Burn or toast, freeware dvd burning OSX

When it comes to burning disks under osx leopard, there are not too many options. It's the build in file burner, or the program toast. However toast is not all that great and as usual with most mac products, it costs money. Spending money for a burning tool is something you can easy avoid, as there is the aptly named "Burn" application that is quick and simple. Burn burns the following formats :

• Data disks : hfs+ (mac), jolliet (pc), udf, hfs+jolliet, dvd-video
  
• Audio disks : Audio cd, mp3 disk
  
• Video disks : vcd, svcd, dvd, divx with on the fly conversion
  
• Disk images : img, dmg, cdr, toast, iso, cue/bin, toc
  
• Disk copy : Everything but audio cd

Burn has a simple 1 screen userinterface and is very easy to use, in true apple style. All this as open source freeware. So drop your toast and burn baby !

You can find the program and more info - here -.

Windows under OSX86

Now that i have leopard running and installed quite a lot of programs, i still miss some software that just is not available under apple's os. A few examples :

• Good usenet program with build in search like usenet explorer just does not exsist
  
• Quicken ; i use the 2002 version where with my financial data of the last 8 years
  
• FTD : fill threads database, dutch program to keep track of latest usenet releases
  

After reading quite a lot of forum posts on windows within osx, i decided to install parallels. Altough it works quite well, it does not feel all that fast. Luckily it's competitor, vmware fusion, is quite a lot faster. 

Installation of fusion is very quick and easy, after that depending on mostly your systems ram you can install xp or vista under fusion. If you have 2gb ram, like my system, i suggest you install the latest xp. With 4 gigabyte of ram or more in your system, you could just as well install a version of vista.

Fusion has a fully automatic mode to install windows, you fill in the options and the serial number and it does a quick unattend install. After everything completes vmware also installs it's runtime tools fully by itself. The last step, as usual with windows, is a lengthy download from windows update to get the latest updates. Or you could find a slipstreamed version with the sp3 service pack of course...

Xp under fusion is amazingly fast, considering it runs on a virtual machine. I have a test setup running with xpsp2 pro with nod32 antivirus and the above mentioned programs. It feels almost as fast as a normal xp install. Fusion even has an expirimental directx9 support, so you could try a few 3d games to see how they perform. Currently it's missing shader support so i doubt that it's of much use with the latest and greatest, however it is a start unliky parallels.

As long as there are some programs that just do not have an equivalent under osx, you will have to run a windows of some sort. Boot camp is great, but you will have to go through a full os shutdown and restart every time. With fusion you get a very good performing virtual machine that runs xp just fine. Only 3d games will still force you to go the bootcamp route.

Use Return to open objects under osx

What drives me mad under leopard is that the Enter key in the finder is used to rename a selected object, instead of opening it. When you are used to windows this is one of the annoyances with working with leopard.

Luckily someone made a little program which corrects this the aptly named : Returnopen (click to go to the website).The enter key of the numpad will still rename the file. Uninstall this is a bit difficult so be carefull when you are just trying.

Install guide for osx86 on your laptop

Well here it is, the step by step install guide for leopard 10.5.2 osx86 on your acer laptop. The mentioned software can be found on many torrent sites when you search for the names.

To start you will need the following :

• Kalyway leopard 10.5.2, burn this to a dvd
• Kalyway 10.5.2 comboupdate
• 10.5.2 kernel update
• Acer5220.zip from > click <
• Powermanagement.bundle > click <

Once you have that continue with the following :

• Connect the external monitor to your laptop as the install process has problems with the x3100 integrated graphics. Later on you can disconnect just keep reading !
• Insert the kalyway 10.5.1 disk and boot up from the dvd writer
• Wait for kalyway to load, this takes a few minutes
• Select your language
• when the disk finishes loading, select the diskutil from the top menu
• Create a 1 partition efi, also select efi as in the options section from the diskutil
• Select customize from the kalyway menu and select efi + vanilla kernel
• Start the install, and skip the dvd check as that takes a long time and is not needed

Now get a cup of coffee and wait till the install has finished. It is possible that the install hangs at 1 minute to go, just wait a few minutes normally it will continue. If it takes longer than 10 minutes, just reboot and the install will continue. In the end you will end up at leopards desktop, still on your external monitor.

• Install the kalyway 10.5.2 comboupdate, selecing vanilla kernel
• Install the kernel update 10.5.2
• now connect to the internet with wlan (wired lan does not work) and download the apple graphics update from the apple site.

Now if you reboot, you can disconnect your external monitor and start using the laptop's screen!

• Install the audio from acer5220.zip, or install the osx86 azalia audio which also works
• Install the acpi...kext from acer5220.zip with kext helper
• Copy the powermanagement.bundle file to the system/systemconfig location. For me i had to first delete the exsisting one and then copy the new one. OSX did not let me replace the file.
• Install all apple updates

That's it you now have a fully functional leopard 10.5.2 install on your laptop. A few small problem remain : Lan, ir, cardreader do not work. Also when resuming from sleep, you will have to hit the ESC key to stop the number "7" from being typed continously (don't ask me why) and you will have to switch on airport manually by clicking the topbar icon and selecting airport on.