Ask TUAW: Finder thumbnails, wifi connection manager, external drive on PS3, Tiger on an old iMac

In this Ask TUAW we have questions on the need for anti-virus protection, customizing Finder views, connecting automatically to an AFP share, using an external drive with both Mac and PS3, installing Tiger on an unsupported iMac and more.

As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!

Sigbhu asks

I have a BlackBook (early '08) running Leopard. Is there any way I can make the thumbnails in Finder larger? I want to be able to see picture thumbnails more clearly.

I assume you're working in icon view; you can change the size of the icons (including the preview thumbnails) by going to the view options in the View menu (or just hit ⌘+J) and adjusting the Icon size slider. The largest size is 128x128 but if you want anything larger than that you're probably better off switching to the Cover Flow view.

raptrex asks

How safe am I using my mac without an anti-virus program?

It's very difficult to answer a question like this. As of now there has not been a serious virus outbreak on the Mac. Does that mean there will never be one? Obviously not. How likely is it? That's hard to say. With the Mac becoming more popular by the day I suspect that malware will be developed at some point. Another thing to keep in mind is that you might unwittingly propagate Windows viruses even if they don't affect your Mac. I will say that I personally run Sophos on my Macs as I have free access to it from my University. If I didn't get it for free I probably would cross my fingers and hope for the best without, but if you've got access to it I would run it.

Richard asks

I have recently noticed that I have a fairly constant upload of 14–16 KB/s going on in the background (I'm using iSlayer's iStat menus), even though I haven't initiated any upload. I'm not now running any online backup apps. I've checked in Activity Monitor, and can't see anything very out of the ordinary there, although evidently I've missed something. Is there an easy way to see which applications/processes are using the network connection? Or should I get Little Snitch? It's quite annoying to see that the network connection is being used, and being unsure about what is using it. It's potentially disastrous when I'm using metered connections!

Little Snitch ($29.95) is probably the easiest way to go. There's also another recently released net monitoring application called ProteMac Meter ($29.95) which might be worth checking out. I don't recommend Glowworm FW as I've had serious problems with it under Leopard and have found others reporting similar difficulties. It may be that the demos of one of these application will be enough to find the source of your unknown network traffic.

Josh askd

I was given a Samsung Digimax A50 camera for college a month ago and it isn't compatible with Leopard apparently. Is there any way to fix this or do I need a card reader? Also, I want to connect a Mac formatted External Drive to a PS3 in my dorm room. Is that possible? Or do I need to reformat to NTFS? If I do have to reformat, can I do it without losing any data on the drive?

This camera model was apparently sold in 2005 so I would not expect any updates from Samsung. It's listed as a Mass Storage Device and compatible with OS X 10.2 so I'm somewhat surprised it won't work with your Mac. Nonetheless, your best bet is definitely a card reader, which will likely be faster and more versatile in the end.

To answer your second question, no you will not be able to get the PS3 to recognize a HFS+ formatted drive. However, you also don't want to format it NTFS if you want to write to it from your Mac. You should format the drive FAT32 to ensure maximum compatibility.

Ben asks

I have a old 17" iMac g4 ... before we retired it from normal use, we had put in a new Hard Drive, and I would love to make use of that for a Time Machine drive. My problem is this: For Time Machine to use that drive, the Macbook needs to be connected to the iMac ahead of time. I'm looking for something that will allow my Macbook to sense when it is on my home airport network and connect to the iMac.

You need a connection manager such as Marco Polo (donations requested). You can use it to set up a rule to connect to your iMac AFP share whenever your MacBook joins a specific network. Keep in mind that you must share the iMac's drive through AFP for this to work with Time Machine.

Dan asks

Is there any way to make an Airport Extreme (or Airport Express) connect to my fiance's college network and authenticate itself with her username/password on their 802.1x network just like she does on her computer? Creating her own network would let her share her printer with her roommate, and do wireless Time Machine backups, and also allow me to hop online when I'm there (she's on the edge of AT&T's 3G coverage, so connecting my iPhone & using NetShare works, but isnt ideal for my own usage). I know the simpler option would be for me to plug my Mac Mini into the wall and share the network connection wirelessly, which would work and would have a strong enough signal to cover her entire dorm room, but I'm trying to set this up without giving her my pseudo-media-server/DVR from home.

No, you can't do what you describe, but if you're going to buy an Airport Extreme/Express why not just plug that into the wall? Now, I should mention that adding a wifi router to her college's network may very well violate their network security policy. If it is discovered you might very well get her into trouble.

in2h20 asks

Recently... [I tried] to install [OS X 10.4] on my old iMac Indigo G3 (120 GB hdd, 1 GB RAM running 10.2)... repeatedly I get the message it cannot be done. Any ideas, inspiration, comments?

The official Tiger installer will not run on any machine lacking a FireWire port. The easiest way to circumvent this restriction is with XPostFacto ($25 donation requested). That should allow you to install OS X 10.4 on your iMac.