Install Snow Leopard from an external hard drive

I was deprived off using the latest Mac OS X, Snow Leopard for hours because I didn't know this simplest of features. For some cursed reason my early 2008 white MacBook would spit out the installation DVD after about 15 seconds of making various pitched noises. Nothing I do would mount the drive. Remote installation didn't seem to work either.

Not until I made a quick trip to the nearby Apple store did I find this great tip, and I was able to install the OS with zero hassle. You do need a Mac that can read the OS to start with though to make an installation image. You just don't need an optical drive on the Mac that you are installing it on. This is especially useful for upgrading your MacBook Air. As an additional advantage, the installation is just a tad quicker this way. So, here is what you do,

Restore your installation disk to external hard drive

• Insert the installation disk into the optical drive
• Connect the hard drive from which you want to be able to install Snow Leopard to the Mac (USB / Firewire)
• Open Disk Utility from Applications -> Utilities
• On the left-hand pane, you should see the external hard drive and the installation disc
  
  
  
  
  
• Select Mac OS X Install DVD from the list and select the Restore tab from the top
• Drag and drop the Mac OS X Install DVD from the left pane and drop it on to the Source box; Drag the hard drive on to the Destination box
  
  
  
• Remember to uncheck the 'Erase destination' checkbox if you have other things in the hard drive, then click Restore
  
  
  
• The restore takes about 7 GB and you might want to create a partition to have a nice installation drive of its own
• Mac OS X will do its thing, and you should have an image of the installation disc on your hard drive

Now, remove the hard drive from the Mac, and connect it to the Mac that doesn't have an optical drive. The partition should auto-open with the installation disc. Double-click on the 'Install Mac OS X Snow Leopard' icon to start installation!

Submit Electronic Forms from Adobe Reader, and more

This used to my biggest gripe about Acrobat Reader - for all its bulk and bloat, all it could do is read. Of course, you could generate some really good electronic forms with Reader Pro, but it was never really useful because, it was required that every user who is ever going to fill that form needs to have a Reader Pro too - an incredibly expensive solution. It was.

Adobe has taken on board, the one biggest push back from the customers of Acrobat Reader 8. On the new Acrobat Reader 9, anybody can fill, save and submit documents - with just the free Reader. Now , when you create a form, you can choose to allow saving on Acrobat Reader, and it will allow any user with Acrobat Reader to save, print or submit a completed form. Also, when the 50 users you distributed the form to, submit the form, you don't need to receive 50 PDFs back, you can choose to consolidate the information in a spreadsheet for analysis and reporting. That for me, is a major improvement in workflow.

Some of the other major new features include

• Encapsulating multiple PDFs into one PDF portfolio
• PDF presenter - powerpoint type presentations with rich media
• Form creation from scanned paper forms!
• Commenting and reviewing from Acrobat Reader (extended version not required)

Do check out Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 and the extended version here.