My friend has an iBook from 2001 he's been using daily since; he's never experienced any problems. I bought my iBook in July of 2002 and haven't had any troubles either. Admittedly though, I have a PowerMac at home and don't use my iBook except when out of the house. I have two other friends with iBooks, two more with PowerBooks. None have had any troubles.
I think the problems people are experiencing with logic boards and displays are real, but possibly preventable. For example, one might not want to grab the machine with one hand (putting unnecessary pressure on the logic board). This is something I do too often, unfortunately. Another thing you might want to avoid is opening and closing the display too frequently, putting stress on the cable leading to the display. I will be extending the warranty on my iBook, even though mine has been functioning well.
The article was Slashdotted so I couldn't read it, but it seems this guy's beef is with not being able to swap commodity parts from other laptops, and then put them into his iBook. Well, if you buy a PC laptop you're generally in the same boat. You're not going to be able to swap a Thinkpad's logic board with one from a Dell. Really, the only swappable parts on notebooks are hard drives and PCMCIA cards . . . A malfunctioning, out of warranty Dell is just as much of a nuisance as an iBook. A failing laptop just out of warranty is a pretty common occurrence for my PC using friends (failing displays, HD's, logic boards, etc -- I've seen it). The problem here seems to be people expect much more from Apple, even if the iBook is an entry level machine.
Laptops are portable devices; they see more abuse than your desktop. Though it might be a poor comparison, I used to be a DJ. I'd regularly replace my Sony studio monitor headphones, sometimes 2-3 times a year; it just came with the territory. After the second time though, I bought an extended warranty. Nowadays, sitting at home, a modestly priced set of headphones last me a few years. Laptops are fragile pieces of machinery, and if you're a power user, you put them under TONS of stress daily. Knowing that, one should buy an accompanying warranty, and expect a failure. For a desktop, on the other hand, I'd probably never buy an extended warranty.
And for the record, under Saudi law RobLimo could have been decapitated for pulling up that porn while he was on Saudi soil. The government looks the other way when Westerners do stuff like that, but it is the law.
Prove it. Cite a source saying under Saudi law looking at a blocked website results in decapitation. You can't? Thought so.
The rest of your comment is largely bullshit as well.
75% of the content in these articles were comparison and contrast between Saudi culture and the author's American culture; 25% of it consisted of actual information about technology in Saudi Arabia.
As a Muslim, if I were to write an article about Linux adaptation in say -- France, do you think I'm going to use 50% of the text to explain women there do not cover their heads, many drink alcohol and eat pork, and none of them pray five times daily? No, because I'm not looking to create a cultural competition; I simply don't care since, although I may have certain cultural beliefs and even prejudices, it's irrelevant to the actual topic.
Saudi Arabia is the home of Islam's two holiest places; it is the home of Islam itself. Coupled with that is Arabian culture that is much more rich than that of Arabized nations in the North (such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon etc.) Part of 'freedom' is realizing that people may hold values that are in stark opposition to your own; ones that may even seem 'incorrect,' however NOT being a member of that culture you have no room to judge that. The fact is that the vast majority of Saudis approve of their government, and this is coming from someone who has spent most of my adult years amongst Saudis, and plan to spend the rest of my life there.
The author did not really write a journalistic piece, and that's probably not surprising since he is a self-proclaimed geek. The following links should fill the voids these articles left out. There are some very impressive open source projects going on in Saudi Arabia, including the first Arabic Linux Live-CD (based on Knoppix I believe, as well as many other projects, including Arabic localizations of Mozilla. Feel free to visit the Saudi Linux User group while you're at it. For Arabic Mac users like myself, they may find this site informative.
I wouldn't be surprised if they offer this for free, get people in mixed UNIX/Windows environments to begin adopting it, then make it incompatible with a future version of Windows, requiring a fee for an 'updated' version. Another scenario is that they just break its compatibility with future versions of Windows altogether, and offer no upgrade path, free or not.
This almost looks like the beginning of their buy another company's technology to destroy it tactic. This phase is where they deem the software mostly irrelevant (because Windows is supposedly superior) then abandon it. Dragging the whole process out a few years makes it look less evil. Won't be surprised if something similar happens to VPC for Mac in a couple years.
Especially if they're anything like cheap CD-ROM drives. All my moderately priced drives are still working and some are 5 years old or more. Yet the $30 52x drives usually never made it past one year . . .
Oh, and one other thing. Since MS didn't file the patent until 1995 I'm not sure if this would effect Apple at all. I know for a fact that there was PC exchange support in MacOS 7.5.5, which was released in '95. I'm not sure about versions prior to that though.
It seems like they're mainly targeting cameras, memory sticks, and things of that nature which are pre-formatted with FAT. In other words, the new and upcoming technologies that they can thoroughly rape for profit (everyone and their mother is getting a digital camera nowadays). Until Macs are eating up 10% or more of the market share again, MS will probably stay quiet about Disk Utility.
If it came down to it though, the FAT option in DU is mostly for formatting floppies and zip disks for exchange with PC users. Floppies and zip disks are basically dead in Mac-land anyway, so not a whole lot would be lost in removing this. I suppose it's useful for Firewire/USB drives that are exchanged between Macs and PCs frequently though. Not sure how useful since many files saved with Mac programs (iMovie for example) need their HFS resource forks that FAT strips away.
Imagine if someone like IBM marketed their own Linux desktop distribution. I'd say they have the power to standardize some of the things that make Linux so confusing for new adopters (multiple desktop managers, shells, KDE vs Gnome, etc). Think Lindows, except not a toy, and with a huge company backing it. Home users are not going to adopt Linux in its current very chaotic state. These options are nice for nerds, but your mom doesn't really want to search through fifty open source apps while installing to see which one she likes the best to write a one page document for work.
A reputable company like IBM could give Linux some serious pull on the desktop (they already have in the server world).
Oldest machine on my network that's in everyday use is a Quadra 700 from 1991. It's a 25mhz machine, 1gb scsi hd, and 68mb of ram (4 mb on the motherboard). It acts as a secondary dns server, and I run sshd on it to access my home network remotely. Currently it has a 90 day or so uptime; it would be longer but it's not attached to a UPS.
So I'm looking the 5680-V right here and my figures aren't matching yours. To make the Sager match the PB's default configuration it costs $2608, plus $30 shipping.
Sager 5680-V
UXGA Wide Angle View 15" LCD (This is probably their equivalent to what you consider the PB's "odd" display). 3.2ghz CPU 512mb RAM 80gb 4200 2X DVD-R/CD-RW Windows XP Home Internal Wireless Bluetooth
15" Powerbook Default Configuration
1.2ghz CPU 512mb RAM 80gb HD (4200 RPM) SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) OS X 10.2 Jaguar Built in Wireless & Bluetooth Free Ground Shipping
$2599 Standard Price $2299 Educational Discount (which if you know anyone who's a student or teacher, isn't hard to get).
Mind you the Powerbook will easily get 4 hours or longer doing more than just word processing. Being one inch thick, and only 5.6lbs, you can actually CARRY it with one hand quite comfortably. At 12lbs your machine wouldn't even feel comfortable sitting on my lap, and that's before it starts to heat up. The fans alone on that thing are hideous.
The Sager machine also lacks the backlit keyboard and I didn't see any mention of Firewire 800. I'm assuming it has USB 2.0, but since the organization of their page is so awful, I didn't bother investigating further. They claim to offer a warranty and tech support, but I'd take that as a grain of salt, since the page looks incredibly unprofessional.
The trackpad and keyboard positioning on the unit appear to be very uncomfortable as well. Buying a laptop is about portability not cramming as much as you can into one case. I want a laptop, not extra luggage.
Now tell me which one will give you more processing power for the buck.
It's hard to say. If I installed Linux on the Sager it might give me more CPU power for my money, but certainly not with Windows XP installed. A 'secure' Windows XP install means installing an anti-virus, a pop-up blocker, and a decent firewall. Then of course, assuming I don't manually stop them, spyware invested apps like Real Player attempt to stay resident, alongside Winamp and Winzip. I can disable all these things, but I shouldn't have to and don't have to in OS X. So yeah, you may have more CPU power than me, but the resources you waste to have OS X's basic functionality even it all out. Not to mention I don't have to deal with dirty registries and a whole plethora of other Windows issues. You can load Photoshop faster, I can get more done overall, and my system doesn't look like a piece of shit -- all at the same time.
It doesn't run OS X though, and that's why I bought a PowerMac and an iBook.
It can run a good game of BF1942, all settings up on highest, while playing a DVD on another monitor, and downloading various things off Kazaa.
Right, and that's really important to all of us who play 3d games while watching DVDs and searching for mp3s on Kazaa. From the looks of your daily activities, your schedule must be really hectic. If you had a G5 those 2 extra seconds it takes to load Photoshop would seriously hamper your Kazaa-BF1942-DVD viewing workflow.
Why is it the people most concerned with two second benchmark differences are the those that have the least important things to do?
For $2599 (even less with an educational discount) a 15" Powerbook comes with Airport extreme (built in mind you, not hanging off the side in a PCMCIA slot), a SuperDrive, and an 80gb HD. The $2500 PC Torque laptop gets me a 40gb HD, no Airport, and no SuperDrive. In addition the Powerbook is significantly lighter, produces less heat, gets longer battery life, probably has a nicer screen, and doesn't look like it's targeted to just-hit-puberty-FPS gamers.
Hell, if you offered to trade me my 800mhz G3 iBook (which I paid $999 for) for your Frankenstein, Redneck, monster-truck of a machine I'd refuse.
For some people quality is more than, "I get 150fps in Quake 3!"
You're smug now about not having any issues, but you wouldn't be if you were one of the people affected.
I felt good about myself too after upgrading my 2002 Quicksilver with no problems, and then soon moved to update my 800mhz iBook. After rebooting my battery time was cut in half. If I boot into OS 9, power levels are at their usual (4 hours on a full charge).
My friend has a 867mhz Powerbook and the same exact thing is happening. The issue is widely reported on the Apple discussion boards too.
Fact is a significant minority of people are experiencing problems, and they need to be addressed. If even 10% of the people who applied the patch are having problems it's too much.
Actually, more than 50% of the daily visitors here are using Internet Explorer. Really. Just check out that IRC log that's in the interviews section.. it's somewhere there..
It's just that there are a large number of Linux advocates who are very noisy here.
Doesn't really mean anything. Many people could be browsing from work or school. Others may be huge advocates of Linux on servers, but still not like to use at a desktop replacement. That doesn't mean they're not Linux advocates, just not advocates of it on the desktop. My desktop machine is a PowerMac, but love the grunt work my old x86 boxes do running Linux. It's all about the situation and what's most appropriate for the job.
If this picture is representative of all the other G5's in the cluster then the machines do have video cards. You can see the ADC and DVI outputs . . .
but why not just buy a lower end Mac and install Virtual PC on it? I don't do much web design, but I usually design in OS X, then check the results in VPC with IE.
Mozilla seems to render pretty similarly across platforms, and with X11 you can just compile KDE/Konqueror in OS X. Seems like if one is in web design the best platform would be Mac -- you can test almost anything on one machine -- without rebooting. An iBook wouldn't set you back very much either.
I was still using mine until a year ago as a display for my Playstation. The picture rolls uncontrollable and the v-hold doesn't fix it anymore. Anyone know what's wrong with it?
My university uses the spews list, and I've missed tons of messages tonight because of it. I think I'm more angry at the admins who haven't removed the filtering though.
What really freaked me out was when I sent a message from a shell account, got it through, and then was blocked after the second message. Before I found out about this blackout and I thought someone was blocking me intentionally:)
Slashdot Mirror
My friend has an iBook from 2001 he's been using daily since; he's never experienced any problems. I bought my iBook in July of 2002 and haven't had any troubles either. Admittedly though, I have a PowerMac at home and don't use my iBook except when out of the house. I have two other friends with iBooks, two more with PowerBooks. None have had any troubles.
I think the problems people are experiencing with logic boards and displays are real, but possibly preventable. For example, one might not want to grab the machine with one hand (putting unnecessary pressure on the logic board). This is something I do too often, unfortunately. Another thing you might want to avoid is opening and closing the display too frequently, putting stress on the cable leading to the display. I will be extending the warranty on my iBook, even though mine has been functioning well.
The article was Slashdotted so I couldn't read it, but it seems this guy's beef is with not being able to swap commodity parts from other laptops, and then put them into his iBook. Well, if you buy a PC laptop you're generally in the same boat. You're not going to be able to swap a Thinkpad's logic board with one from a Dell. Really, the only swappable parts on notebooks are hard drives and PCMCIA cards . . . A malfunctioning, out of warranty Dell is just as much of a nuisance as an iBook. A failing laptop just out of warranty is a pretty common occurrence for my PC using friends (failing displays, HD's, logic boards, etc -- I've seen it). The problem here seems to be people expect much more from Apple, even if the iBook is an entry level machine.
Laptops are portable devices; they see more abuse than your desktop. Though it might be a poor comparison, I used to be a DJ. I'd regularly replace my Sony studio monitor headphones, sometimes 2-3 times a year; it just came with the territory. After the second time though, I bought an extended warranty. Nowadays, sitting at home, a modestly priced set of headphones last me a few years. Laptops are fragile pieces of machinery, and if you're a power user, you put them under TONS of stress daily. Knowing that, one should buy an accompanying warranty, and expect a failure. For a desktop, on the other hand, I'd probably never buy an extended warranty.
And for the record, under Saudi law RobLimo could have been decapitated for pulling up that porn while he was on Saudi soil. The government looks the other way when Westerners do stuff like that, but it is the law.
Prove it. Cite a source saying under Saudi law looking at a blocked website results in decapitation. You can't? Thought so.
The rest of your comment is largely bullshit as well.
75% of the content in these articles were comparison and contrast between Saudi culture and the author's American culture; 25% of it consisted of actual information about technology in Saudi Arabia.
As a Muslim, if I were to write an article about Linux adaptation in say -- France, do you think I'm going to use 50% of the text to explain women there do not cover their heads, many drink alcohol and eat pork, and none of them pray five times daily? No, because I'm not looking to create a cultural competition; I simply don't care since, although I may have certain cultural beliefs and even prejudices, it's irrelevant to the actual topic.
Saudi Arabia is the home of Islam's two holiest places; it is the home of Islam itself. Coupled with that is Arabian culture that is much more rich than that of Arabized nations in the North (such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon etc.) Part of 'freedom' is realizing that people may hold values that are in stark opposition to your own; ones that may even seem 'incorrect,' however NOT being a member of that culture you have no room to judge that. The fact is that the vast majority of Saudis approve of their government, and this is coming from someone who has spent most of my adult years amongst Saudis, and plan to spend the rest of my life there.
The author did not really write a journalistic piece, and that's probably not surprising since he is a self-proclaimed geek. The following links should fill the voids these articles left out. There are some very impressive open source projects going on in Saudi Arabia, including the first Arabic Linux Live-CD (based on Knoppix I believe, as well as many other projects, including Arabic localizations of Mozilla. Feel free to visit the Saudi Linux User group while you're at it. For Arabic Mac users like myself, they may find this site informative.
I wouldn't be surprised if they offer this for free, get people in mixed UNIX/Windows environments to begin adopting it, then make it incompatible with a future version of Windows, requiring a fee for an 'updated' version. Another scenario is that they just break its compatibility with future versions of Windows altogether, and offer no upgrade path, free or not.
This almost looks like the beginning of their buy another company's technology to destroy it tactic. This phase is where they deem the software mostly irrelevant (because Windows is supposedly superior) then abandon it. Dragging the whole process out a few years makes it look less evil. Won't be surprised if something similar happens to VPC for Mac in a couple years.
I fix their computers once, then tell them to buy a Mac if they don't want it to happen again.
Welcome to Redmond, where tackiness and lack of style reign supreme. Like father like son; like developer, like user.
The easiest solution is just to quit talking to them. Works for me.
Same problem here with an HP 2200c. Dug through some manpages but didn't really find anything useful. Works fine in Vuescan though . . .
Especially if they're anything like cheap CD-ROM drives. All my moderately priced drives are still working and some are 5 years old or more. Yet the $30 52x drives usually never made it past one year . . .
Oh, and one other thing. Since MS didn't file the patent until 1995 I'm not sure if this would effect Apple at all. I know for a fact that there was PC exchange support in MacOS 7.5.5, which was released in '95. I'm not sure about versions prior to that though.
It seems like they're mainly targeting cameras, memory sticks, and things of that nature which are pre-formatted with FAT. In other words, the new and upcoming technologies that they can thoroughly rape for profit (everyone and their mother is getting a digital camera nowadays). Until Macs are eating up 10% or more of the market share again, MS will probably stay quiet about Disk Utility.
If it came down to it though, the FAT option in DU is mostly for formatting floppies and zip disks for exchange with PC users. Floppies and zip disks are basically dead in Mac-land anyway, so not a whole lot would be lost in removing this. I suppose it's useful for Firewire/USB drives that are exchanged between Macs and PCs frequently though. Not sure how useful since many files saved with Mac programs (iMovie for example) need their HFS resource forks that FAT strips away.
Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for the nerds to get even with the bullies?
Imagine if someone like IBM marketed their own Linux desktop distribution. I'd say they have the power to standardize some of the things that make Linux so confusing for new adopters (multiple desktop managers, shells, KDE vs Gnome, etc). Think Lindows, except not a toy, and with a huge company backing it. Home users are not going to adopt Linux in its current very chaotic state. These options are nice for nerds, but your mom doesn't really want to search through fifty open source apps while installing to see which one she likes the best to write a one page document for work.
A reputable company like IBM could give Linux some serious pull on the desktop (they already have in the server world).
This thing is a $2000+ iBook, and it doesn't even look as cool. Though it does weigh two pounds less . . .
Oldest machine on my network that's in everyday use is a Quadra 700 from 1991. It's a 25mhz machine, 1gb scsi hd, and 68mb of ram (4 mb on the motherboard). It acts as a secondary dns server, and I run sshd on it to access my home network remotely. Currently it has a 90 day or so uptime; it would be longer but it's not attached to a UPS.
So I'm looking the 5680-V right here and my figures aren't matching yours. To make the Sager match the PB's default configuration it costs $2608, plus $30 shipping.
Sager 5680-V
UXGA Wide Angle View 15" LCD (This is probably their equivalent to what you consider the PB's "odd" display).
3.2ghz CPU
512mb RAM
80gb 4200
2X DVD-R/CD-RW
Windows XP Home
Internal Wireless
Bluetooth
15" Powerbook Default Configuration
1.2ghz CPU
512mb RAM
80gb HD (4200 RPM)
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
OS X 10.2 Jaguar
Built in Wireless & Bluetooth
Free Ground Shipping
$2599 Standard Price
$2299 Educational Discount (which if you know anyone who's a student or teacher, isn't hard to get).
Mind you the Powerbook will easily get 4 hours or longer doing more than just word processing. Being one inch thick, and only 5.6lbs, you can actually CARRY it with one hand quite comfortably. At 12lbs your machine wouldn't even feel comfortable sitting on my lap, and that's before it starts to heat up. The fans alone on that thing are hideous.
The Sager machine also lacks the backlit keyboard and I didn't see any mention of Firewire 800. I'm assuming it has USB 2.0, but since the organization of their page is so awful, I didn't bother investigating further. They claim to offer a warranty and tech support, but I'd take that as a grain of salt, since the page looks incredibly unprofessional.
The trackpad and keyboard positioning on the unit appear to be very uncomfortable as well. Buying a laptop is about portability not cramming as much as you can into one case. I want a laptop, not extra luggage.
Now tell me which one will give you more processing power for the buck.
It's hard to say. If I installed Linux on the Sager it might give me more CPU power for my money, but certainly not with Windows XP installed. A 'secure' Windows XP install means installing an anti-virus, a pop-up blocker, and a decent firewall. Then of course, assuming I don't manually stop them, spyware invested apps like Real Player attempt to stay resident, alongside Winamp and Winzip. I can disable all these things, but I shouldn't have to and don't have to in OS X. So yeah, you may have more CPU power than me, but the resources you waste to have OS X's basic functionality even it all out. Not to mention I don't have to deal with dirty registries and a whole plethora of other Windows issues. You can load Photoshop faster, I can get more done overall, and my system doesn't look like a piece of shit -- all at the same time.
It doesn't run OS X though, and that's why I bought a PowerMac and an iBook.
It can run a good game of BF1942, all settings up on highest, while playing a DVD on another monitor, and downloading various things off Kazaa.
Right, and that's really important to all of us who play 3d games while watching DVDs and searching for mp3s on Kazaa. From the looks of your daily activities, your schedule must be really hectic. If you had a G5 those 2 extra seconds it takes to load Photoshop would seriously hamper your Kazaa-BF1942-DVD viewing workflow.
Why is it the people most concerned with two second benchmark differences are the those that have the least important things to do?
For $2599 (even less with an educational discount) a 15" Powerbook comes with Airport extreme (built in mind you, not hanging off the side in a PCMCIA slot), a SuperDrive, and an 80gb HD. The $2500 PC Torque laptop gets me a 40gb HD, no Airport, and no SuperDrive. In addition the Powerbook is significantly lighter, produces less heat, gets longer battery life, probably has a nicer screen, and doesn't look like it's targeted to just-hit-puberty-FPS gamers.
Hell, if you offered to trade me my 800mhz G3 iBook (which I paid $999 for) for your Frankenstein, Redneck, monster-truck of a machine I'd refuse.
For some people quality is more than, "I get 150fps in Quake 3!"
You're smug now about not having any issues, but you wouldn't be if you were one of the people affected.
I felt good about myself too after upgrading my 2002 Quicksilver with no problems, and then soon moved to update my 800mhz iBook. After rebooting my battery time was cut in half. If I boot into OS 9, power levels are at their usual (4 hours on a full charge).
My friend has a 867mhz Powerbook and the same exact thing is happening. The issue is widely reported on the Apple discussion boards too.
Fact is a significant minority of people are experiencing problems, and they need to be addressed. If even 10% of the people who applied the patch are having problems it's too much.
Actually, more than 50% of the daily visitors here are using Internet Explorer. Really. Just check out that IRC log that's in the interviews section.. it's somewhere there..
It's just that there are a large number of Linux advocates who are very noisy here.
Doesn't really mean anything. Many people could be browsing from work or school. Others may be huge advocates of Linux on servers, but still not like to use at a desktop replacement. That doesn't mean they're not Linux advocates, just not advocates of it on the desktop. My desktop machine is a PowerMac, but love the grunt work my old x86 boxes do running Linux. It's all about the situation and what's most appropriate for the job.
If this picture is representative of all the other G5's in the cluster then the machines do have video cards. You can see the ADC and DVI outputs . . .
but why not just buy a lower end Mac and install Virtual PC on it? I don't do much web design, but I usually design in OS X, then check the results in VPC with IE.
Mozilla seems to render pretty similarly across platforms, and with X11 you can just compile KDE/Konqueror in OS X. Seems like if one is in web design the best platform would be Mac -- you can test almost anything on one machine -- without rebooting. An iBook wouldn't set you back very much either.
This was my first mouse. Currently enjoying a Logitech dual optical though.
I was still using mine until a year ago as a display for my Playstation. The picture rolls uncontrollable and the v-hold doesn't fix it anymore. Anyone know what's wrong with it?
Kurtz is that you?
My university uses the spews list, and I've missed tons of messages tonight because of it. I think I'm more angry at the admins who haven't removed the filtering though.
:)
What really freaked me out was when I sent a message from a shell account, got it through, and then was blocked after the second message. Before I found out about this blackout and I thought someone was blocking me intentionally