More problems, but Parallels Desktop comes to the rescue

I have two new problems to add to my experience as a Mac Switcher.

CanoScan N650U and Mac OS X:

I tried using my Canon N650U scanner with my MacBook Pro but I had no success. The problem is that for Mac OS X, Canon decided to distribute only a plug-in version instead of a normal utility application:


What does this mean? It means you need to have installed on your OS another application (such as Photoshop) to use the Canon plug-in and be able to acquire images from the scanner.

Well, since I'm not a graphics expert and Gimp is suitable enough for me, I don't intend to spend a whole lot of money on a program that I don't need just so I can scan some documents!!

In one of the forums that I looked for, someone said he was successful in using the plug-in in another application other than Photoshop: Graphic Converter. However, I tried several times to install the plug-in but was unsuccessful.

It is sad to say this, but I actually need Windows for this. Luckily, Parallels Desktop works like a charm and running Windows on my MacBook Pro is simple and easy, as much as it is possible taking in account that we are running Windows :-)

So, for now, whenever I need to scan some document, I have to use Parallels Desktop to run Windows and then connect the scanner to start scanning away!

If anybody was able to solve this problem of using N650U in Mac OS X Tiger, leave a comment below.

Using NTFS-formatted hard disks:

I have this WD MyBook 250 GB portable hard disk where I used to keep my backups of music, photos and work-related documents. When I first connected it to my Mac, I found it very odd that it was read-only and, obviously, I was unable to change anything.

At the beginning I didn't care that much about it, since my priority was actually to get my music and photos into my new Mac. However, soon enough I needed to backup some new stuff and the read-only annoyance was still there.

It wasn't until I looked on Google for this problem, that I figured out that NTFS-formatted disks do not work on the Mac OS X file system thus appearing as read-only. In fact, this is how Windows-formatted drives work on Mac OS X:

• FAT-32: work both on Windows and Mac OS X
• NTFS: works on Windows and read-only on Mac OS X

As to Mac-formatted drives, it is obvious that they only work on Mac OS X.

So, now my problem is that I don't have anywhere else to put my backups on, so that I can format my portable hard disk into a more Mac-friendly format (such as FAT32, that will at least work on both systems) and then copy the backups again into the external hard disk.

In the meantime, I use the Windows-Parallels' solution again to update my backups on the hard disk :-)

But this didn't brake my spirit. I still believe that the Mac environment is the way to go and I'll still advice everyone around me to switch from Windows.