Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with osx and ibook

Okay, so plate spring on vocals only?

Cantdosleepy — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:22:48 -0800

Please help get my old iBook to be as fast as possible! Hey all,

I've had an iBook G4 14" 1.42GHz for a few years now (bought it about a month before they switched to Intel chips). I haven't treated it super-kindly (the day-to-day account is also the admin account, since I didn't realise you were meant to make yourself a limited user account; I've installed and uninstalled all sorts of software of varying quality; and I've made it a bittorrent packhorse for days at a time) and the battery was on the point of dying. I recently put a new battery in, and now that I'm not permanently tethered to the wall I'm enthused about fixing the machine up to get it as fast as possible.

I've been using the DAW Reaper for a few months now and like it a lot. Unfortunately my computer isn't fast enough to do any audio effects work - every channel has to be clean or the program judders and overloads.

My goal for this project is to be able to use Reaper and Reason ReWired together for recording sketches in my bedroom. Nothing too ambitious - I'm not talking about running bitcrunchers, choruses and delays on dozens of channels - I'd just like the ability to use panning, compression and reverb on four or five tracks to make things sit nicely together.

So how do I squeeze out the speed? Will reinstalling the OS help? I've already got the maximum amount of RAM that this computer will hold. What processes run in the background that I don't need? Does the Quicksilver launcher eat up a lot of memory (I currently use it)? Would installing Leopard be a bunch faster, or would that money be better spent elsewhere? Can I tell the computer to prioritise one program at the expense of others? Should I set up a separate user account for recording that has almost everything disabled that isn't needed for ReapsonWire?

Aside from music making I'll be using this machine to cruise the internet, watch '.avi' files and write bits and pieces - so nothing too demanding.

Any and all tips considered. Thanks!

Rain rain go away, although this game is moderately fun to play

Your Time Machine Sucks — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:29:06 -0800

Awesome but slightly rambunctious 8th grade class going on a school trip to the country. Rain is possible. Possibility of ultra-rare recreational computer access is likely to be a highly compelling reward for good behavior. The kids speak German. With all of these givens, what non-crack-like game should I install on the beater iBook G3 12" running 10.4 that I'm sending the teacher off with? Disclaimers: there is already a no-tech primary rain strategy involving books, indoor sports, board games, the lost art of conversation, etc. For those folks who feel that every second of a trip out of the city should be technology-free, I think the goal here is that nearly all of the seconds should be technology-free, but only a newbie teacher wouldn't keep an ace in the hole on a weeklong trip. For those folks who feel that every second of kid technology exposure should be educational, I'm mostly setting up the computer so the kids can take and store photos and blog their trip if they get antsy, [see last clause of previous sentence]. Just write me privately if you're bothered by the underlying premise, that's totally fine and I won't bite.

So, Mac-compatible non-system-demanding games which don't specifically require English skills (a few words are fine or even possibly beneficial), ideally which don't have unusually addictive qualities, with bonus points for having a cooperative mode. If you can further suggest something with redeeming virtues, I'd be most indebted. Thanks!

Help! My Leopard is changing its spots!

annabellee — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:12:35 -0800

My iBook G4 is possessed! Please help perform an exorcism. Suddenly many things are wrong with my iBook G4 running Leopard. There is a white box over the right-hand side of my menubar, and Spotlight, Airport, clock, and all my startup items (Quicksilver, WeatherDock, MenuCalendarClock) are gone.

I can't open many applications that might help (including Disk Utility, Finder Help, System Preferences). I cannot open Mail, but I am indeed online as I can open Firefox and Fetch and use them. I tried inserting the Leopard Disk and reinstalling, but I can't run the install program. I repaired permissions in single user mode (startup with Command-S, run fsck) and my hard drive seems to be fine.

I plugged in my backup drive and tried to restore from Time Machine. I get the Time Machine interface, but I can't click on any past backup windows.

When I place the mouse cursor over the white rectangle on the menubar, I get the beach ball. I am unable to shut down or logout without doing a hard restart. I can't get to System Preferences to create a new user to see if it's particular to my login.

Please help. I know Leopard requires more memory than I have, but I have been running it since release with next to no problems.

Syncing a Razr? More like STINKING A RAZR

Sticherbeast — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 20:24:33 -0800

iSync question: I'm trying to use a USB cable to sync a Razr V3 with iSync 2.4 on an iBook G4 running Tiger, but something's not clicking. iSync recognizes the phone and it claims to Sync it, but nothing gets added to Address Book. What's the deal? The iBook doesn't have Bluetooth capability, so I can't use that. While I don't expect miracles, I'd also be very interested in learning how to get the photos off of this phone and onto the computer, without simply pix messaging an email address over and over again.

Help my ailing iBook!

annabellee — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:35:26 -0800

MacTechFilter: Is this strange activity in my console log the reason my iBook is freezing up? I posted a few weeks ago about my iBook G4 freezing at seemingly random moments and not responding to anything but a hard restart.

Original question here: http://ask.metafilter.com/72204/How-to-get-iBook-G4-to-stop-freezing-up
(There's no option to hyperlink or format in this text field for some reason)

As advised in the responses, I checked my console.log and system.log files right after it froze this morning and found in my system log:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **

followed by about 1000 lines that look like this:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x01005c63 4f000217 00000007 00000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x02007c43 c0001c04 00000002 00000008
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x00004443 01e1f8b7 00003b3b 80010140
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x4000ffff 001e0000 51b3a220 72001005
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x080a0f00 00000000 040100f8 80000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x0008bbbb 00000002
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0:0x0021e110
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 1:0x80000000
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 2:0x000101ce
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 3:0x10264600

The numbers before the colon go up to 1023 each time.

These are the final lines before the time at which I restart the computer:

Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 1023:0xffffffff
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 0x5d56f250
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log End **
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 5, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140. VAP_CNTL_STATUS 0x00000002
Oct 20 08:49:26 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

Entering ** ASIC Hang Log Start ** and ** ASIC Hang Log End ** in Google give me only people who had this problem with eMacs, mostly several years ago.

Can anyone help?

How to get iBook G4 to stop freezing up.

annabellee — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:39:36 -0800

[iBook G4 filter]: My Mac keeps freezing and responds to nothing but a hard restart. About two and a half weeks ago, my iBook started freezing randomly. The keyboard stops working totally and the only thing I can do is move the mouse pointer with the trackpad (can't highlight anything, can't get hidden dock to show). Sometimes I get a spinning beachball for a second but usually it just shows an arrow cursor. The only way I've been able to get it to work again is with a hard restart (pressing the power button).

Lately I've noticed the I can count on it freezing up when I unplug the power cord, plug in the power cord, or unplug the speakers. It still freezes at other times, but this is a guaranteed way to make it happen.

I've done extensive Googling on OS X boards to try and find help.
I have run: Disk Utility to repair permissions; started in single user mode and gotten a clean bill of health from Disk Utility, installed and run Cocktail (which seems to just clean caches), installed and run Applejack AUTO. All give me a "nothing's wrong" report at the end.

I do NOT have my Tiger disk (Grrr, misplaced) so I'm trying to avoid the "nuke and pave" option if I can attribute the freezing to a software issue/repair the hardware myself.

Vital stats: iBook G4, purchased 1/2004, running OS 10.4.10, 1GHz PowerPC, 640MB DDR SDRAM. Approximately 12 GB free on 60GB hard drive. Applecare expired. Running Tiger for a year with no problems. Most memory-intensive programs used regularly: Quicksilver, Firefox. My battery is not eligible for the replacement program.

Please help! Happy to answer any further questions if needed.

How can I fix my wireless connection?

Len — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:16:48 -0800

Why has my wireless connection gone wonky? And how can I fix it? I've got a G4 iBook, and a Belkin wireless router. Until about six months ago I was running 10.4 on the iBook, then, for reasons that don't matter, 10.3.9. Under both, the wireless signal was fine – full strength signal in all parts of the house, no dropped connections, etc. When I upgraded to 10.4.6 about two weeks ago, the wireless connection suddenly got very temperamental, and it's got to the point that the signal will disappear – i.e. when clicking on the Airport logo on the taskbar, my home network (nor any of the five or six others in the building) will not even appear as a network to join, in some parts of the house; previously, I could have wandered over to the other side of the street and still connected to my network. It's not the router – there's a Windows laptop in the same house that has no problems; in addition to that, there's a desktop eMac (running 10.2.8, if it matters) sat next to my iBook which has a perfect connection – and that's if I use the same Airport card that's currently in my iBook.

Frankly, I'm bored of this now, and it's starting to be a pain in the arse. I have an 8Mbps ADSL line, and I'd like to be able to use it to its full potential – as I had done before upgrading to 10.4.6. And I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the dropped connections, not to mention only being able to use my internet connection in prescribed parts of my flat.

I've hunted, and maybe I've missed some vital document, but is this (a) a known problem and/or (b) fixable? I'm presuming that there's some conflict between the OS and the router, but given that my iBook ran 10.4 and there were no problems previously, I'm at a loss ...

Why won't my G3 boot?

Orb2069 — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:52:37 -0800

My G3/700mhz (DualUSB) iBook is not booting in a strange way: I definitely need a hint on this one. Lots and lots more inside.

A while back, the machine started having problems while tidying the disk up with Applejack or Disk Utility - only occured once per run, and fsck would finish running. Rerunning fsck with Applejack would produce the exact same error at the same time. I don't remember the exact error, but it was always the same, and googling it convinced me that it was file-structure related, and not hardware related. I took this as an opportunity to install 10.4, and reformatted the hard drive - Since the machine dosen't have a DVD drive, I used an external firewire drive to boot 10.4, format the disk using a 'wipe clean' setting, then install. It did so without errors.

Now, If left to it's own devices, it boots to the grey apple screen, then the gear spins endlessly. If I boot it in Single-User(command-S) or view boot mode, the boot hangs with:

BSD root: disk0s10, major 14, minor 10
disk0s10: I/O error.
disk0s10: I/O error.

...Which to my mind says 'Disk bad!' but:

The disk is more than six months, but less than a year old - an odd time to die IMO.
If the laptop is booted in Target mode(command-T), it mounts fine on my Blue & White G3, and Disk Utility can scan it without problems.

I've even installed 10.4, then 10.3 on it in target mode when I thought that the new OS could be the source of the problems. It still exhibits the same problem.

The tech at the local Apple store booted it off a FW drive, ran some diagnostics, and noted that the machine had problems until the CD drive was ejected, and suggested that I remove the CD drive and see if it would behave itself. I tried it, and it did not.

To sum: It's probably hardware, but I'll be dipped if I can think of what it is.

Any ideas of what I can try next?

Slow iBook

roll truck roll — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:58:31 -0800

Why is Mac OS 10.4.9 so slow on my iBook G4? I've tried everything I can think of and am going crazy. This is probably going to be a little overly wordy, for the simple reason that I really don't know what's important information and what isn't.

For starters, I have a two-year-old PPC iBook G4, 1.2 GHz, 768 MB RAM. Thank God I got Apple Care, as the logic board has already been replaced twice.

About three weeks ago, my computer started acting up. I couldn't open Microsoft Office. Also, I could open iTunes, but couldn't get into my music library. I quickly determined that the problem had to do with Disk Permissions. The Disk Utility gave me the message, "Underlying task reported failure." And apparently when you get that message it's time to cut your losses.

So I did a complete reformat and reinstall. While reformatting, I did the complete disk repair (the one that takes like three hours, whatever it's called). After all this, my computer ran perfectly, just like new.

I don't know how relevant any of that info is, except to say that I should theoretically be starting from a completely clean slate.

About a week after reformatting, I downloaded and installed 10.4.9. And ever since that point, it's been painfully slow. I'm not doing anything fancy. If I have open Firefox, Thunderbird, iTunes, Skype, iCal, and Word all at once, I'll get the spinning beach ball every few minutes. When one program is stuck, I can't switch to anything else. When more than one program is open, switching between two takes 5-10 seconds. Even switching between tabs in Firefox is a pain.

It never completely freezes. I just sometimes have to wait a long time for my computer to respond.

I took it to the Apple store twice in the past week. The first time, the guy deleted some Cache files. He also did some key combination on startup to "restore factory settings." Very little change.

The second time, the guy did a reinstall of 10.4.9. There was some improvement, but it's still prohibitively slow.

Again, I apologize for the longwindedness. I'm hoping that I've provided enough information that the problem might be obvious to someone.

Will Leopard like a G3 iBook?

northernsoul — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:58:46 -0800

I'm looking at buying an old G3 iBook (900 Mhz), but I've heard some rumblings that Leopard might cut off G3s all together. How likely is it that this would happen with Leopard? How many more releases is it reasonable to assume this Notebook would be supported?

Installing Xubuntu on an iBook SE with a broken CD drive: possible?

jack_mo — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 04:08:38 -0800

Installing Xubuntu on an iBook SE with a broken CD drive: possible? I'd like to install Xubuntu on my old clamshell iBook SE (Graphite), but the CD drive on it is broken.

Would it be possible to install it from my other iBook? I'm guessing this might be possible over the network, but am not entirely sure how to go about it, and can't find any specific instructions online. (And I'm loathe to just jump in and try, in case I do something daft and end up installing Xubuntu on the wrong iBook!)

So, can I install over a network, or would I be better off borrowing a USB CD drive and trying to boot from the Xubuntu cd that way?

The old iBook is running OS 10.2.8 and the new iBook is running 10.4.7, in case that matters.

It just works, right?

mds35 — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 19:30:48 -0800

Data recovery in target disk mode: what are the pitfalls? A friend of mine has a G4 iBook that is dead. He has been told by a computer repair person (non-Apple) that his logic board is hosed. He'd like to save his old iTunes and iPhoto libraries to his new MacBook Pro. I told him about Target Disk Mode and offered to perform the transfer for him, but he's wary and is afraid of losing some of his photos forever. Is target disk mode fairly safe, assuming there is no damage to the HD on his old iBook? Also, is target mode even possible if the logic board is hosed? What if the power supply on the iBook is dead? Is there any thing I should beware of?

Palm Syncing Woes

rossination — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:43:10 -0800

My Palm hates my mac. I was just gifted a used Palm Zire 21 that I'd like to try out (to see if a PDA is the kind of thing that I'd actually _use_).

I've run into what seem to be some pretty standard problems with syncing to my Mac. But, they haven't been solved by any "standard solutions". Here's what I've done so far:
Installed Palm Desktop from the CD (version 4.1)
Downloaded the iSync Palm conduit and set it up in the Hotsync Manager (Basically, the first couple steps listed here: Palm with iSync).

When I try to set up Palm OS Syncing in iSync (Devices -> enable Palm OS Syncing), it tells me that the Hotsync software is not properly installed.

So, I'm sorry for asking what seems to be an oft-posted question on the Internets, but 2 or 3 hours of googling and browsing Palm and Apple websites have failed me. HOW DO I MAKE THESE THINGS WORK TOGETHER?

I know that Missing Sync could solve many problems of mine, but I'm not going to buy a $40 program for a device that I may not even end up using anyway. Once I get this work, and once I find out whether or not this little doodad will actually help me, I'll pay the forty bucks. For now, I'm a bit frustrated that this thing doesn't "just work".

P.S. I should note that I intend to continue using iCal/Address Book/iSync. I don't want to have to use the ugly and quasi-functional Palm Desktop as my mac's PIM.

Odd iBook hard drive problem

letitrain — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:35:09 -0800

I've got an intermittent iBook hard drive problem that has me stumped. The computer works fine for a short period of time, then completely freezes. The "good" period of time has gotten shorter and shorter. At first I just assumed it was a big software crash that locked up the entire system, - everything worked fine after a hard restart. Then the freezing started getting more and more common. The problem seemed to occur more after waking from sleep. Then it would work for shorter periods, maybe ten minutes rather than an hour. It's now working for around 1-2 minutes, and occasionally not at all.

I ran Disk Utility "Verify Disk" on the hard drive and sometimes it would show no problems and other times it would be "not able to unmount the drive" (that's not the exact phrase, but something similar). Once or twice a long list of "I/O errors" would interrupt the startup routine. About half the time now the drive will not even show up in the list of drives in Disk Utility, or will show up for only a short period of time.

So basically, it looks like the hard drive is available for few minutes, then just sort of goes away. A few more details: after the crashes, things I had done in iPhoto (rotations, etc.) were not saved. It was dropped about 9 inches a couple of weeks before the problems started. The drive is a replacement Seagate 100GB that I installed a little over a year ago.

I have a complete backup, so there is no problem with lost data. The drive is still under warranty. I just want to know if there is something else I should test or try before replacing the drive (a near-complete disassembly on this model).

Tiger's QuickTime Misperforming on an iBook G3?

WCityMike — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:35:09 -0800

Ever since upgrading to QuickTime 7 and Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), I've noticed that apparently what I think is the H.264 and H.267 codecs play very choppily on my machine. The audio track doesn't freeze, but the video stops, then moves forward slightly choppily, then goes forward, then repeats the cycle a few seconds later, making the resulting video mostly unviewable. I've noticed this specifically on videos from the iTunes Media Store and Apple Movie Trailers.

My machine isn't horribly ancient, but it's not top-of-the-line, either: an 800 mHz iBook G3 with 640 MB RAM (which is the maximum available for this unit). I know the G3 is at the hind end of the pack nowadays, but I can't believe it's been entirely ignored when these codecs were tried out at Apple.

I have tried three things: increasing the QuickTime cache (no effect), reducing the number of open applications at the time (very little or no effect), and letting the whole video load before trying to play it (very little or no effect).

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Can I access my mp3s remotely?

synecdoche — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:28:12 -0800

Can I access my files on a Window 2000 machine (at home) from my iBook when travelling? I have a Windows 2000 desktop at home. I store my MP3 collection on it. Usually when doing day-to-day computing, I use my iBook laptop. At home, I can easily access the files on the Win2K box over my local network. However, I do travel from time to time, and I'd like it if I could mount the remote computer as a hard drive when I am away from home (whether across the country or at my university).

Is there any simple way to do this? If it works okay, I'll just tell iTunes that the library is in a new location and then keep it all the time. It'd be nice to be able to move files back to the Win2K machine, too.

I've seen somebody do something similar but they were running Linux, which I am not too proficient with.

I have Win2K Pro, updated to whatever they're at now, on the desktop where the fiels are, and OSX Tiger on the iBook.

Microsoft Office Keyboard on an iBook

synecdoche — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 20:21:17 -0800

I picked up a very cheap Microsoft Office Keyboard today. It works great on my Windows 2000 machine with the software provided, but the Mac software included on the CD is for OS9, and I want to run it with my KVM switch into my G4 iBook (OSX.4). I tried to install Microsoft Intellipoint software from the Mac section of the Microsoft web site, but it has not helped-- so far the only extra keys that work are the volume controls. The standard keys work fine, though.

Now, to compound matters, I can't find any reference to this specific keyboard on Microsoft's website. I was hoping there'd be an updated driver, but evidently the keyboard is discontinued enough for Microsoft to remove any online support for it.

So, the question is, is there anything I can do to get full functionality out of the keyboard on OSX.4?

This is the keyboard, by the way.

How do I get rid of the bad blocks on my iBook's hard drive?

letitrain — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:40:05 -0800

A couple of days ago, my iBook (G4, dual USB, 800Mhz) hard drive started making excessive noise, like it was continually writing, and the computer slowed wayyy down. I backed up all the important data, then ran several diagnostic programs: TechTool Pro 4, Drive 10, Norton Utilities 8. All came up with major errors, first with the volume bitmap, then with the disk surface itself, i.e. bad blocks. None of them could fix the problem (although Norton said it did), so I erased the disk with the option to write zeroes selected. After erasing three times, TechTool Pro still found bad blocks on the surface scan test. I tried all I could think of, so I reinstalled OS X, and everything is working OK, but the S.M.A.R.T. status in Disk Utility is showing failing. I'm afraid it's just a matter of time until the bad blocks start causing trouble.

Replacing the drive on this model is incredibly involved, so is there anything else I can try?

Mac OS X Newbie Seeking Forums, Websites, Tips, and Tricks

keswick — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:18:31 -0800

MacFilter: I'm buying my first Mac shortly-- an iBook. (After years on first Commodore then Windows) Can anybody share any resources (forums, websites, etc) that they find useful? How about any tips or tricks for a brave soul's first foray into OSX?

Images quit refreshing using iSight / iBook / EvoCam.

terrapin — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 09:52:46 -0800

An iSight / iBook / EvoCam question concerning non-refreshing images and possibly firewire power inside ... I run a silly little webcam from my home that is set up as such: iSight connected via Firewire to a G4 iBook using EvoCam v3.4 to serve up the images. EvoCam is set up to take a picture every 20 seconds and FTP it to my remote web server. This works for a few hours, but at some point the camera stops sending new pictures, and EvoCam simply adds a new date stamp to the image it had last and continues to upload it.

I have the iBook set up to power off the screen after a while to avoid burning in a ghost image on the iBook's screen. I have turned off all other power management. Since the screen turns off after a minute without apparently affecting the uploading of images, I don't think this is the issue. The images upload correctly for up to 4 hours or so before I notice the issue creeping up.

EvoCam claims this issue is with Apple and that Apple is aware of it. While waiting for Apple to fix this, EvoCam suggests using v3.4 of their software which has a work-around that apparently refreshes the image periodically to avoid the freeze up. But this doesn't seem to be working, for me, at least.

I think my issue may be an issue with the Firewire port and/or iSight. I think it may be that at some point, the iBook stops powering the port or something.

Anyway, I am relatively new to Apple (switched in 2003) and all of the stuff above is simply thinking out-loud. I have checked a variety of sources I have found via Google, and have perused (and posted) to EvoCam's support forums. All with no luck. I'd like to get this thing working in time to humour the family with a Tree Cam this holiday season. If anyone can help I'd appreciate it.

Apple Memory Upgrades

rubin421 — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 20:16:29 -0800

A long-time PC user, I am planning to switch to Apple, replacing my centrino laptop by a 12" ibook G4 (I want a small computer).

Most of the standard Apple configurations come with 256MB of RAM: is this because OSX needs less memory than XP (since most laptop configs today come with 512MB), or do I need to go for 512 (768?) megs?

I mainly use my computer to browse the web, send & receive e-mails, do some word processing, and manage my MP3, which I only store on my iPod.

Other question:
If I buy the computer at the local Apple Store (I'm in NYC), I'll only be able to get a memory upgrade, and not a hard disk upgrade. The laptop comes with a 30GB drive. For a Windows PC, I'd go for 60GB: should I do the same here? This would make me have to order it online, which is a bit of a problem (I'm not often at home...).

What are some cool OS X hacks?

angry modem — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 01:19:26 -0800

I recently got an ibook, and I'm having a lot of fun with fink. But I'm wondering, what's the coolest or most interesting thing/hack you've done with OS X?

Thinking of a new laptop. Should I switch to Mac/Apple?

coriolisdave — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:37:14 -0800

I'm thinking of getting myself a new laptop to play with. Do I want to switch? [~~Intel~~ More Inside] I don't _need_ a new laptop, but it would be useful to have for home use. I have a Toshiba for work, but if the argument is strong enough it could be replaced with a Mac. I'm a sysadmin for an almost pure Win2k/2k3 network, but most of that work is done remotely (i.e. RDP). I play with some webdesign (teaching myself PHP, etc) but am not a web- or code-monkey. I do travel somewhat, so this beastly heavy Toshy is a pain. I have a PC for (very light) gaming at home, but would like to be able to watch avi's etc on my television from the laptop. I detest IE with a passion unholy, and Opera is having my baby.
Price-wise, the AppleBooks are fairly equivalent to the IBM offerings which I've played with extensively. I like their X-series (particularly the X40) mainly for size/weight reasons (tiny, 1.6kg) and the excellent battery life (6hrs on main batt alone).
In realistic terms, how does a G4 1.33 stack up against the Intel boxen? What's the battery life like on an iBook? Is the PowerBook's battery better? How heavy is the iBook? What sort of gaming performance will they give me? Most importantly, Will the Apple do what I need it to do, and how long will it take me to be up-and-running?

Death of an iBook

matteo — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 08:31:55 -0800

Death of an iBook. A couple hours ago, in the exact instant that I pushed the button to turn off my iBook G4, the iBook made a weird sound, its power was cut out immediately and abruptly went dead in a split-second (instead of the usual, slower process). It doesn't restart. It doesn't. Batteries are OK, by the way. Two questions: how bad is it, is it just electrical or the hard disk has been damaged as well? Also, I have put a lot of expensive software (Photoshop CS, Toast Titanium, Office, etc) in it. I still have the cd's and serial numbers, will I be able to reinstall them when the iBook's been fixed? It is still under guarantee, it's 7 months old. (more inside) Today it's a national holiday here, so Apple Support offices are closed. I plan to call tomorrow, immediately. Anybody has ever had similar notebook trouble?

Can I use the OSX CDs that came with my iBook to upgrade a desktop G4 from OS9?

kmel — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 11:35:41 -0800

Can I use the OSX CDs that came with my iBook to upgrade a desktop G4 from OS9? Sorry if this is a dumb question for askMe. I tried searching Google and various Mac forums ... I must be having a problem hitting on the right search terms.