Looking for some cool Mac tools! Checkout this review by InfoWorld's Mitch Wagner as he looks at 13 Mac Productivity Tools from Merlin Mann and others.

Can you connect more than one external monitor to their new Mac Notebook. The answer is, of course, yes. However, not all multiple monitor solutions are Mac friendly. Kensington solutions come to mind, and Targus may not work well either.

My favorite solution for the Mac I think is the Matrox products best. These are the DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go. Dual will power two external monitors; triple will do three. You can get them in VGA or DVI versions. Just run a cable from your DVI output into the box. Pricing, is around $150 to $200 depending on the version you go to. SideCar from Digital Tigers looks awesome, promising to let you run up to four external displays, but with at $1300 price tag, maybe not. VTBook is another solution, this is a CardBus solution that gives your laptop a second external monitor or even three external monitors, if you get the right cable. Price is around $250 and since the MacBook Pro takes the smaller 34mm ExpressCard format, you have to purchase an adaptor like this. I will move this to the Mac@Work page in a few days. But, I thought you would want to know the answer too.

Parallels Desktop 4 For Mac Boosts Stability, Performance

Virtual Machine software, Parallels for Apple has had a rocky road. From its initial version that excited Mac users who wanted to run Windows software to version 3 which was reported as buggy and troublesome. Now Version 4 is out which the company says has significantly improved performance and stability over the previous version, and a few new features.

If you are a Mac user and would like to get more out of your Mac Laptop or Desktop in the Windows business world here are a few products you need to know about!

1. Boot Camp is slow and limiting and requires that you restart your computer to go back-and-forth between your Mac OS  and Windows OS. Consider using a Virtual Machine instead and run all those accounting and business application in  a Windows Virtual Machine on your Mac. My favorite is VMware Fusion, www.vmware.com, $69 plus the cost of your Windows software licenses.

2. One real headache for Mac users in the Windows world is that Apple computers are not NTFS compatible out of the box. This makes moving large files nearly impossible, including those VM's mentioned above. The solution, Paragon NTFS for Mac gives you read-write access to NTFS volumes; $40 from www.paragon-software.com.

3. Finally, you may want to leave Outlook behind and mind your Contacts, Appointments, and e-Mail with the Mac's programs, so spend $10 and get the tool for converting Outlook .PST to Apple Calendar, Contacts and Mail files from http://www.littlemachines.com/ called O2M. Best $10 you can spend.

Now remember, between fixing your Fixed Assets and Debiting your Credits - a little Garage band can't hurt! More tips coming on how to take your Mac to work, so stay tuned to Bob in the future.

Quick Tip; Stranded on vacation with no wifi for your iPhone!!! OH NO!  Turn your Mac into a Wireless Access Point and don't worry about it.

The History of Bob on Mac

Want to use your Apple Mac at work, but you live in a Windows world? Come to work with me then as I share a few best practice tips and secrets for taking your Mac to work and much more. By the way, I started with this logo, because it is where I began my life long love affair with the Macintosh. I, of course, had an early Apple IIe, back in  in late 1977 and tried to develop educational graphical software, which went no where, so there you go. I also had an Apple Lisa when it first came out and traded up for a Macintosh the next year.  It was heaven, but I also had a Radio Shack TRS 80 and later an Osborne and then a KayPro, followed by assorted other DOS based systems as the came and went. When DOS, and that other company from Redmond, began to dominate the business market I had to leave Apple behind and pursue my destiny in the business world (four kids to feed helps one make those decisions!) Some of you who have been around computers for awhile, will enjoy the trip down memory lane via the links above, and for the full treatment (see how many of these you owned) visit http://oldcomputers.net/.

When my friends at K2 Enterprises decided to do a few Mac at Work conference sessions I was delighted as it gave me the excuse I needed to get back into it again. I have a Mac Book Pro with 4GB of RAM and 200GB fixed disk. Pretty standard machine, but a lot of fun to play with. I plug it up to my 37 inch LG LCD display and use it for a number of business graphics applications as well as testing software. I run Vista 32bit under VMware Fusion to test Windows applications and present seminars. So far, so good.  I continually run into Apple users who come up to me at lectures and ask questions as well as contribute suggestions. So there you have it. I hope to present unbiased comments, tools, and best practice suggestions without the hype we see elsewhere.

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