Here are some Tech Tips I have come up with, and I hope you enjoy them..

Cable Modem and router with MAC address

I was helping a friend configure a router for there cable modem. I had some trouble getting it working. I figured out that Comcast is saving your MAC address. For those whom do not know every peace of LAN hardware has a unique MAC address it is like an electronic serial number. So every LAN card and router, etc have unique MAC addresses. Most things on the net ignore the MAC address. It is used mostly for assign IP numbers. Comcast is saving your MAC address when they issue you an IP address. So if you change your LAN card you have to call them to get reactivated. Since a router has its own MAC address they will not assign it an IP. Luckily the router we were configuring allowed us to clone the MAC address which made the router look like the PC to the net.

Maxtor PCI cards and MAC don't mix

Maxtor has been putting free PCI controller cards in there retail hard drive kits.  The packaging leads you to believe that it is MAC compatible.  It is not!  The hard drive itself is MAC compatible but not the PCI controller card.

MAC is a no WAV zone

I ran into a problem with trying to use a WAV (sound wave format) sound file on a MAC.  The problem is MACs don’t use WAV sound files while you may find a few programs that can let you here the WAV you can do little else with it on a MAC.  The problem is that MAC uses a deferent file type for WAV files called AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format).  The two file types are similar in function but are not compatible with each other.  There seems to be no easy answer on how to get around this problem.  Luckily we where trying to decode a MP3 to a WAV so all we had to do is find a utility that would decode to AIFF.  Gee it sounds easy now but we really had a hard time with it.  The utility that we used is called Audecity, and the best part is it is free.  Check out the links section I will post a link for it.  So just remember a MAC is a no WAV zone.

Spy-ware