As I said a month ago, I always wanted this Powerbook. Well, my iBook is toast (the screen won’t come on, the optical is dead) so I’ve been without portability for about two months… so no matter how many reviews and angry comments I read about the Revision B(!) Powerbook I was going to recieve I was willing to put up with an ancient machine in despiration.
Well – I’m sitting in bed this afternoon, streaming KCRW through Air Tunes, and via my splendid christmas gift; The Airport Express, to my stereo. I’m surfing, editing and generally having a time of it. And hell, my battery (5 years old now folks) seems to be rocking at 3.5 Hours… I’m so happy. Thanks Kyle.
Secretly, I’m using this for timing the perfect poached eggs or blueberry muffin… but hell – for the perfect Earl Grey; give it 7. This is a tiny little app for OS X that will countdown to a time you specify. As you can see its on a (spiffingly English) tea-like theme… but mix it up a bit use your imagination, because Freeware Rocks!
So yesterday I decided it was Game Over for my iBook G3. It took about 2 hours to work out how to bypass some weird ass video problem that made me pee my pants until some clever dickie told me about Single User Mode. Its like safe-safe-mode and worked a treat. My iBook lives again, I’m still chucking it.
Why? Well I once saw an advert where Ian Malcolm Jeff Goldblum told me I was ’so’ going to want a Powerbook. This was nearly 4 years ago, but its hard to brush off his presumptions… serriously; I’m still holding out for Intel Macs in January, but I can’t live/work without my little shiny OS X – so I’m going to buy a rocking G4 (woo, upgrade time!) and max it out (60GB HD, 1GB RAM). I’ve already grabbed a killer deal on eBay and if I can shift my G3 iBook I’ll still be able to buy a brand new 12″ (Widescreen 13.3″?) Apple Laptop of sorts in the new year. For now the 550Mhz G4 TiBook comes with a 15.2″ Widescreen and was announced way back in October 2001 to rave reviews. Its made of Titanium, I so want one; the prophecy is fulfilled.
To be honest all I really wanted to say was Watch This! (1.1MB .zip / .mov)
Well, not quite – my iBook lost it today. It won’t boot now. I believe its eligable for some Logic Board Warranty Program, but I have no proof of original purchase, I imported from the US a year and a half-ago, and it was built in late 2002… so I’ll try my luck with the Apple Support folks tomorrow. I can’t see this working, its already undergone (user) replaced Hard-Disk, TFT Screen, Motherboard, CD-Rom and now Combo Drive… I could put it all back together as it would have been. I think I’ll just get I just bought a new Powerbook.
Update: So I pulled apart my iBook (again) and layed things out – expecting to find a “Broken / Not Broken” toggle. I found no toggle, but did replace the Combo Drive. When I screwed everything back together and pressed the power switch, it just worked. Hmm, I’ve installed 10.2.8 (safe!) and its running better than ever, I’ve put a new hard-disk inside and its perfectly silent now. I’ve already eBay-ed up an old Powerbook G4, which I’m going to use until the switch over to MacIntels in January (?). Again, if you’re interested in a 14″, DVD-ROM, 900Mhz G3 iBook, 640MB RAM and 2 Batteries… e-mail me!
Nope, its gone again. Game Over.
Read On »
Quincy doesn’t think much of Apple Computers,
yesterday (during some early-hours drinking) he coined the name “crap ‘n posh”
as a jibe directed at my Macintosh (the iBook G3) which can’t decode and rip (to
DiVX) while closed, and in my case running down Ship-row (after a really great
bar-supper – woah, Yorshire Puddings the size of your head – at the
Illicit
Still). I tried to argue that my iBook didn’t
need to do ripping on the go (on the move) and that it was probably
impossible… but maybe not, there must be a mobile solution to cloning
cds/dvds. A Panasonic Toughbook
may do it – PC Laptops have a nice option to “do nothing” when the user closes
the lid – an option sadly missing on my iBook – which has VGA out, it’d be a
perfect set-top-encoder!
Anyhoo – where was I going with
this… I’m compiling a how-to on DVD-PSP (memory stick needed) for the Mac. I’m
using ffmpegX and some other fun tools, there’s hacking-a-plenty but it takes
hours. Soon…p.s. I’d love a Toughbook,
shame about Windows.
