Apple Mac Purchasing advice, and a few questions.

[BoomAM]

Hi.
Im currenty about 30% of the way to getting my long awaited reward (5 months of hard work).
Yesterday, a Netgear FA311 network card, 5m Belkin Cat5e cable & 512mb PC2100 Crucial for iBook G4 arrived.
Tommorrow, sometime before 12, i can expect a LinkSys ADSL Modem/Firewall/Wireless Router to arrive. And, when ive placed the order in a minute, Norton Internet Security 3 for Mac.
On Friday afternoon, i will be traveling down to a computer shop in Birmingham (1h30m train journey), to pick up the 12" G4, iBook, Airport Extreme Card & a Neoprene case.

Next month, i plan to buy a few acccessories for the iBook.
First, is £38 on AoE Gold for Mac. Any other suggestions on what could come in handy?

----
And as for network security, will;
ZoneAlarm on XP rig, Norton Firewall on iBook, and hardware firewall on router be secure?
Any other ways you can reccommend making my WiFi network secure?
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Will my MX700, and/or Nokia 8310, and/or a S-E T160, and/or any other wireless device, interfere with the wireless network?
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At my college, there are small boxes linked to the networks, which are themselves linked up to the printers, to make them network printers. Whats the name of these devices, and where can i find one? Cos i want to get rid of the printer in my room cos it take too much room, so one of those devices, and a wireless addon thing for it, will allow me to plonk the printer somewhere else.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Eug]

Will my MX700, and/or Nokia 8310, and/or a S-E T160, and/or any other wireless device, interfere with the wireless network?

Do you mean SE T610? If so, you should probably get Bluetooth for your iBook. Also get Salling Clicker. Anyways, if interference happens, it's minor.

At my college, there are small boxes linked to the networks, which are themselves linked up to the printers, to make them network printers. Whats the name of these devices, and where can i find one? Cos i want to get rid of the printer in my room cos it take too much room, so one of those devices, and a wireless addon thing for it, will allow me to plonk the printer somewhere else.

Print server. Dunno about your wireless print server idea though. By the way, a print server alone often costs as much as home router/gateway with wireless 802.11g and print server.

Oh and until AT gets a Mac forum, check out the forums at MacNN.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: Eug
Do you mean SE T610? If so, you should probably get Bluetooth for your iBook. Also get Salling Clicker. Anyways, if interference happens, it's minor.

SE T610 = Sony Erricson T610. Thinking of buying one.
Whats this Salling Clicker software do anyway?

Print server. Dunno about your wireless print server idea though. By the way, a print server alone often costs as much as home router/gateway with wireless 802.11g and print server.

Oh and until AT gets a Mac forum, check out the forums at MacNN.

I know of places that do a small adaptor that`ll plug into a normal Cat5 socket, and converts the card to a 802.11g compatible card.

 

[Eug]

SE T610 = Sony Erricson T610.

OK. You had written T160, so I wasn't sure.

Whats this Salling Clicker software do anyway?

It's all in the link I provided.

 

[BoomAM]

Hmm.
Nifty program. I`ll have to try that when i get the phone.

Ive heard that MacOSX has a firewall built in. Is it any good?

 

[thraxes]

Originally posted by: BoomAM
Hi.
----
And as for network security, will;
ZoneAlarm on XP rig, Norton Firewall on iBook, and hardware firewall on router be secure?
Any other ways you can reccommend making my WiFi network secure?
--
Will my MX700, and/or Nokia 8310, and/or a S-E T160, and/or any other wireless device, interfere with the wireless network?

Thanks in advance.

First point listed: Can you spell "overkill"? The Firewall in the router alone is more than enough for a home network!

Secure the WiFi with a static MAC list, suppress SSIDs and enable WEP encryption and you will be very secure, but these steps should be common sense when installing a private WiFI system. The Firewall has nothing to do with it.

Second question: Nope, have BT and WiFi running happily at the same time without worries.

Congrats on you piece of fruit!!

 

[addragyn]

You don't need any of that Norton crap on your Mac. NU was sometimes useful for fixing pre OS X boxes. OS X has a firewall included. Additionally it's much easier disable services, and actually see what they do. By default all the network services are off.

I personally run WiFi in a DMZ and share it. I treat it as an insecure connection. Otherwise you can do encryption, passwords, user number limitation, and MAC filtering but know WiFi can be broken.

Study says BT and 802.11 can live together. Definitely get BT to use w/ your cell. I have no real world experience with this.

If you do P2P check out poisoned

This site has good info - http://diveintoosx.org/DiveIntoOSX.html

Use SuperCal to setup your screen

I would turn off some of the OS X visual effects and turn on full keyboard access

I've found the community to be very generous when it comes to sharing tips/scripts/ and programs people have written. If I found something useful I always PayPal a couple bucks. I do that not to make them rich but to show that I appreciate their work. If you download stuff plz shoot the dev an email or some PP.
http://www.bombich.com/ Has bunch of good stuff, see Carbon Copy Cloner, it's Ghost for OS X.
http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Mail_Scripts.html Has saved me a bunch of time.

 

[Dug]

You don't need any of that Norton crap on your Mac

Agreed. Get that off your system. It will cause more problems than what its worth.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: thraxes
First point listed: Can you spell "overkill"? The Firewall in the router alone is more than enough for a home network!

ZA is on my PC anyway. Norton is for the iBook. The FW is built into the router as well. I plan to make it VERY secure against everything.

Secure the WiFi with a static MAC list, suppress SSIDs

Do what and what now?

and enable WEP encryption and you will be very secure, but these steps should be common sense when installing a private WiFI system. The Firewall has nothing to do with it.

As above, how do i do that?

Congrats on you piece of fruit!!

??? Never heard that lingo before, whats it mean?

Originally posted by: addragyn
You don't need any of that Norton crap on your Mac. NU was sometimes useful for fixing pre OS X boxes. OS X has a firewall included. Additionally it's much easier disable services, and actually see what they do. By default all the network services are off.

So does Windows. Just cos its built it doesnt make it good.

 

[LiekOMG]

Norton products have a history of completely messing up OSX. I'm not sure about Norton Internet Security, but Utilities certainly does. OSX without a firewall is already very secure (no open ports at all), and if you're paranoid, you can just enable the built in firewall. I highly agree with everyone else - ditch Norton!

Oh yeah, other than that, congrats on your iBook

 

[BoomAM]

I hav`nt got it yet! lol. Gettin it on Friday.
Internet Security comes with AV, FW, and some Aladin Cache cleaner software.

So you guys really think i should save myself £40 and get just the AV software?

Hmm. Is the OS-X Firewall any good though? Is it crappy, like the Windows one, or as user friendly and transparent, whilst secure, like ZoneAlarm?

 

[BoomAM]

According to;
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/security/
The built in firewall only stops incoming stuff, and not outgoing, which makes it as "bad" as the windows firewall. Cos it`ll allow spyware/adware to "get out".

 

[addragyn]

You've gotten good advice but apparently you've got a hardon for that dweed Peter Norton. (Remember the early versions of NU in his big BCGs?)

-spyware/adware is not a problem on a mac, you will not be wasting hertz running it or sw to protect against it, same with viruses
-activex controls can't install crap on your machine, there is no hklm\...\run key to hijack
-norton sw jacks up systems on any platform (really, do a search on NAV, spell it out, on MSKB)
-the only reason to run AV on a Mac is to keep from passing it on to Windows boxes, but if you're running Windows w/o AV that's on you AFAIC


"So does Windows. Just cos its built it doesnt make it good."

Yeah and Windows ships w/ RPC, remote registry, server, DCOM, and more enabled. 2k services

You need to explicitly turn on server services in OS X. os x server services

Nobody said anything about built in being synonymous w/ good! However the OS X firewall is as good as you set it up to be. And since by default it allows nothing all you need to do is turn it on. os x firewall

You really want to know what's going on just run a netstat in terminal. Apple gives you a GUI netstat in Network Utility. check it

- - -

If you're in the US or have a friend who can order, un-package, and ship you stuff you should peep the
Special Deals section in the Apple Store. That 15" Pb for $1399 would be a great machine with a RAM and HD upgrade.