Ask TUAW: Scanning bills, migrating, iWOW, Cover Flowing and more

In this round of Ask TUAW, we're going to be tackling some of our backlog of questions. We'll be looking at questions about scanning, migrating from an external volume, augmenting audio in iTunes, using Cover Flow to file images, Bonjour iChatting on a local network, and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now to the questions!

pdcryan asks

In an effort to find something to put in our kitchen to intercept mail/bills/documents as them enter our home, I have been searching high and low for a document scanner that need not be tethered to my Mac to work. What I had envisioned was a portable sized scanner (something like the old "paperport" scanners) either with WiFi (much like the wifi in the "all-in-one" printer/scanner products) or with some built-in storage (much like a digital camera, I would expect to plug it into my mac later to dump the scanned files) - but alas, no such device seems to exist. Any suggestions?

Such things do exist, but they are seriously expensive. For instance the Kodak Scan Station 100 will do what you describe, but unfortunately it costs north of $2000. I think you'd probably be better served with something like the NEAT receipts, which is due to have a Mac version in 2008 (with a preview coming at MWSF), though it will require connection to a computer. The even nicer computer connected solution is the Fuji ScanSnap though of course the cost is rather higher (~$500).

Mike asks

Longish question here. By way of background, a few months ago I upgraded to a new Intel iMac and gave my G4 to my mother, a lifelong PC user. She took to it really quickly and is kicking herself for not switching sooner. At her request (she's done her own homework), I upgraded her to Leopard, where we had some problems-there were persistent hard drive errors that prevented me from booting her internal drive in Leopard. In order to get out of the house after many hours of installation, I installed Leopard on her backup drive (which had all her current files anyway), set that as her primary drive (using the internal drive for Time Machine), and let well enough alone. Now my mom wants to buy her own new iMac. Great, but how do I help her transfer her files? Does Firewire Target Disk mode work if your original machine is running off an external drive? What do I need to do?

No problem; when you get the new Mac just run the Migration Assistant in /Applications/Utilities. It will ask you if you want to migrate from an external volume. Mount the external drive and you should be able to choose it as a source. You can also move the files (particularly your mother's user folder) over manually, of course.

benc asks

I've got myself a new Mac Mini and am greatly enjoying it. Though I have one issue with it. When listening to music, I feel that it lacks a certain...something. It just sounds flat, and there's very little bass. I've compared tunes on different devices and my Mac certainly comes out worst. I've tried all the equalizer settings, including the so-called "perfect" setting. That's the best, but I'm still lacking that bass. Am I missing something here?

I haven't used it myself, but I've hear good things about the SRS iWOW 2 Plugin for Mac ($19.99). This iTunes plugin may give you the sort of thing you want. There is a demo that you can check out for yourself.

PowerLlama asks

I have a western digital mybook studio edition hooked up to a usb hub. And sometimes when I plug the hub into my mac, it won't mount. Growl will tell me it connected, but it just doesn't mount. I usually have to restart the hard drive. Is there a way of mounting it without me having to restart?

It's somewhat hard to say what the problem is. You may be able to mount the drive with the Disk Utility in /Applications/Utilities. I've had a similar problem myself with USB drives and I have found (purely anecdotally) that plugging it in directly to the computer rather than the hub tends to help.

bobm asks

Do you know of a product that will allow browsing directories much like the filmstrip mode that the windows explorer uses? The thumbnails aren't really big enough and what I want to be able to do is browse a directory and move pictures to other directories or delete them, etc..

No, but I think I have a better solution. Finder in Leopard with Cover Flow. It's absolutely great for doing exactly what you suggest. Here a post at Inside Aperture that makes the exact point. Combined with Quick Look, the new Finder really helps in sorting through folders full of images. The image above (which cuts off the sidebar) gives you an idea, but you can also enlarge the Finder to fill your whole screen which makes flipping through images a breeze.

weeeeeew asks

Is there any way to keep iTunes from editing my files completely? I know about the two checkboxes in the preferences (not sure what they are called in English though, maybe something like "Copy files to..." and "Keep the folder iTunes Music in order"), but iTunes still edits the metadata of the tracks when I edit genre-info and such. I would need iTunes to just store those changes in some sort of database of it's own, and not in the files.

No, because when you edit meta-data with Get Info you are editing the ID3 tags, which are part of the music files themselves. The iTunes database stores things like playcount and rating. The sort of metadata you're talking about is in the music files, so there's no way to edit them without editing the underlying MP3/AAC files, etc.

katie asks

I recently purchased a macbook with a canon MX310. Is there any way I can connect the printer wirelessly? I was looking at NETGEAR WGPS606NA 54 Mbps Wireless Print Server but I'm not sure if that would work with the printer.

Sure, both the Airport Express and the Airport Extreme routers allow printer sharing. If you don't want to replace your router you can use a wireless printer server, though it maybe be difficult to set up. Frankly, I would suggest going with one of the Apple routers.

Lee asks

I was wondering if you know of any method for 4 macs on a local network to instant message/chat with one another? 2 have isight 2 don't, don't want to use MSN?aim other stuff just something like the chat in Remote desktop.

Sure, just turn on the Bonjour chat option in iChat. In the iChat preferences, add a Bonjour account on each of the computers. Then in iChat you only have to show the Bonjour iChat buddy list and you should be able to see all of the computers on the network.

leviar asks

When you open a bunch of images in preview, it can display all the images as if they were all pages in a PDF. Is it possible to some how save those grouped images as an actual PDF? When I try the print -> save as PDF trick, it always saves only the image I'm currently looking at...

This is apparently now possible with the Leopard version of Preview. According to this hint, you open a PDF in Preview, then add the images in the sidebar, delete the original pages and you'll be able to do it.