Mac OS X Tip--Automatic ISP Dialing

From Dana Baggett,

"Something unusual happened in the process of writing the note I just sent you. Instead of going to Internet Connect, I opened Mail instead, figuring I'd compose the note off-line and then send it. Mail took a minute or two to open, whereupon I selected Compose and wrote my note. I heard a chime indicating that new mail had arrived and I wondered how that could be, since Internet Connect showed no activity. No green lightning bolt in evidence. So, I ignored it."

"After sending the note to you, the Internet Connect panel showed up in the background and revealed that I had in fact been on the internet for 15 minutes."

"This could be an unpleasant surprise for folks with a dial-up connection for which they pay by the minute. I could have left my iMac unattended for a long period of time, thinking that I was not connected to the internet."

Automatic dialing to your ISP is controlled by a setting in the Network control panel under the PPP tab and the PPP Options button. The first Session Option is whether or not to connect automatically when starting a TCP/IP application.

-- Weekend, May 5-6 --

[10:45p] Apple Posted a QuickTime Movie of Steve Job's May 1 iBook Introduction on Apple's QuickTime page.

[6:45p] Mac OS X Tip--Increasing PowerBook Battery Life: We experience very poor battery life with our PowerBook 2000 (FireWire) during sleep. The battery will be virtually dead if left sleeping over night 7-8 hours with Mac OS X 10.0.0, 10.0.1 and 10.0.2. Two things have been suggested to help with battery life while a PowerBook is asleep.

First, Charles Eicher wrote that some screen savers (including those that come with Mac OS X) have bugs and continue to run even during sleep. He suggested using "Basic Black", a screen saver that doesn't have the bug. We apparently don't have this problem, perhaps because we have the screen saver preference set to never activate. Installing the suggested screen saver had no effect on our PowerBook's battery life during an over night sleep.

The second suggestion is to turn off AirPort during sleep on a battery. We connect to our network with AirPort and this suggestion helped significantly. We had a little over a third of our battery life left after a 7-8 hour sleep.

Around the office we leave normally our PowerBook connected to its AC adapter. Now when we take it out on the battery, by turning AirPort off we can leave it sleeping in Mac OS X for most of a day with confidence.

[5:00p] "Gov. King takes his Laptop to Class" is the full Times Record article on the visits of Maine's Governor King to Maine's classrooms. He does so with iBook and AirPort in hand to teach class and to promote laptop computer technology for learning. He specifically wants the state to supply all seventh and eighth graders with laptops. Here's a photo. We noted the TV blurb on Friday. [Dana Baggett]