Stream Line Windows XP intall

I have a motherboard with SATA but when installing windows XP I am required to provide the SATA drivers by floppy disc. I dont have a floppy disc drive so I managed to find a way around described in this article http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

As long as you already have a working windows installation you can use nLite http://www.nliteos.com/
to create a custom windows installation disc, that includes any required drivers.

Stop the Startup Sound on OS X

The default system preferences in mac os x do not give you the option to stop the sound that os x makes when booting. This could be a problem if you were in a library or a lecture, luckily there is a 3rd party app that will mute the sound on shutdown and return it to the original volume when booted there fore stopping any sounds during boot (even the warning ones when things go wrong)
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/StartupSound/BETA/index.en.html

Graphical ftp for Mac OS X

After reading this article
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/mac/2006/04/13/ftp.html

I decided to try the Cyberduck as my ftp program, seems pretty straight forward and reliable so far.
http://cyberduck.ch/

Mac OS X tips

discovered this site today tips4mac.blogspot.com and so far worked back through to Nov 2007 archives.

My favorite tips so far have been about 3 apps.
iRed Lite - get the apple remote working with other apps like VLC. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23518/ired-lite

Battery Health Monitor - Tells you current capacity of your battery and number of charge cycles you have put it through. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24141/battery-health-monitor

As a recent convert from Windows (and Linux) I am use to having a start button with access to all applications, which seems to be missing on OS X. So on Leopard i created a stack from the applications folder. However I have grouped a lot of similar applications in folders so clicking on this in the stack just opens the folder in the finder. This program says that it will fix that and I can treat my applications stack just like a windows programs menu. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26284/hierarchicaldock

terminal.app on OS X Leopard Backspace

When using terminal.app on OS X Leopard the backspace works correctly until I ssh onto another machine, running debian and normally accessed by putty from a windows machine.

When ssh'd onto the external machine the backspace acts as a delete key.

There is some outdated advice here http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060825071728278

I fixed the Problem by going to terminal.app
Terminal -> Prefferences settings tab, advanced sub tab then select "Delete sends Ctrl-H"

This fixed the problem for me.