Here’s a unique Mac setup, a Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v hooked up to a 42″ LCD flat screen, and the same Mini with an external 22″ Dell display doing iPhone development! Ok ok, so it’s not really a Mac setup, but it’s running Mac OS X and it’s also our favorite Hackintosh netbook, so I had to include it.

If you want to get a Dell Mini 10v running Mac OS X yourself (How does about $215 for a Mac sound?) check out our guide to getting a cheap Hackintosh Mini. Don’t expect it to replace your main Mac in terms of power, but they make pretty great road warriors for writing, blogging, email, etc.

[ via Flickr ]

I recently came across the default wallpaper in Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server and I think it looks just fantastic with it’s blue hues, I wish it was included in the standard Snow Leopard. Since it’s not, I’m re-hosting it here for everyones eye candy convenience, just click on the image for the full-size.

If you need to create multiple users and you want each of them to have identical settings, check out this handy guide from The Apple Blog. The walkthrough is geared for Snow Leopard users but in practice it should work fine in earlier (and later) versions as well. Basically you’ll create a single user account, adjust the settings, look & feel, and preferences to your liking, then you’ll be able to duplicate this user account repeatedly so that each new account based on the template will be identical. Check out the full walkthrough:

TheAppleBlog: Create a custom user template in Snow Leopard

Command+Option+H hides all windows from all applications except for the currently active window

Likewise, if you want to hide just the current application to clean up your workspace for something else:

Command+H hides all windows from the currently active application

With either of these keystrokes, you can just click on the apps icon in the Dock to find the windows again.

It’s tax time in the USA, which means everyone is either going to be happy with a refund or sad when they owe. If you want to file your taxes online and you use Google Chrome, be sure to skip TurboTax though, which does not support the browser.

Adding insult to injury is the supported browser list: TurboTax supports IE6, but doesn’t support Chrome? WTF? Google Chrome is my favorite web browser by far, so I was pretty annoyed to find this out. I imagine this is just a simple user agent detection, since other WebKit browsers are supported (Safari), but what a boneheaded maneuver by TurboTax.

FYI: this effects all OS’s using the Chrome browser, and has been tested to not work in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Grr.

You can easily compare two versions of a Word document using Microsoft Word in Mac OS X.

* Launch the two documents you want to compare within Microsoft Word
* Go to the Tools Menu
* Select Track Changes
* Select Compare Documents
* Select the two documents you want to compare

You’ll be shown a side by side comparison of the files and the changes will be highlighted and easy to spot. If you’re a writer, researcher, or editor, you’ll find this feature very useful! As far as I know this comparison tool is not included within Apple’s Pages application (at least not in version 3.0 that I have), hopefully in a newer version it will be a feature, it is too helpful to not be!

If you’re looking for a more developer orientated version of file comparison, check out FileMerge.

When shopping around for an external monitor, I was asked “What’s the maximum resolution I can get out of my MacBook with an external LCD display?” by a friend of mine. Well the answer depends on which MacBook you have, what video card it has, and what type of video interface you’re going to use (DVI, VGA, DVI-I, etc) to power the external display.

MacBook’s with shared GMA video cards can drive an external display with a resolution of up to 1920×1200 via DVI , or 1600×1200 via VGA

Newer MacBook’s (unibody included) with independent graphics cards can drive external displays with resolutions up to 2560×1600 via dual-link DVI

Both newer and older MacBook’s will support extended desktop as well as mirroring, but note the older MacBook’s with shared GMA video will have a slight performance hit when driving an external display, this is mostly noticeable when doing graphics intensive processing but rarely a significant issue. Either way be sure to get the proper mini-DVI to DVI adapter for your MacBook and external monitor.

[ picture via RegEx.info ]

One Mac Pro powering six monitors for a total of 9220×1600 pixels. Wow. Oh, and the Mac Pro has 8 cores, 12gb of ram, 8tb of disk space, and 3 video cards. Excessive? Maybe, but what a cool workstation. This guy is very serious about his working setup and has a ton of information about it on his website, it’s fun geek reading.

[ via Biscade ]

If you want to beef up the security on your Mac, you can try enabling the built-in firewall.

Enabling the Firewall in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

* Open “System Preferences” from the Apple menu
* Click on the ‘Security’ icon
* Click on the ‘Firewall’ tab
* In the corner of this window, you’ll see a lock icon, click on that and enter the administrator password
* Now click on the ‘Start’ button to activate the firewall

Yes, it’s that simple.

If you want to allow certain ports, applications, or network connections, you can enter the ‘Advanced’ tab and adjust the settings as necessary. The Mac OS X firewall is quite secure by default and will block nearly all incoming connections (again, unless specified otherwise). It’s my opinion that if you’re behind a router with it’s own firewall, and on a trusted network, you probably don’t need to use the Mac firewall at all. For small home and school networks you should be fine, but for larger, untrusted, or exposed networks, using the firewall may be a prudent idea, even if the likelihood of an attack on your Mac is extremely low in comparison to a Windows machine.

It’s worth mentioning that since Mac OS X 10.6, the Firewall service has been placed under the “Security” systems preference as opposed to ‘Sharing’ as it was in prior versions of Mac OS X.

Google Books is a pretty amazing virtual library filled with who knows how many books, magazines, periodicals, and whatever else you might expect to find in a brick and mortar library. Some of the books can be downloaded and saved as a PDF with just a click, others are restricted, but thats where Google Book Downloader comes in. Simply give the program a Google Book URL or Book ID, and Google Book Downloader will generate a PDF of that book (or at least the portion that is accessible via the web). This is so useful for anyone who wants a virtual copy of a book stored locally on their Mac (or iPod Touch, or iPhone, or even the iPad!). This is about as easy as it gets.

So you want to save a Google Book for later? First, find a book on Google Books

Now just paste the URL or book ID into the application and it will start the download:

Your Google Book is now saved as a PDF and it can be read or viewed from anywhere, independent of the web and an internet connection. Awesome! Google Book Downloader is free and open source, so if you feel like poking around the code it’s freely available on the developers site.

HacThePlanet: Google Book Downloader
Download Google Book Downloader now