Friday Wrap-Up

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ATi X1900 and Leopard - How To Fix
The first time I installed Leopard on my Mac Pro I was disappointed because I had screen distortions, system glitches and God-awful freezes. I went to the Mac Forums and listened to other Mac Pro-ATi owners and they confirmed I wasn't alone. Since my office is just a block away from the downtown Apple store I went in to talk with a Genius. He confirmed other Mac Pro-ATi owners had complained and Apple had an explanation and a cure. The reason for the problems have to do with the ATi cards over-heating from the new core-animation Leopard requirements. The fan on the ATi card is defaulted to spin at 500 RPMs which is simply too slow to keep the card from over-heating. Add to this blocked air-vents, dust and other debri and you can count on a hot graphics card.

And the cure? First buy a can of compressed air, usually about $3, and open your Mac Pro case and blow out all the dust and debri from your air vents and fans, taking particular care with the ATi X1900 graphics card. Then close up the case. Second, download smcFanControl v2.1.2
and install it. Go to the smcFanControl preferences and slide the dial from 500 to 1500 on the PCIe/HDD item. Save and restart your system.

Your screen distortions and system glitches and freezes should now be gone. This "fix" has worked again and again.

Leopard's New Update
Very pleased with the first update of Leopard. The download was a mere 31megs from Apple's auto-service (don't know what all these whiners are talking about when they claim "100 megs... yada yada yada"). I can say from personal experience the whole installation was quick and the results are obvious to me. A faster more stable system. Leopard has been stellar for me so far but then, I'm running it on a top-o-line Mac Pro loaded with RAM (8GB) and hard disk space (4TB internal and 2TB externals now). I'm backing up to a 1TB LaCie external and using the other 1TB LaCie external for additional space. BTW, on a 30" HD Apple Cinema my Leopard is a blaze or glory. I highly recommend Leopard and the latest update.

The Beatles and iTunes
The Beatles Catalog of wonderful songs are coming to iTunes. Sir Paul McCartnery is quoted as saying "It's down to fine-tuning, but I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year, 2008. "You've got to get these things right. You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and in three years time you think, 'Oh God, why did we do that?' There's just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it's being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn't be too long."