Daniel there are still two big boxes of Mac stuff that will be heading your way sometime this week. As I'm packing I keep finding one more thing to toss in the boxes.

Dan, Sorry I posted and ran...had access to a car today...must take advantage!

I went hunting for memory and an external dvd.
I'm dim.

No retail outlet will match mail order!

Patience is a virtue, and thin on the ground around here.

You? A god among men. Those links are really helpful...and while I can't find a model number (unless I heft the sucker off the table...what does it weigh? 50lbs??) the 'lowendemac' described on the one link fits it to a t.

I must say, I really appreciate you and tommyrot. There are simply NO knowledgeable Macdaddies anywhere around me. Sigh.

Daniel there are still two big boxes of Mac stuff that will be heading your way sometime this week. As I'm packing I keep finding one more thing to toss in the boxes.

Sounds good. And fun!

Is there any way to make the font bigger in iTunes? I was kind of using it in my car this weekend, and a larger type for the current song playing would make glancing over to see what's playing much less accident-prone-ish.

Okay, so my brother and SiL gave me the iPod mini for Christmas, pre-loaded with a bunch of music. From what y'all say upthread, I can sync the iPod manually with the music on my hard drive? Can I download the music on the iPod to my hard drive so that in the future I can sync automatically?

I'm hardly the expert, but ipodlounge.com has all sorts of useful info. It's my understanding that music is not supposed to travel from iPod to computer, only the other direction, but that there are several workarounds. Go to the site, check FAQs under Help, and the info is there.

I have an aspect ratio question.

When in Best Buy yesterday, the salesperson was trying to sell me on this widescreen TV, telling me that it was perfectly suited for movies, with the whole 16:9 thing. He finally admitted that it would squish normal TV, which was pretty much a no brainer for me -- I'd rather waste screen space on bars than encourage distortions.

But while I was watching the stuff they were testing, it was apparent that the TV was not displaying as well as the HDTV widescreen units -- they had extra info on the sides that the 4:3 sets were chopping off, and in fact, the widescreen flat tube was chopping AND squishing.

Is that because they had it set up badly? What signal were they piping that a standard TV was chopping anyway? Is my TV chopping?

Is my TV chopping?

Yes, but it's supposed to. Like movies, tv is shot with the understanding that a certain amount of the visible-in-the-studio edge of the frame will be cropped out by the projection/tv set. The "tv safe" region of a video frame is the middle 90%. ("Title safe" is the middle 80%, the idea being that titles really have to be seen, so you should be extra-safe and give the TV manufacturer an extra 10% wiggle room.)

Is aspect info sent along with the picture? I mean, how does a standard TV know when to letterbox, and when to chop, or conversely, how does a widescreen TV know when to squish, when to show wide, and when to slice off the letterboxing?

Also, what was UP with the Phillips?

The Phillips just sounds screwy. And you know, I have no idea how a television detects aspect ratio. It must be part of the signal. (Which makes me wonder if it affects the frame rate, the way color does. Huh.)