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MacEdition Pro News : October 20, 2002, Switch your office in a time deal

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Another way to switch…

Here’s a switch campaign for Mac users that some real people might actually join.

Dr. Bott just released a nifty version of their MoniSwitch (a KVM-type of switch box) that allows people to use one ADC monitor or flat panel on two machines.

The US$299 device also reduces the spaghetti tangle of cables usually associated with KVM boxes, as Dr. Bott notes in the press release.

With MoniSwitch ADC, Dr. Bott reduces the usual tangle of cables and connectors behind a KVM switch to only 3 connectors, one belonging to the display. The two cables leading to the computers are included in the package. Sharing a display between two computers doesn’t get much simpler than that.

The company also notes the new MoniSwitch - which ships with a pair of ADC to ADC cables - can be used with DVI displays, provided the user also buys an adapter similar to one which Dr. Bott already sells.

(Oh, and we here in the ProNews department of MacEdition would be remiss if we didn’t tip our hat to the folks at Slashdot for links to Microsoft’s brief switch campaign which obviously involved testimonials from stock photographs.)

The office is open

Got a hankerin’ for some of that MS goodness, but your don’t have the bucks to join in that office party they’re throwin’ down the street?

Well, cheer up bucko, the folks at OpenOffice.orghave just released an OS X version of their cross-platform open-source productivity suite. Normal users might want to leave the champagne on ice for a while yet, as the newly minted release, intended for developers, runs on the X Window system (which can be made to run on OS X, if you know what you’re doing in a terminal session.)

Road warrior The gang at OpenOffice.org is hopeful some Mac coders will come out of the woodwork and help the project along (as evidenced by this link.) Those brave souls up for the challenge are asked to download the beta and see where they might make themselves useful.

No reports yet from Microsoft as to whether or not this road warrior intends to switch or stay.


No time like the present

The good people at Trinfinity Software have passed us a note that they’ve recently updated their Time Track software to make it Mac OS X compatible and take care of a few nasty bugs. From their press release:

This update fixes a bug that prevented the Rate Calculator and several other utilities from working properly when dealing with log entries that contained two digit months (i.e. 10 - October, 11 - November, 12 - December). This update also includes new application and document icons for MacOS X.

Those looking for a time-billing application might want to try out the US$24.95 shareware program by downloading a 30-day trial from Trinfinity’s download site.

A volume discount

The Big Nerd Ranch is offering a hearty discount to programmers who want to take in two five-day OS X programming courses at their mountain lodge in North Carolina next month.

Each session carries a US$3,500 tuition tab which includes room, meals, course materials, and transportation to and from the local airport. Those who opt for both sessions will get US$1,000 trimmed from their tab.

The course syllabus is outlined in the following press release:

Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming is the Big Nerd Ranch’s newest class. Programmers will learn how to take advantage of Mac OS X’s Unix foundation. Instructors Mark Dalrymple and Aaron Hillegass will team-teach this class, including topics such as: multi-threading, rendezvous, distributed objects, network programming, performance tuning, exception handling, and advanced debugging techniques.

Cocoa I is based on the Addison-Wesley book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, and is taught by author Aaron Hillegass. Topics added to the course since book publication include Screen Savers, View Swapping, and OpenGL and Cocoa.

Those interested can check out Big Nerd’s classes schedule for further details.

And, in case you’re wondering, the Mark Dalrymple mentioned in the above release is the same guy as the fellow contributing most of the articles in MacEdition’s BOLTS series.

Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.

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