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If you’re a technology lover, the likelihood that you’re also a fan of Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry is perhaps a safe bet. The next question is whether or not you’re a PC fan or a Mac fan. For those that are the latter, you may be interested in this little offer.

How would you like to own the Macintosh computer that was given to Gene Roddenberry by Apple directly? Now you can if you bid enough in an auction being presented by the Profiles In History website.

Profiles in History is the leader in Hollywood and movie memorobilia auction items. They’ve auctioned away some of the coolest items from some of the greatest sci-fi movies ever. Items like the “Cowardly Lion” costume from The Wizard of Oz ($805,000); a full-scale model T-800 Endoskeleton from Terminator 2: Judgment Day ($488,750); a T.I.E. Fighter filming miniature from Star Wars ($402,500); a King Kong six-sheet movie poster ($345,000); the Command Chair from the “U.S.S. Enterprise” ($304,750); Harrison Ford’s hero blaster from Blade Runner ($258,750); the original “Robot” from Lost in Space ($264,500); Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber ($240,000); a Frankenstein one-sheet movie poster ($212,400); the Black Beauty car from The Green Hornet ($192,000); George Reeves’ Superman costume from The Adventures of Superman ($126,500); the H.R. Giger designed Alien creature suit from Alien ($126,500); a full-scale T-Rex head from Jurassic Park ($126,500), the Leaping Alien Warrior figure from Aliens ($126,500), Christopher Reeve’s ‘Superman’ costume from Superman: The Movie ($115,000), C-3PO’s helmet ($120,000),  The Wizard of Oz ‘Winkie’ Guard Costume ($115,000); a “Ming the Merciless” cape from Flash Gordon ($115,000) and the Hydraulic screen-used Velociraptor from The Lost World: Jurassic Park II ($115,000).

Enough about that though, we’re talking about getting a piece of Star Trek and Apple history by successfully winning the Macintosh 128, which was later upgraded to a Macintosh Plus for Mr. Roddenberry. The auction will take place October 8-9th and you can put in your bid at the auction website. Estimated price for the item is $800-$1200 which I think is kind of odd because that’s about what you’d pay for a bare bones Mac computer today.

Update: Current price of the item is now $2750.

Image: Provided by MJK Public Relations

I’ve worked this week setting up a new computer for a client. They’ve replaced a dinosaur of a machine with a brand new HP Slimline running Windows Vista 64-bit operating system. Everything went well until I tried to print a PDF.

My first surprise was that the machine didn’t have a PDF reader application installed by default. The fact that it didn’t even have Adobe Reader installed was another surprise. I went to my trusty replacement PDF reader application, which is Foxit Software’s Foxit Reader.

After installing Foxit’s Reader, I opened a PDF file with no problems. The challenge occurred when I tried to print the PDF, which was the ultimate goal. As soon as I hit the print button I immediately got an error message and the application crashed.

I thought maybe there was a problem with Foxit, so I uninstalled it and installed Adobe Reader instead, after downloading the ridiculously large 34MB installer. Opened the PDF file with reader and went to print and got an error message immediately as well.

The question now is if there’s a known issue with printing PDF’s on Windows Vista 64-bit operating system? Maybe the fact that there was no reader application installed by default could have been a hint. If this is a known issue, does anyone have any ideas how to to fix the issue? Wondering if running the PDF reader app in compatibility mode.