Sierra Wireless 306 USB Modem Install On The MacBook Pro

We picked up a new Sierra Wireless 306 HSPA cellular modem on Friday.

Unfortunately, our carrier seemingly had issues getting it activated so we had no cellular modem available to us over the weekend. A call from them this morning, and a flip of some sort of switch and we now have connectivity on our Windows machines.

The MacBook Pro did not install the same way for the 306 as the previous Sierra Wireless 598 CDMA 3G modem.

Once the post install reboot was finished, we had the strangest message about a New Network Found when the 306 was plugged into the MacBook Pro.

When we clicked through the message, we were presented with the following nondescript, and really strange window:

Now, our provider did not give us any information to fill out the requested fields.

After searching around for a while, some information on Sierra Wireless's Web site provided a clue as to what we needed to do. We say clue because the instructions linked to do not apply specifically to Snow Leopard as there are differences in the set up routine.

Note that in the above screenshot that the Apply button is no longer available. That is because it was available and clicked on even though no specific information was entered in any of the fields.

Strangely enough, even with the empty fields, the 3G Watcher utility's Connect button showed up after clicking Apply.

The new 3G HSPA network is significantly faster than the "3G" CDMA network that the Sierra Wireless 598 connected to. As a result, we will need to keep an eye on the data usage as a true 3Mb connection can add up very quickly.

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

iMac - In-Place Leopard to Snow Leopard Post Upgrade Printer Choke

We received a call from one of our clients that runs 100% Mac systems on their network.

Apparently, they could not connect to the Internet, send e-mail, or print. Thinking that perhaps there was a problem within the Leopard OS X itself, they did an in-place upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Well, that did not fix the problem. So we received a call.

When we got there, there was no DNS resolution, no ability for the iMac to get anywhere even on the internal peer-to-peer network.

After poking around in the Network Settings, the network adapter was set to pull the iMac's IP address via DHCP and seemed to release and renew without a problem.

At first glance, the DNS field was not empty and the IP address that was in there did not register. It took a minute for the realization to hit: They had the IP address of their own iMac set as the DNS server!

No wonder there was nothing coming in. As soon as we deleted the iMac's IP address and released and renewed the IP the network's own DNS servers showed up and we had connectivity.

The e-mail issue turned out to be some in correct settings in their Mac Mail program while the Ricoh Aficio MP C2050 was another problem altogether.

Out of all of the troubleshooting time spent there, most of it was spent on getting the iMac to reconnect to the copier.

Knowing how an in-place upgrade can kill any already existing drivers we downloaded the newest printer driver set from Ricoh's Web site and installed it. We deleted the two Ricoh printers in the iMac's Printers and reinstalled using the copier's IP address and the correct LPR queues.

Still no joy though.

In the end, we needed to perform essentially what is a ground level reset of the entire printing subsystem in OS X.

This is the Apple KB article that we needed in order to fix the problem:

• Apple Knowledgebase HT1341: Mac OS X: About the Reset Printing System feature.

It is important to note that we were unable to fix the problem by clicking on the "-" sign to remove the printers. We needed to perform the drastic measure in the KB:

Resetting the printing system in Mac OS X 10.5.x

To use the Reset Printing System feature in Mac OS X 10.5.x, follow these steps:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Choose Print & Fax from the View menu.
3. Control-click on list of printers on the left side of the window, then choose "Reset printing system" from the contextual menu.
• If you don't see a list of printers, Control-click on the text "Click + to add a printer or fax" and select "Reset printing system..."

Once we reset the printing system we were able to install the copier via LPR using its two queues, one for black and white and the other for colour printing.

Written using MarsEdit on the MacBook Pro. This blog post editor looks promising as I know enough HTML to be dangerous. We shall see if it can upload images to Blogger's Picasa Web Albums to clinch the deal.

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

MacBook – Blogger Blog Editing With Ecto = Fail If Using Native Picasa Web Albums

Attempt number one at finding a blog post editor for Mac OS X: Ecto.

Simple and straight forward, but unfortunately no native support for Picasa Web Albums where Blogger posts images to.

Ecto does support Flikr, but why start a whole new location for images when our Picasa Web Albums account is only 20% full after close to three years of blogging?

While the editing abilities of Ecto are pretty good, due to the incompatibility with the Blogger native image location we unfortunately have to give Ecto a fail.

On to the next editor . . .

Windows Live Writer may be a bit clunky, but at least it works with the native tools.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

MacBook - Change The Default Search Provider In Safari

One of the pesky things about the Safari browser on the MacBook (Snow Leopard) is the fact that the Google search engine is hard coded into the browser's search bar:

Unlike Internet Explorer, we cannot go and change that default search provider without mucking about in the underlying code or downloading a third party utility to do it for us.

So, we ended up downloading a third party utility called Glims.

• Glims for Safari

Once Glims was installed, getting the search provider changed in Safari required only a few clicks:

1. Open Safari.
2. Click on the down arrow just to the left of Google.
3. A drop down list of search engines will come up.
4. Click on the desired search engine:
5. The check mark should now be on the search engine of choice.
6. From then on, when Safari opens the default search engine will be Bing in the case of our choice.

Our first line of search is Bing, if we are unable to turn up any satisfactory results we resort to Google or others depending on what we are searching for.

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

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