Ask TUAW: Display problems, Outlook invites, MacBook Pro revisions, and more

I'm getting a little bit behind on Ask TUAW, so this time we'll have a bit of a firesale to catch up a bit. We've got questions on MacBook displays, Outlook invitations, streaming video from a Mac to an iPhone, syncing iCal between Macs and much more.

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

Warren asks

Is there a way for me to occasionally use my MacBook Pro screen with a PC? I need to use my old PC sometimes but hate having an extra monitor out taking up space.

No there's no way to do this directly. However, I do have an idea. You could install VNC on your PC and access it from your Mac using Chicken of the VNC or other VNC client. The other possibility if you've got an Intel Mac is running virtualization software like VMWare Fusion or Parallels and retiring the PC altogether.

Simon asks

The Documents folder in my user folder has always annoyed me. I never use it for any of my documents because many applications insist on putting their stuff in there too. Looking at you, Adobe, Microsoft, and others. Is there any way to purge this stuff and keep it purged – by moving it. The apps seem to recreate their folders whenever you restart them. But who wants application support stuff cluttering up the folder that supposed to be home to your own files. Can you help?

I don't think you want to do that. Oftentimes those applications are built to assume that they'll find those files in the ~/Documents/ directory and if they're not there they will just recreate them (as you say). It maybe be that the applications have preferences to change the location that they save at, but that will be specific to those applications. I would highly recommend that you just reconcile yourself to the annoyance rather than risk breaking the applications.

Emil asks

I bought a Bookendz for my new MacBook and was disappointed to discover that, unlike the 12" Powerbook G4 I had, the MacBook does a spotty job of sensing that an external monitor has been disconnected. The result is that I can't get to the display preferences to toggle mirroring without reattaching the external display in most cases. Is there a built-in shortcut, or some way to hack together a keyboard shortcut to toggle external mirror monitoring? I remember older Powerbooks used to have a labeled function key that did exactly this...

Well apparently Shift-Cmd-F7 used to do this, but it does not any more (at least on my machine). What I would suggest, however, is that you should still be able to do this without unplugging and replugging by hitting the "Detect Displays" button on the Display tab of the Displays Preference Pane.

Jonathan asks

I'm starting to get meeting invites from outlook users and, unfortunately, Mail(tiger) doesn't seem to understand how to take a meeting request, connect it with iCal(tiger) and respond to the organizer with an accept or decline. Is there a way to make this happen?

Not being popular enough to get Outlook invites I've never used it myself, but I ran across an Mail.app plugin that may do what you want called YAI (You Are Invited).

Christopher asks

I am looking to upgrade from a MacBook to a MacBook Pro but am also considering waiting to see upgraded MacBooks. We haven't really seen any upgrades for the MacBook in a little while. There was also no 'One More Thing' at Macworld, so do you think they might have an entire 'One More Thing' event like there was to unveil the 5G iPod? I guess my question is should I wait for upgraded MacBooks (or for that matter, newer MBPs too, because they've only ever had spec increases) or just take the plunge and get me a 15"-er right now? I can afford to wait a few months, if that helps.

Nobody ever knows for sure about these things, but if you check out the MacRumors MacBook Pro Guide you'll see the last MacBook Pro revision was in June of 2007. With the 45nm Penryn processor line bringing improved performance and battery life now released we should expect updated MacBook Pro's in the not too distant future. So if you can wait a few months, I definitely would.

Paul asks

I have a number of videos (clips from my digital camera etc) on my Macbook that I would like to stream over the net in order to watch on my iPhone (and show to friends). Is there a simply way to do this? I have little experience with programming etc – would like a very user friendly method.

I've never done it myself but I found this tutorial on using iPhone Remote (aka telekinesis) to do what you want. Keep in mind that this will likely only work over wifi, and generally with relatively low bitrate video files.

James asks

I missed my easy Exchange support so I went back to Office 2008 this week. I'm back to Word and Entourage, but notice that when I print then select E-mail PDF, it still fires up Mail to compose the message. How can I get this funtionality to start up Entourage and create a new message instead of using Mail? Thanks for the great stuff every week!

The problem is that Mail.app is still selected as your default mail client. The easiest way to fix this is to start Mail, go into the preferences and in the General tab choose Entourage as your Default email reader:

Dave asks

I'm going to buy a Macbook in the next couple of months, and I'm very intrigued at the RAM prices Crucial offers. I can get 4 GB of RAM from them for about what I'd pay Apple for 2 GB. I've heard generally positive reviews about their products, too. But do I really need 4 GB, as opposed to 2 GB? I mainly use the Web, listen to music, chat, or work in word processing/text editing programs. Every couple of months or so I'll use a weightier product like Photoshop or InDesign... But it's still an extra $100 compared to upgrading to 2 GB. I could buy iWork or Office 08, or even better, a slew of good books. Realistically, am I going to get anything out the extra 2 GB?

It's difficult to answer this question precisely, but I do think you'll see a performance increase from 2GB to 4GB of RAM, particularly when running Photoshop. In my own experience I noticed that my iMac definitely felt snappier and more responsive when I moved from 2GB to 3GB of RAM. So I think the answer really depends on your psychology as much as an technical issue. If you, like me, hate waiting for your computer then it will probably be worth it; it you don't mind little hick ups here and there you may find that the $100 is best spent elsewhere. That said, you will have reasonably good performance with 2GB of RAM in Leopard, but I think you would actually notice it if you install 4GB. In any case, I would recommend not buying the wildly overpriced Apple RAM; Crucial or another reputable vendor should be fine.

pjones asks

Does anybody know how to share iCal calendars over a local network? I'm running an all-mac setup-airport express, two portables and one mini. I want to share calendars from all machines to all machines, but I don't have OSX server. There's got to be a way to do it-I have basic networking skills but can't figure this one out. Thanks

Probably the easiest way to do this is with BusySync ($19.95). If all you want to do is share iCal calendars from one machine to the others (i.e. not sync) you can do that on any WebDAV server. We pointed this tutorial a while back.