I recently had a MacBook that had a mouse problem.  The client said the mouse was jumping to the top left no matter what she tried.  She restarted the laptop, connected a different mouse, but nothing worked.  She tried using just the trackpad and that didn’t help either.

In the end, it was a Promethan board problem and when I removed the Promethean board USB cable, everything worked fine, including both mice and the trackpad.

Solution was to replace the Promethean board USB cable.

I’m using EMC Insignia’s Retrospect from my Mac Xserve and my clients are set up correctly, but some of my clients will never back up.  What can I do to get these 3 clients to backup?

I don’t know why, but sometimes Retrospect will turn the Retrospect client settings to “Off” after it backs up.  To fix it you just need to turn it back on.

Open the applications folder of the clients who are having trouble backing up and open Retrospect Client.  Click the “On” button and close Retrospect Client.  It will now back up.

Retrospect Client

I have 20 brand new MacBooks that I need to set up for a client.  What is the quickest and easiest way to set them up?

Thanks for the question.  Without a doubt the easiest way to set them up is to use Mike Bombich’s NetRestore.

If you’ve never used NetRestore, you have to run it from a server (of a MacBook set up as a server) and make a master image that has everything (files, apps, settings, etc) that you want cloned to all of your other new MacBooks.

As for setup, there are a lot of NetRestore guides including a great one at Bombich’s site.  Good luck and let me know if you run into any trouble.