Getting On Line
Setting Up The Mac
Apple are selling lots more laptop computers than desk machines at present and, assuming you move around with your laptop and want to connect in different places, then the Location feature of OS X is a real boon. This can usually be set to Automatic and your Mac will sort out where it is. However, it's worth understanding how to set it manually.
- New Location
- Click on the apple logo at the top left of screen and choose Location then Network Preferences
- In the Location drop down list, choose Network Preferences then in the drop down there, choose New Location (Tiger) or Edit Locations then the plus sign (Leopard and Snow Leopard) and type in the name for it - e.g. Home Broadband
- In the Show drop down list (Tiger), or the left hand panel (Leopard & Snow Leopard) choose Built-in Ethernet.
- In Tiger, Select the TCP/IP tab and from the Configure IPv4 drop down list choose Using DHCP.
- In Leopard and Snow Leopard, set Configure to Using DHCP
- Click Apply Now
That should be all you need to do. You should now be able to surf the net or move on to setting up your email account (see the Mail pages).
The next step shows how to set up a Mac manually - i.e. not using DHCP. There are reasons for wanting to do this but they are unlikely to apply to you if you needed this tutorial! However, we include them for completeness.