Odds & Ends: MouseWare; iBook battery life; Buslink drive; Myst III OpenType; Shrinking large InDesign documents

Logitech MouseWare: will the latest version please stand up Peter Lin, in response to our note yesterday about MouseWare 3.5.1a/3.5.2, writes: "The most recent release of Logitech MouseWare is version 3.5.2. That is the version on the CD that came with my Cordless MouseMan Optical mouse. The Logitech Web site only has version 3.5.1a, and support for this particular mouse is not listed for that version." Gene Ushinsky adds: "I called Logitech and was told that a new version of software is in development. It will be out in about two months."

iBook battery life and installed RAM Jimmy Lam points out that users who have only 64 MB of RAM installed on their iBook (which is one of the standard configurations) and who want to extend battery life should consider adding more RAM. With only 64 MB, the Mac OS is often overly dependent on virtual memory, which consumes power as the disk continuously spins up to swap memory. He goes on to say that his iBook, with 320 MB of RAM, lasts about 4 hours between battery charges.

Buslink FireWire drive cannot spin down A reader reports he was told by Buslink tech support that their 80 GB external FireWire drive does not spin down unless the power supply is disconnected. A firmware fix is apparently in the works, but it will not be available for at least a month and requires the drive be returned for the update.

OpenType fonts installed by Myst III UbiSoft's Myst III Exile installs 2 OpenType fonts, arir67w.ttf and GIFFRD-H.TTF. Jim Clements offers: "I became aware of these after I began to get an alert upon startup that 'ATM could not activate one or more OpenType fonts.' The arir67w.ttf font is a< variation of Arial Narrow and the GIFFRD-H.TTF is the handwritten-style font used throughout the game in the book pages, dialogs and menu. Though there does not seem to be any adverse effect from these fonts being in the system, I suspect their presence may slightly confuse applications such as Illustrator. Not sure, however." See previous for more on OpenType.

Tip: shrinking large InDesign documents Brett Wickens writes: "I had a 40 page document, with a large JPG image on almost every page. It was about 7.4 MB, and I noticed that after deleting many of the images the file was about the same size. However, after performing a Save As..., the newly created file was only 1.1 MB. I have seen file sizes grow enormously in InDesign, even though editing has reduced the number of pages or images in the document. It appears the program does not get rid of unused stuff along the way, and a 'Save as...' is the way to reduce the file size."

Update: Michael Oliwa replies: "This is a well-known PageMaker problem also. Adobe had touted InDesign as being built from the ground up, but it looks like they used a few PM parts at least. When you Save, all your corrections, deletions, moves, etc. are recorded into the file. 'Save as' will clear this out."

Richard Dermody concurs: "This is consistent with the way PageMaker has historically handled files. A Save merely appends the changes to the end of the current file, causing the file to grow. 'Save as' rewrites the file and removes the deleted items."