All of my Macs in my home/office here in Durham, New Hampshire are having trouble connecting to Google, in that they can’t connect at all using Firefox or Safari, though my wife’s PowerBook has had success connecting using IE.My linux and Windows machines have no trouble whatsoever, regardless of browser (including lynx).If I connect to a proxy server elsewhere, then Google loads fine on my Mac, indicating to me that, well, it’s not my Macs.This is the wierd one: If I run CrossOver on my MacBook Pro, and then run IE *or* Firefox, Google comes up fine…. the Windows version of Firefox running in CrossOver has no problem, while the Mac version (running on the SAME MACHINE SIMULTANEOUSLY) can’t connect.

Though I discussed it on the most recent Mac Geek Gab podcast, enough of you have e-mailed me about this that I thought I’d type about it here, too.For the last 3+ years I’ve kept all my mail (and I mean all 180,000 messages and 1,400 folders) in Mailsmith…. My e-mail client on my Macs and work and home can certainly do it, my phone already does it and, with SquirrelMail installed on our server, I can access it on the web, too.

If you’ve been following the conversation here (or over on HawkWings), you’ll note that one of my biggest concerns with having all my mail *in* Mailsmith was that I couldn’t easily get it all *out*, especially not while preserving the hierarchy of messages. That’s no longer a concern, thanks to a little bit of AppleScript mojo, a few hours of “free” time, and the seeds planted by BareBones flat-export script.

My big problem is that, as far as I can tell, there is no way to automatically migrate all of my mail out of Mailsmith while preserving the hierarchy of 1400 mailboxes that exists…. The import is taking a while, as one would expect, and hopefully I’ll have an answer to that particular question soon.But I ask you: knowing what you know, is Mail.app the right choice for me?

Well, I guess being in Chicago for three days made me miss the fact that Skype sneak-peeked the beta of their next round for the Mac, and even made public (though not promoted) access to the video-capable version of the beta.This thing’s pretty stable, and is *well* worth your time to check out.

Apple’s Boot Camp documentation is correct: Windows XP SP1 won’t install on my MacBook Pro, so in the morning it’s off to purchase a copy of XP SP2…. So far it works very well — Apple’s partitioner is slick and just does it’s job with little fanfare (if only the lay user appreciated how *much* voodoo has to go on to do what is being done).

As I mentioned on last night’s Mac Geek Gab podcast, one of my long-time wishes has come true… Chax, the popular freeware iChat-enhancement utility, has now added the ability to use a tabbed interface, wherein all your chats are available in one window, with different tabs at the top for each person with whom you’re chatting.

We were out to eat about a week and a half ago (when the power was out) and I noticed this in the parking lot of the local Bugaboo Creek (hey, what can I say? I have kids and they cook a decent steak..

Specifically I changed the hard drive from the 120GB/5400rpm model to the 100GB/7200rpm model.Then I looked Wednesday, and the hard drive was still the 120GB/5400rpm model, but they put me at at 2.16GHz processor and added the requisite $300 to the order…. But they screwed something up in the process and somehow lost my place in line, putting my ship date back to March 16th!!The guy on the phone was *so* apologetic and said he’d give me a discount off the price (plus free 2-day shipping), and we said our goodbyes, mine being a bit more depressed than his.Then late last night an e-mail appears in my box stating that my order has shipped and is en route.

I opted for the high end model (at the time, 1.83GHz) and figured I’d better put the 120GB, 5400rpm SATA drive in it. Since then, it’s been “due to ship” sometime by or before February 15th.Today, as you probably know, Apple announced that the whole MacBook Pro line would be given a speedbump (yes, this is prior to them shipping anything!), so I called the Apple Store to see about all this.I chose to wait the extra 30 seconds on hold and actually talk to someone, and she was very helpful in reporting a few things: Yes, it’s true, my 1.83GHz model will be upgraded to a 2.0GHz model without impacting my ship date.My ship date will be impacted anyway, and I’m supposed to get an e-mail from them today or tomorrow indicating my “revised” ship date.If I want to change ANY part of my order, they have to cancel it and put a new order in, meaning my ship date will be pushed back yet another couple of weeks.The interesting thing, of course, is that last point was the only time she indicated anything about a time frame.