[Mark Sloan]

Quick answer is Command-Shift-3 or Command-Shift-4… don’t remember which does what, but it ends up on your desktop.

[Mark Sloan]

Technically you can go into the terminal app and do some Root level stuff to adjust the virtual memory settings, but you are better off leaving it alone. In general, you should leave 10% of your hard disk space free for the system to swap with. If you go under that you might begin to see problems. As stated above, the more RAM you can get the better off you will be.

[Mark Sloan]

You just pointed out why the top of the line PowerMacs have not gone Intel. They are waiting for the next version of 64 bit processors from Intel, due in about 4 to 5 months… Intel has not been secretive about this, just look for news on those processors and you will have a good idea when Intel PowerMacs, or MacTowers or whatever they will call them, will be out…

[Mark Sloan]

If you are asking which is faster, the Dual 2.7. The thing to keep in mind is that the Dual-core machines have a different PCI bus, PCI-Express vs. PCI-X… so double check that and make sure you can get the expansion cards you want.

[Mark Sloan]

So you are able to log into the machines, see the drives, but not copy anything? Do you get an error, or does it just take forever?

What is the quality of the cables? Sometimes a wire gets crimped and you loose half your bandwidth up or down…

Could you do a little scenario like this to help narrow it down:
G5.1 to G5.2 – no problems with upload or download
G5.1 to G4.1 – downloads both ways okay, but upload FROM G4 bad
G4.1 to G4.2 – no problems with upload or download

Does it matter if you take a machine off the network? Do you have Appletalk turned on? (turn it off)

[Mark Sloan]

Are you seeing the Drives and just having problems with permissions? Are all 4 computers hooked up to one router sharing an internet connection? Simply, how are the machines “physically” connected via a network?

[Mark Sloan]

you can also try lowering the resolution and the refresh rate to see if you have gone beyond the limits of your monitor….

[Mark Sloan]

I don’t have access to my Macs from work, but one thing I think still holds is that you need to enable a checkbox to respect user rights on the external drives. Otherwise, anyone can do anything. I think this is when you do “Get Info” on the drive, but it may be something you have to do in Disk Utility, I can’t remember off the top of my head.

One thing to be aware of, if these computers are on a network and the drives are accessible you will run into problems setting up users locally on each machine. But if your goal is to prevent basic user error, not security, you should be fine.

[Mark Sloan]

Let me see if I understand, you have mutiple Macs that each have their own set of drives, which you want to set 4 different user types. User 1 might get access to drive 1, user 2 to drive 2, etc.

Do you want a user to be able to use ANY available Mac/Edit bay? With the same restrictions from one Mac/Edit bay to another? I am assuming you are only doing local authentication…

Are the “user types” you are setting up something more like 1=admin, 2=class A user, 3=class B user, 4=class C user?

[Mark Sloan]

The other issue is to check what your Workgroup is set to. If it gives you problems just check your Mac’s IP address and you can connect that way using Run function from your start menu. Just type \\111.222.333.444 whatever the IP address is.