

Keyboard Covers

The iPad 3 is here for sale!!

Apple’s newest iPad with the new A5X Chip with Quad-Core Graphics has arrived!! All that technical talk actually means better graphics with more pixels and a little “power brain” (the A5X chip) that drives power to all of the 3.1 million pixels to deliver outstanding graphics.  The response time of using your finger-tips to control everything is faster because of the Quad-Care graphics processing power.  Our Demo Models should be arriving by the end of the week so you can try them out for yourself to see the difference. until then, i am including a link below that shows a close up of just how beautiful the graphics are.

iPad 3 Graphics link

We recently had a Switching to Mac Workshop for those Mac users who needed to brush up on their Mac skills and for others who needed help from the bottom up, the beginners or the want-to-be Mac owners looking for some lessons before they entered into the new frontier of the Mac OS X simplicity.  We were told it was very informative.

The next day however, I was approached by an attendee who needed more in-depth help.  I showed some basics with our Mac’s at the Apple Desk in the Bookstore and then sent the individual to Mac 101- the Grand Tour Introduction.  You can actually start with Mac 101 which is a Getting Started with Mac tutorial assistance link provided by Apple. There is also a Mac 101- Mac Essentials which includes helpful pictures.

After you’re more comfortable with the basics, you can visit Mac 101- All Work and Play for help with different applications like TextEdit, Safari, File sharing, iChat, VoiceOver and many other fun apps.  So for those of you out there, who would like more tutorial instructional assistance, just follow the links provided for a look into the other world, allusive to some, the world of Mac OS X.