Ask TUAW: Migration, syncing, backing up, and more

I was just looking at the cost (going forward) of renewing MobileMe. The family pack (from Amazon) is $137.49. This is a leap from the price ($79.99) I paid for the family pack in November of last year. Is something wrong with this picture?

I use MobileMe to sync contacts and calendars as do both of my sons one with a BlackBerry & myself and the other with iPhone 3G's. It sure seems the days of the bargains are gone. Am I understanding this correctly?

Thanks for the help.

I would like to have the PC "send to" command in the menu when I right click on my mouse. For emailing or just cleaning up files I find very useful. Is there a way to do this on a mac?

Using Leopard on an Intel Mac.

Thanks!

I have a leopard machine almost 9 months now, a macbook black 2.4, 4GB ram early 2008.
That was my first mac, and I may install some hacks, for mail for example, o another one that open your windows wide open if you click the green button...
Mi question is, preparing for Snow Leopard, how do I get rid of all hacks that I have may installed?
I´m not even sure how many, or which ones I have installed, so at this point I´m not sure.
Is there any way to list all the hack and unistall them?
Thanx

I have a Mac Mini (2009 model) running the latest leopard and a Kodak W1020 wifi- frame. Is there a way to setup the mini to automatically stream photos from my iphoto library to the frame? (either random photos from the library, or specific albums) I've been looking all over and I can't seem to find a easy method that doesn't rely on uploading pictures to an online service (since that involves extra steps I would rather not do every time I take new pictures) I'm not opposed to running some form of streaming program on the Mini - I currently have pulptunes setup to access my itunes library. Ideally I would like to have the setup accessible from within my home network as well as outside via the internet. Any suggestions?

My first Ask TUAW question:

Hi guys, I had a question to see if this is possible on a PowerBook:

I'm running Tiger on my 12" PowerBookG4 (1GHz 1.25DDR SDRAM). After six long years of service, the combo drive has failed. I do not want to spend anymore money maintaining this machine since used and refurbished MacBooks are in my current pricepoint. But since it still works, I still use this little guy for taking notes during lectures and light photoshop work.

I recently found this service by mcetech: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ to remove the optical drive and replace it with another smaller, lighter SATA hard drive. why not go a step further? I would like to remove the broken optical drive completely and not replace it with anything - this would take a pound off the weight of the PowerBook and I could continue using this for school work.

So I'm wondering if this is even possible? Can the PowerBook function with an empty Optical Drive bay? Will there be any functionality problems without it (ie. would the keypad be lowered where the empty Optical drive once was?

Thanks in advance to the TUAW crew and their readers for suggestions!

Hi TUAW

You did this great little article about making music with the iphone and ipod. I'm wondering since a long time if there isn't an app wich uses my voice and turn it into music. For example if I would hum into a microphone and could choose to sound like a guitar or an organ or everything else midi. That would be great for everyone feeling musical but can't play any instruments. Thanks for your tip.

Question for next time:
Fairly new to Apple, and was wondering if there is a way, perhaps using Automator, to locate files (say .jpg files) and then have all of the files move to a new folder and delete all of the scattered files after they have been copied (moved) to the new folder.

Thanks for any possible help.

@CozartDono

Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme can serve the same file system to both Macs (using AFP or SMB) and PC's (using SMB).
You can also share an external drive using Time Capsule.

If I had the money (and didn't already have an AP Extreme), I would buy a 2TB Time Capsule for Backups and attach a 1TB USB Drive as a File Repository.

Hi guys...and gals. I use an early 2009 24" iMac, and a late 2007 13" MacBook running 10.5.7. My question involves a 1TB Time Capsule and VMware Fusion. I was wondering if it were possible to install a Vista virtual machine on a 100GB external hard drive and connect it to the Time Capsule and access this virtual machine wirelessly with either of my Macs.

I got a question -

So I'm considering buying a Time Capsule. What I'm not sure is should I buy the lower end model (1TB) and just supplement it with an external hard drive (via USB) or should I get the larger (2TB) model? Ultimately what I'm getting at is - do you lose any sort of functionality by getting the smaller drive and then just adding storage via an external drive? That option certainly seems more cost effective.

Also, is there any limit to the number of Mac's I can back up to my Time Capsule? I currently have 1 MBP but I'll probably be picking an iMac soon to replace my old PC desktop. I'd like to have them both be backed up to my Time Capsule and/or my Time Capsule's external HD. Thanks!