Tech Friday: Grumbling about my Parallels subscription

| November 3, 2023

For years I’ve been running Parallels on my iMac after switching from Bootcamp on the old Mac Mini. It has been a love -hate relationship, but I’ve sort of always needed to run Microsoft Windows. Since adding the MacBook Air M2 without Parallels or a Windows10 option, I’ve learned to function fairly well without “at […]

Many of us have a love/hate relationship with computers

| March 25, 2023

Much of Friday was spend trying to recover tax oriented data that has been on the Windows virtual drive on my iMac computer. Earlier this year, I started taxes and had been slowly adding data and archiving items in a folder so I could file taxes this year. All the downloads were in place and […]

A movie remake, with a twist? “iMac Down” & stocks down too

| June 10, 2022

A semi-disaster struck as my iMac choked on a Parallel 17 "virtual Windows" update on Thursday. It reminded me of the movie "Blackhawk Down" or perhaps "White House Down" … hence the subject line for Tech Friday.   The virtual Windows 10 side of my computer booted, but everything from the connected drives to the display […]

Tech Friday: Pondering the new Mac Mini vs iMac setup again

| June 4, 2021

The Joanna Sterns review in the WSJ about the new Apple iMac highlighted a few plus and minus points last month … and started me thinking about a desktop computer replacement. It is difficult to imagine spending $2000 again to replace my aging late 2012 iMac 27” model, especially since I run a dual monitor […]

Added TimeMachineEditor to iMac after Mojave update & issues

| December 23, 2018

After my recent issues with my overheating iMac, I’ve become a lot more fastidious about what software I keep running and tax the quad core 3.4 GHz i7 chip. Frankly I still don’t think the relatively light computing demands asked of this aging Mac are all that much, but Apple has sardined in a lot […]

Christmas prep and my iMac is still recovering from surgery

| December 15, 2018

Although Brenda and I are making steady progress in getting things ready for Christmas, the iMac surgery mentioned yesterday did not go as smoothly as planned, but at least I do have backups to rebuild things from. Currently the “way too many” cloud services that I’m using are working overtime as my Time Machine archive […]

The Apple Mac and Parallels virtual Windows 10 nightmare

| February 28, 2018

What a pain. I had a major crash on my iMac and wiped out my Parallels install (corrupted the virtual hard drive).  One would think this would be an easy fix, but it wasn’t. I spent about 6 hours attempting fix after fix to restore a back up version of the virtual disk (Apple’s Time […]

Updating TWC Internet and the iMac virtual to Windows 10

| December 18, 2015

A couple improvement to our Internet connectivity at the house this past week as I quarreled with Time Warner Cable yet again about our service and our bill. Of course they once again wanted to schedule a tech to come out and look at things to determine why our paid for turbo speed was only […]

TechFriday: No FREE Windows 10 for Parallels on the Mac yet

| July 3, 2015

So much for “considering” Windows 10 on my iMac (Parallels). And here I was thinking that upgrading a couple of Windows machines wouldn’t be as expensive as in the past … with Microsofts FREE upgrad offer and all. (Parallels is working on a solution) Microsoft is making Windows 10 available as free upgrade for qualified […]

TechFriday: Contemplating an iPad2 to iPad Air2 upgrade

| September 26, 2014

As a iPhone, iPad and iMac Apple customer, it is challenging to know what products to upgrade and at what time. As much as I would like an iPhone6 or 6plus, I’ve opted to stick with the current iPhone 5s (and 5) in order to save a few dollars on our cellphone plan as we […]

Controlling a PC or Mac, iPad-Style by Walt Mossberg

| August 29, 2013

I don’t care how good this “controlling a desktop computer with your iPad”app is … it can’t be worth $80 per year! “Parallels Access costs a hefty $80 per computer per year…” Parallels, a company based in Seattle that’s best known for its namesake program that allows Macs to run Windows, calls this “applifying” your […]

Tech Friday: Reusing my OLD Blue Snowball microphone

| May 10, 2013

After almost throwing away my older version of the Blue Snowball microphone, I decided to plug the USB mic into my new iMac running OSX 10.8.3 … and to my surprise it worked great for a couple VOIP connections.  For those of you familiar with this original USB mic, it was not supported with firmware […]

Tech Friday: A New iMac has replaced an old G4 and PC

| March 29, 2013

I’m still adapting to a new computer and trying not to burn out my eyes on this bright and large 27” monitor, but after the adjustment I think I’m going to enjoy using the new iMac for both OSX and Windows 7 chores (via Parallels Desktop 8). The new four cored 3.4 GHz Intel i7 […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog