Ask TUAW: Anti-virus, upgrading RAM, syncing computers, backup, file management and more

This time in Ask TUAW we have questions on Mac anti-virus options, upgrading RAM in a white iMac, syncing a laptop and a desktop, emulating Windows file management and more.

As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!

Brassen asks

I'm on a MacBook (last gen, black) running Leopard 10.5.4. Can you indicate a good antivirus for me? If possible a free one. I've read about ClamAV but it hasn't been updated in a while.

The only two free options I know about are ClamAV and iAntiVirus (though business use and/or support costs $29.95). Your best bet is probably VirusBarrier X5 ($69.95) from Intego, which is recommended by Macworld.

Personally, I run (and have had reasonably good luck with) Sophos, which I get free from my university. If you're part of a large company or university you may be able to get Sophos, which is generally marketed to Enterprise users (although there is a small business product line).

Tomahawk asks

I have the white 24" Intel iMac, and I have been looking at upgrading the RAM to its max and I'm not sure what would be the recommended configuration to get the maximum performance. I know that I can put two paired 2GB sticks in the slots, but it is my understanding that the motherboard can only address up to 3GB total (is there a way to change this? firmware update maybe?), and I can't buy two 1.5GB paired since such a thing doesn't exist. Should I just get 1 – 1GB and 1 – 2GB and call it a day or do you think I should do the 2 – 2GB thing? What is different from the newer Aluminum iMac which allows up to 4GB, that wasn't present in the white iMac?

Unfortunately, the RAM limitation on your revision B iMac is built-in to the motherboard design, so there's not really anything you can do to get past it. Now to answer your question: you can get a little bit more RAM by doing two 2GB sticks rather than one 2GB and one 1GB. Check out this guide on Intel Mac RAM and you'll see that your motherboard can actually address 3.3GB, meaning that you'd get an extra 300MB of available RAM with the second 2GB stick plus a 6-8% performance bump from the Dual Channel performance.

So you will get something out of running two 2GB sticks, though if that's enough to matter depends on what you do with your Mac. If you're running Photoshop or other memory intensive applications, every little bit will help.

NeilS asks

I have an iPhone (1st gen), and a MacBook running Leopard. It surprised me to find recently that if I connect them over bluetooth, the iPhone doesn't list any services as available. Where I was hoping to reach was the ability to select a phone number in Mail, or a web browser, on my Mac and "Dial from my iPhone" – which would instruct the iPhone to dial over bluetooth. (Otherwise, I just have to type the number in manually ... sigh ...) Sending SMSes from the desktop would be good, too! Is there any way to achieve this, either natively, or through third party apps?

BluePhoneElite 2 ($24.95) will apparently allow you to dial and receive calls, basically by turning your Mac into the equivalent of a huge Bluetooth headset. However, it will not allow you to send SMS messages over the iPhone nor am I aware of any other method for doing so. You'd think this would be a no-brainer for inclusion with Address Book, but that is unfortunately not the case. I hope you know, though, that you can send SMS messages on your Mac with iChat.

Jones asks

I just bought a second external hard drive to use for Time Machine. I would like to be able to use both of my drives to backup the same computer using TM. Is there a way to do this? (I am doing this just in case one of my drives dies at the same time as my computer. Better safe than sorry!)

If you'll allow me to make a suggestion, I would really recommend doing something different. Instead of trying to use both drives with Time Machine at the same time (which does not seem to be possible), instead I recommend using Time Machine with one drive and using the second drive to make a bootable clone backup (once or more per day) with SuperDuper! ($27.95), or Carbon Copy Cloner (donations requested) if you want a cheaper option.

If you do this you'll have the advantage of a double backup, plus you'll have much less downtime if a problem occurs on your main computer. With a bootable backup you can simply reboot the Mac off the second drive. If all you have is Time Machine backups you may face a much longer recovery operation to get going again.

Steve-o asks

MacBook pro running Leopard. Question about finder. I switched from a PC to a Mac at the release of Leopard and love it except for 1 annoying thing in finder. When I scroll down through a page of folders, sometimes I need to select a folder to view the contents and then "back out" to the page of folders again to look in other ones. However, on my Mac, no matter how far down I have scrolled to a particular folder, once I select one and then push the back arrow, it resets the prior page of folders all the way back to the top.... Not where I was at the selected folder. Windows not only brought me back to where I was, but also highlighted the folder that I just selected for reference. This becomes tremendously annoying when searching my iPhoto folders and the like with huge numbers of similarly named folders (one number differences). Is there a way to enable a placemarker or something so that it doesn't reset each time I go back a page?

As far as I know there is no way to do what you want with the Finder. I might suggest, however, that there are third-party file management applications out there that might be more congenial for you as a Switcher. For instance, if you're accustomed at all to the two-pane style of file manager you might like to check out ForkLift ($44.95) which in my limited testing does seem to function as you describe.

Update: Our commenters below have your solution: ⌘ + the up arrow.

Adam asks

I soon will be purchasing a new Mac and had a few questions about keeping my two Macs up to date with each other. Essentially one is going to stay at home all the time, the other will go to class with me. Is there a way to ensure specific folders/apps are synced to each other – preferably one that doesn't involve using the web (since I have a bandwidth limit at school) and is automatic? Essentially I want to ensure my "school work" folders are synced on both machines and that my apple mail is synced (ie the sent messages/inbox will be the same on both machines regardless of which was used to send/receive the messages).

We've addressed this type of question before, but with back-to-school time upon us it might be good to revisit it. If you want to keep two folders on two Macs in sync you'll need some kind of third-party software. There are two that I regularly recommend for this ChronoSync ($30) and Martian Slingshot ($29.99). Either can be set up to do what you want, with ChronoSync perhaps a bit more powerful, but Martian Slingshot perhaps a bit easier to use.

As for keeping email in sync, it's best to do that server-side. If you just set up both Macs to use IMAP in Mail.app your email will be essentially automatically in sync. Your school will most likely support IMAP, but you can also use Gmail in this way for free.