Ask TUAW: Education software, virtualization, Spaces, and more

In this round of Ask TUAW we have lots of questions! We'll go over some answers about sluggish performance, educational software for image editing and learning to type, image editing in ImageWell, moving from XP to a virtual machine, keeping Preference Panes visible in all Spaces, 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!

AboutRound asks

I've got a late 2004 iBook G4 that just recently has started to run extremely slow. No longer can I run multiple programs, and even within running one program, I get the spinning beachball quite a bit. Any ideas why this is happening? I'm pretty sure I've got plenty of memory still available as I have almost nothing on this laptop. Everything is up to date. It's getting quite annoying.

Well it's not really possible for me to say exactly. However, it's possible that you have some sort of background process that's out of control. What I would suggest is starting the Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities) and the sort on CPU and RSIZE. Look for a process that's using an inordinate amount of processor time and/or memory. Try killing (force quitting) that process. If that improves things then you need to make sure whatever it is that's out of control doesn't start. You may have to remove an item from the Login items tab of your account in the Accounts Preference Pane.

joel asks

I WOULD APPRECIATE A THOROUGH TECHNICAL ASSESSMENT OF LEOPARD MEMORY MANAGEMENT AND IF IT HAS BEEN IMPROVED SINCE TIGER, IF SO WHERE AND BY HOW MUCH.

No need to shout, Joel. A good place to start would be page 5 of John Siracusa's exhaustively detailed review of Leopard at Ars Technica.

maybenot asks

My mother is a middle school art teacher and loved using AppleWorks Paint and Draw feature to teach her kids. Are there any viable alternatives to these programs now that this program has seen its demise? ... [Also] does anyone also know a good typing program that runs on Leopard, the lady needs to learn how to work a qwerty keyboard....

This obviously depends on how much sophistication she needs. We've previously posted on Tux Paint, a very kids oriented paint program, but it's aimed at kids "3 to 12." If they're older than that, they're probably ready for real software, in which case you might have her check out DrawIt 3 ($39), which is a rather sophisticated shareware image editor and illustrator. Of course at the top of the heap are Corel Painter X ($99 for educational purchasers) or the simplified version Corel Painter 4 Essentials ($79 right now).

As far as typing tutors go, I don't have any specific recommendation but you might want to check out this list at MacUpdate I don't know for sure, but it's unlikely that any of them would be incompatible with Leopard. I haven't used it myself, but the free TypeTrainer4Mac seems to have lots of good reviews.

Michael L asks

I needed to join two scans of newspaper columns into one image, and I couldn't figure how to do so with ImageWell, iPhoto, Preview, or Seashore. I could have done it in Pages by lining up the two images and doing a screenshot, but the result would've exceeded the size of my screen. I ended up having to use MS Paint (sigh). What I need is a program that allows me to add some empty space to an image (by dragging an image's borders outward) and then copy and paste in another image and move it into place. Any program recommendations? Or is there a way to do so in one of the programs I've mentioned?

Actually, yes, you can do this pretty easily in ImageWell. Just open the first image, then hit the edit button. Now drag and drop the second image next to it (you may need to enlarge the window). Finally use the selection tool to draw a rectangle around both images, hit ImageWell icon button and you'll bet a single image with a white background.

a different Michael asks

I am a Windows user, and am planning to get a Macbook in a couple of months. My current Toshiba laptop did not come with Windows XP installation discs, but rather a "Restore CD", and at any rate was released well before XP SP2. Is there a way to copy my current Windows laptop's hard drive into a Boot Camp partition on a new Macbook, without having to do a Windows install from scratch via Apple's tool? (Or, better yet, any way to run Boot Camp off of a partition on a USB drive? I can easily take my Windows machine's hard disk and stick it in an external USB case.) If Boot Camp is not an option here, do Parallels or VMWare offer a solution? And if so, any experience with how well they work? I hate to have to buy a copy of XP – for use with a Mac! – when I'm already licensed for one and will be decomissioning the machine it's currently installed on...

I am not aware of a way to transfer an XP install directly to a Boot Camp partition, however it is relatively easy to convert an existing XP install into a Virtual Machine. With VMware's Fusion you just need to use the VMware convertor. This is actually software you run on the Windows machine which will "transform your Windows PC into a VMware Fusion compatible virtual machine, then copy the virtual machine from your PC to your Mac." Parallels has a similar tool called the Parallels Transporter.

lgbtech asks

Regarding games on a Mac, does anyone know how well Windows games perform in Parallels or VMware? I'm specifically interested in the performance of games like Civilization.

Do you actually mean Civ I? In that case I suspect it would work fine. As far as Civ IV goes, however, it's not going to work that well. Both Parallels and VMware Fusion have limited 3D graphics support (VMware seems a little bit ahead on this). That means you can run certain 3D games, but the performance is always going to be heavily compromised. For any game that requires serious graphical horsepower you're going to want to run them in Boot Camp.

Alex asks

I'm a fairly Mac-literate user, but this one is throwing me for a loop. I've recently upgraded to Leopard and I'm really enjoying Spaces, including the functionality to assign certain apps to a specific space (or Every Space). What I haven't figured out, though, is how to assign a specific prefpane to Every Space. I use PTHPasteboard as my multi-clipboard app and its "app" seems to exist as a prefpane. That is, "PTH Pasteboard" doesn't appear in my Applications folder and I access its settings through System Preferences (so, I guess that makes it a prefpane-app or something?). The tricky part is that I don't know what file on my system to point the Expose and Spaces Prefpane toward in terms of assigning that to Every Space. Any ideas there?

Well I'm not familiar with PTHPasteboard in particular, but if it's a Preference Pane that you want to access in every space then all you should have to do is assign the System Preferences application to every space in the Spaces tab of the Exposé & Spaces Preference Pane.