Recession promises notebook price cuts . . . but does Apple? - The Dedicated Mac - Column

Home Office Computing, March, 1992 by C.J. Weigand

The recession has hit hardware vendors hard. Sales are down. Already, there have been significant price reductions in PC portables, and this trend will eventually spill over into the Mac market. Once Apple fills the initial demand for its notebooks, and announces delivery dates for the new gray-scale, color, and ultra-compact models, look for competitive price decreases among current PowerBook notebooks. If you're interested in the Apple PowerBooks and wait for the next round, you'll likely get an improved machine. Perhaps it'll have a more rugged, easier-to-access phone jack instead of the fragile, hard-to-get-at RJ-11 connector you get now. Also, some positive indication of available charging power would be nice (if you plug the cable into the back of your notebook, but forget to plug the external power supply into a wall outlet, you still get the battery-is-charging icon). And how about an external monitor port?

Typing stand-alone accents. Most of us know how to get an accented character, such as the letters a, o, or n, on our Mac: You type an Option-key combination followed by the desired letter. In these instances, Option-e followed by the letter a, Option-u followed by the letter o, and Option-n followed by an n. Suppose, however, you want only the accent itself? Then just type the Option-key command followed by a space. This makes the accent into a separate, stand-alone character that you can easily manipulate.

More macro keystroke combinations. Here's a tip to get more mileage out of QuicKeys 2 and Tempo II by assigning different macros to the same Option-, Command-, and Control-key combinations. How? By substituting numbers on the numeric keypad for those you've already used on the main keyboard.

QuicKeys 2 and Tempo Ii view numbers on the numeric keypad different from those on the main keyboard. You can, for example, assign Command-Option-3 on your numeric keypad to one macro, and Command-Option-3 on the main keyboard to another macro. These seemingly identical keystroke combinations do not conflict with one another.

Printing legal-size pages. If you occasionally need to print legal-size documents (8.5 by 14 inches) using a LaserWriter II series printer, you don't have to buy an $89 legal-size paper tray. Instead, feed the paper through your printer one sheet at a time.

Be sure to choose legal-size paper in the Page Setup dialog box, and then click the Manual Feed button in the Print dialog box. Otherwise, only part of your page prints because the printer thinks you are feeding letter-size paper (assuming you have the letter-size tray installed). Note that if you print from within PageMaker, you also must choose Legal from the pop-up Paper menu in the Aldus "Print to" dialog box.

Resize before your very eyes. Did you know that if you double-click on the title bar of any Microsoft application window, it will automatically resize to the last size you made it? Of course, you only have to click once on the zoom box, but now you don't have to limit your productive mousing to a tiny box up in the corner.

What's on your hard disk? If you're running System 7, there's an easy way to find out. Choose "find" from the File menu. In the dialog box, click on the More Choice button. This gives you an expanded Find dialog. Choose "kind" in the first pop-up menu, "contains" in the second pop-up menu, and "folder" in the third pop-up menu. Select the hard disk you want from the pop-up Search menu, and click the "all at once" box. Then click the Find button.

In a few seconds, the Finder displays the contents of your hard disk with all forlders highlighted. You may get a message saying that it's impossible to show all matching items in one window. Ignore the message and click on OK.

Now, hold down the Command key and press the right arrow key at the same time. This fully expands all folders. Choose Print Window from the File menu. This prints a hierarchical index of every file on your disk.

To close up all the open folders again, choose Select All from the Edit menu. Then hold down the Command and Option keys and press the left arrow key.

A few great System 7 keyboard shortcuts. To close previous folders, hold down the Option key as you open folders within folders. This automatically closes each previous folder as the next one opens. If you forget, and wind up with a clutter on your desktop, hold down the Option key and click the close box of the topmost window. This closes all open folders at once.

To move backwards through your folders, hold down the Command key and click on the name of the topmost folder window. A pop-up menu displays a hierarchical path to that folder. Choosing a folder from the list opens it and brings it to the foreground.

To move thorugh file lists easily in Open and Save As dialog boxes, use the up and down arrows on your keyboard. Press the arrows continuously to scroll the lists, and hold down the Command key as you press the arrows to close or open folders.

To jump to the last item in an Open or