Although both Apple and Microsoft say it’s easy moving between their platforms, things aren’t as easy as they seem.

You can struggle for hours trying to move your data. I’ve tried conversion tools and some emails always fail. The best method is to take advantage of IMAP, which will let you store emails on a server, then download them again.

If your ISP doesn’t give you an IMAP account, there are Lots of webmail providers such as gmail can give you an IMAP account.

Once you’re set up, just drag the emails into the IMAP folder and they will upload to the server.

Now, just configure your new client and download the emails. Done!

If you are worried about privacy, you can download and install hmailserver, create an account on that and then just send the messages to your local server.

I just brought an 8GB Sandisk Cruzer USB stick. Unfortunately whenever you plug it in, it comes up as both an emulated CD-ROM drive and the removable disk. the emulated disk comes up as “U3 System” and it tries to run backup/sync software called U3 Launchpad.

Some people enjoy these extra “benefits”, but I’m not a big fan of the bundled software and just want 8GB of storage space I can call home.

If you want to remove the built in software and just use it as a memory stick, you’ll want to use the U3 LaunchPad Remover from Sandisks’ Website. The link to it is: http://www.sandisk.com/driverdownload/download.asp?driverId=2

Did you know that the latest version of Safari has a built in developer toolbar?

You can change your user-agent, disable styles, disable javascript, etc?

It even has a nifty network timeline so you can see how big your pages are and what the delays are.

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I use the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client (Version 2.0.0 Beta 3) to connect to a number of Windows machines from my Mac laptop.

There is one very annoying ‘feature’ when using the Remote Desktop Client with a MacBook with a UK Keyboard – Whenever you use shift + arrow to highlight text, the Remote Desktop Client sends a delete signal and deletes one character to the right of the cursor.

I’ve since found a very useful fix for this – Set your keyboard layout to US.

There is only one key combination change which is that hash and pound (As in the currency) are reversed – Shift + 3 will do a hash and Alt + 3 will do a pound. This does have another benefit… when using the RDP Client on a UK Mac keyboard, you do not have access to the hash character.

You have the ability to add an icon to quickly change the layout from the menu bar.

Here is how you do it.

1. Open System Preferences and Select International

2. Select the Input Menu Tab

3. Scroll down the list and tick U.S. and then at the bottom of the window select Show input menu in menu bar (Screen grab below)

4. Close the international tab.

5. You should now have a picture of a flag in your menu bar. If you click it you can quickly change between the UK and US keyboard layouts. (Screen grab below)

As said earlier, the only layout change for common keys is that hash(#) and pound (£) are swapped.

Let me know if this makes your life easier.

I’ve never had any trouble finding where to set the default application for a specific file, but it took me a while to find out how to set it for an entire file type.

To set the default application for a single file you simply select the file, right click it, select “Open with” and then select “Other”.

Select Other to be able to define the default application for a single file

You will now see a window similar to the one below.

You can now select the application you want to open it with. Finally select the “Always open with” checkbox and click open.

This file (and only this file) will now open with the new default application.

If you want to set an entire file type to open with a new default application, select one of the files and either press Command+I or right click and select “Get Info”. You should see something resembling the following.

Scroll down to the section “Open with” and expand it if required. Select the application from the list – If it’s not there you can once again select “Other” and go through the process of finding the application. Once you have the correct application selected in the list, simply click “Change All” and this will change default application for all files of that type.

Apple recently released an update to Mac OS X 10.5.6

I have a Macbook pro with everything standard except for 4GB of RAM. I was currently running OS X 10.5.5 and thought the update would be somewhat trivial.

To cut a long story short, the install kept freezing at the start of the update saying “Configuring Installation”.

I found no disk errors and after a few more attempts gave up on this upgrade method.

I decided to try the manual standalone method and downloaded the (668MB) combo update from Apple’s website (I never bothered to try the standard update).

Mission Accomplished!

So if you’re having the same problem, try the standalone updater, available from http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx1056update.html.