Not all 3M iBook owners know about the site and lawsuit, so that cuts the number down considerably. Also there are owners like me that have had the failure, but everything was replaced in warranty and so have no reason to sue. Assuming that even a tenth of the people with the logic board problem even know that its widespread and know about blackcider is probably an overstatement.
I bought an iBook about a year ago and have had it replaced due to logic board problems. My roommate bought one at the same time and his died just about the same time as mine (6 mo). Apple replaced it though kindly and gave me a fresh new 1 year warranty to go with my replacement computer. They may have made a lemon with the ibook but if youre in warranty they will fix it. I see lots of people complaining that their out of warranty ibook is failing, but that really ISN'T Apple's responsibility unfortunately. For those of us that own these and probably will have problems later on, buy AppleCare to extend it to 3 years. Its $183 I think for students and it basically assures that your iBook will last for 2 years past the warranty, hell you might get a brand new one. Its sad that these things fail but with laptops, always buy the extended warranty. I'm on the list somewhere on the logic board problem petition but I'm not on the lawsuit one because what right do I have to get money from them when theyve fixed everything (and replaced my computer with the newer model that was out)? I think theyre going to have a tough time fighting Apple on this one.
Add me to the list that would snatch up a $100 1gb+ music player from Apple in a heartbeat. I definitely wanted an iPod, but: a) couldn't really afford one and b) wouldn't feel all that comfortable carrying around a $400 piece of electronics with me everywhere. I think you're right about the "post" thing and also a lot of people get money for xmas (I did), so they might be looking for something like this to buy.
I had been an x86 user for my whole life but got an ibook a little less than a year ago and I haven't looked back. I wouldn't consider buying a laptop from another company, unless there was some Windows app that you really needed. The ibook is the perfect laptop in my opinion (and now at $1100 its cheap). First, the 12" ibook is the size of a piece of paper, which makes it really easy to carry around if youre a student. Second, its durable and feels like it, unlike EVERY pc laptop I've tried (we get a lot in at work for professors and even the high end Dell laptops don't feel as nice). Second, my 800 mhz G3 ibook is fast enough, quartz looks great and I can even run programs like Matlab with decent speed, so the G4s should be even nicer. Finally, AppleCare rocks and for $183 (to students) you can have a 3 year warranty. I had problems with my 800 mhz w/in the first year and they sent me a replacement 900 mhz one. Before my year is up I'm buying Applecare and if I have repeating problems with my current ibook I'll get another new one.
Just encrypt the network, even with something weak. Then set up an agreement that to join the network you must use the official client and put some legalese that would make it illegal to spy on other users and get personal info. Then when they want to get user info, they have to crack the network and BAM!, hit with the DMCA. If we have to live with this amazingly stupid law, we might as well use it as a weapon instead of letting people beat us with it.
Wouldnt you still just be able to change the boot order back in the BIOS, OS or not? I still don't see how having an OS on the drive would hinder the advanced user.
but the G5 looks amazing! Apple really did it right and didn't make it look cheap at all. Look at the top end Dell/Alienware/Gateway comptuers, they still look cheap. Amazing pictures and great link.
They are cutting off DHCP access to infected machines. In my department I have to go to these machines and give them a temp IP, patch them, and wait for the computing department to reenable them. I'm not sure how they tell if its infected or not, but this seems to be a workable solution. With student's PC's however, passing around CDs with the patch seems a much better solution.
I've been converting people to Mozilla too (Windows users don't seem to even see a negative difference between Firebird and IE). I show them how you don't get any more popups, the integrated Google search, tabs, etc. and they normally set it as default browser. I really think that Firebird has great potential to become THE browser for Windows because its easy to switch to from IE. The Preferences are also super easy and wouldn't confuse my grandma. Spread the word!
I've had similar problems with my iBook but completely opposite experiece with AppleCare. After about 6 months my iBook died, so I sent it in and they fixed it, only to have the backlight die a couple days later. Sent it back again and it worked fine, but now my CD burner was killing CDs. They said "ok, too many problems, we're giving you a replacement" and sent me a brand new one, with a fresh (1 yr) warranty. Then after about a week I noticed the screen was screwed up and they said they'd call it DOA and sent me another brand new one. I haven't had to pay a cent for shipping (including sending the bad ones back to them). I'm really disappointed in the quality control and reliability of the laptop, but AppleCare is awesome and I'm going to buy it before my year is up. If it keeps failing like this then I'll have a brand new (not old stock either, new model) laptop every 6 months or so!
I have a couple friends in wheelchairs and I always forget that they can't stand up. One of my roommates is and I constantly put stuff on the top shelf in the pantry just because I forget. My neighbor is in a chair too and she doesn't use any of her upper cabinets in the kitchen. The ability to stand up will open up tons of possibilities for people that need chairs and will greatly reduce the amount of modifications a house needs. Too bad its purely electric, most the people I know have straight mechanical chairs and would never use an electric. If they could make something that climbs stairs and stands up that also can be pushed like normal (I have ZERO idea how they would though) they could help many more.
The prices for a YDL machine are the same as one with OSX. Yellow dog just has a license to install and sell linux on their computers. The Navy don't need supported, they need something they can process images (or whatever else they use it for) on. G4s are excellent for this task. Also, Yellow Dog is Red Hat, but for PPC. If you've ever compared them, you'd see that even the installer is the same. Last time I checked Red Hat didn't make a PPC version.
is with a web-based interface. Say they set up a system where you log in with your browser and your student ID. Then a web-based player (that should be able to work in linux, windows, and mac) has a library of music for you to pick from. Let it save playlists and even let students access it from anywhere (unless there are too many restrictions). I can see this as potentially very cool (say you want to have an 80s party, for example, you can set up a playlist with a bunch of 80s songs that you might not have otherwise had), but I agree that it should NOT be forced upon people. I might pay for it, depending on what music is offered, but I know many who wouldn't (and also LOTS that would).
I was at my parents house for a couple weeks this summer and had my iBook. I noticed a Monkey Island disk (which had 1 and 2) in a stack near my parents PC. I remembered ScummVM, downloaded it, and played for hours and hours. I'm looking forward now to getting Sam and Max and many of the other classics. IMO those were the best games I've ever played, thank you for your hard work!
I went to CES this year and heard the (vastly overpriced) high end sound systems. One thing that struck me on one pair (Avantgarde Duo) was the dynamics. It was a simple recording with male vocals and guitar and every sound could be heard from quiet to loud. Obviously the recording must have been very dynamic and lacking the amount of compression that is used on most new recordings to make them louder. I cringe when I hear very compressed songs and get bored easily. Louder is not better! Dynamics are!
You should always plan on getting an extended warranty. I have an iBook thats less than a year old and had some hardware failures so they sent me a replacement (and upgraded, brand new retail box!). Also with the replacement comes a new 1 year warranty. Before my year is up I'm definitely going to get AppleCare. I've heard stories of over 2 year old powerbooks being replaced with brand new ones because of failure, not bad. Apple really does they customer service well and AppleCare is really good. Free overnight shipping on repairs too, they send you a box next day, you tear off the outer label and put your computer in, then have it picked up and sent to Apple next day. Then they fix it and send it back next day. That ~$200 or $300 will be worth it eventually (i.e. your first hardware failure).
--Ryan
and it's called a palm pilot! I used my Sony Clie to kill tons of valuable class time playing nearly all of the popcap.com games. My gf has a high res color Clie (T615s or something, $90 at Best Buy refurb) and the games look awesome on it. My point? For under $100 you can already have a sweet Palm OS based gaming device that does all that productivity stuff too...
I have a 900 mhz iBook and it never runs "hot." I really use it as a laptop sometimes and after a while the fan will come on but other than that it never comes close to burning me. Its only rated to 35 C on their website but I don't see how a hot tiBook would be any better, maybe you could call Apple. The iBooks are relatively inexpensive and very well made. My girlfriend has a Dell Inspiron and my iBook just feels so much more solidly built. The $1299 model can burn CDs and play DVDs (very well I might add, I did it on the plane a little while ago) and is also very portable (about the size of a piece of paper length and width). If you need a PC, I've heard the Centrinos are great but haven't used one myself. Good luck! --Ryan
$40 a lot??? I just finished recording a family friend and the amount he's spent on recording equipment (or if he had bought studio time) far eclipsed that amount. If your music isn't good enough to sell ~75 songs (about what it would take to break even) then you probably shouldn't bother. Also, that $40 buys you something: CDBaby doesn't just pocket it, they encode your album, send it to the company, and set it up for you. That sounds like a downright steal, even if they took 25% afterwards. Look at what most artists deal with when working with RIAA labels: unless they are enormously successful, they end up owing money to the record company. I think that at 9% (which calculated in an earlier post gives over 50% of the original sale to the artist) I'd feel very good about buying an entire album from a CDBaby artist. We need more labels like CDBaby and I honestly hope them the best of luck in destroying the business model of RIAA labels.
I've used 2 different DLink DI-614+ Router/AP's now and have had great luck. One has been there about a year and was rebooted twice and the other is about 2 motnhs old and hasn't needed a reboot yet. The range is pretty good and the transfer rate is OK. My wired connection is very fast and I get 10,000+ kb/s from computer to computer. They are very cheap (the one I just got was $50 + tax after rebate) and reliable.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all 3M iBook owners know about the site and lawsuit, so that cuts the number down considerably. Also there are owners like me that have had the failure, but everything was replaced in warranty and so have no reason to sue. Assuming that even a tenth of the people with the logic board problem even know that its widespread and know about blackcider is probably an overstatement.
I bought an iBook about a year ago and have had it replaced due to logic board problems. My roommate bought one at the same time and his died just about the same time as mine (6 mo). Apple replaced it though kindly and gave me a fresh new 1 year warranty to go with my replacement computer. They may have made a lemon with the ibook but if youre in warranty they will fix it. I see lots of people complaining that their out of warranty ibook is failing, but that really ISN'T Apple's responsibility unfortunately. For those of us that own these and probably will have problems later on, buy AppleCare to extend it to 3 years. Its $183 I think for students and it basically assures that your iBook will last for 2 years past the warranty, hell you might get a brand new one. Its sad that these things fail but with laptops, always buy the extended warranty. I'm on the list somewhere on the logic board problem petition but I'm not on the lawsuit one because what right do I have to get money from them when theyve fixed everything (and replaced my computer with the newer model that was out)? I think theyre going to have a tough time fighting Apple on this one.
Add me to the list that would snatch up a $100 1gb+ music player from Apple in a heartbeat. I definitely wanted an iPod, but: a) couldn't really afford one and b) wouldn't feel all that comfortable carrying around a $400 piece of electronics with me everywhere. I think you're right about the "post" thing and also a lot of people get money for xmas (I did), so they might be looking for something like this to buy.
most people in this thread are saying that the music from iTunes is cheap when normally we hear how its so much for DRM'ed files?
White Noise of Death (or WNOD for the hip)
I had been an x86 user for my whole life but got an ibook a little less than a year ago and I haven't looked back. I wouldn't consider buying a laptop from another company, unless there was some Windows app that you really needed. The ibook is the perfect laptop in my opinion (and now at $1100 its cheap). First, the 12" ibook is the size of a piece of paper, which makes it really easy to carry around if youre a student. Second, its durable and feels like it, unlike EVERY pc laptop I've tried (we get a lot in at work for professors and even the high end Dell laptops don't feel as nice). Second, my 800 mhz G3 ibook is fast enough, quartz looks great and I can even run programs like Matlab with decent speed, so the G4s should be even nicer. Finally, AppleCare rocks and for $183 (to students) you can have a 3 year warranty. I had problems with my 800 mhz w/in the first year and they sent me a replacement 900 mhz one. Before my year is up I'm buying Applecare and if I have repeating problems with my current ibook I'll get another new one.
Just encrypt the network, even with something weak. Then set up an agreement that to join the network you must use the official client and put some legalese that would make it illegal to spy on other users and get personal info. Then when they want to get user info, they have to crack the network and BAM!, hit with the DMCA. If we have to live with this amazingly stupid law, we might as well use it as a weapon instead of letting people beat us with it.
Wouldnt you still just be able to change the boot order back in the BIOS, OS or not? I still don't see how having an OS on the drive would hinder the advanced user.
4) Should just have Windows in it, users of the other OSs should know about boot order. :)
but the G5 looks amazing! Apple really did it right and didn't make it look cheap at all. Look at the top end Dell/Alienware/Gateway comptuers, they still look cheap. Amazing pictures and great link.
They are cutting off DHCP access to infected machines. In my department I have to go to these machines and give them a temp IP, patch them, and wait for the computing department to reenable them. I'm not sure how they tell if its infected or not, but this seems to be a workable solution. With student's PC's however, passing around CDs with the patch seems a much better solution.
I've been converting people to Mozilla too (Windows users don't seem to even see a negative difference between Firebird and IE). I show them how you don't get any more popups, the integrated Google search, tabs, etc. and they normally set it as default browser. I really think that Firebird has great potential to become THE browser for Windows because its easy to switch to from IE. The Preferences are also super easy and wouldn't confuse my grandma. Spread the word!
I've had similar problems with my iBook but completely opposite experiece with AppleCare. After about 6 months my iBook died, so I sent it in and they fixed it, only to have the backlight die a couple days later. Sent it back again and it worked fine, but now my CD burner was killing CDs. They said "ok, too many problems, we're giving you a replacement" and sent me a brand new one, with a fresh (1 yr) warranty. Then after about a week I noticed the screen was screwed up and they said they'd call it DOA and sent me another brand new one. I haven't had to pay a cent for shipping (including sending the bad ones back to them). I'm really disappointed in the quality control and reliability of the laptop, but AppleCare is awesome and I'm going to buy it before my year is up. If it keeps failing like this then I'll have a brand new (not old stock either, new model) laptop every 6 months or so!
I have a couple friends in wheelchairs and I always forget that they can't stand up. One of my roommates is and I constantly put stuff on the top shelf in the pantry just because I forget. My neighbor is in a chair too and she doesn't use any of her upper cabinets in the kitchen. The ability to stand up will open up tons of possibilities for people that need chairs and will greatly reduce the amount of modifications a house needs. Too bad its purely electric, most the people I know have straight mechanical chairs and would never use an electric. If they could make something that climbs stairs and stands up that also can be pushed like normal (I have ZERO idea how they would though) they could help many more.
The prices for a YDL machine are the same as one with OSX. Yellow dog just has a license to install and sell linux on their computers. The Navy don't need supported, they need something they can process images (or whatever else they use it for) on. G4s are excellent for this task. Also, Yellow Dog is Red Hat, but for PPC. If you've ever compared them, you'd see that even the installer is the same. Last time I checked Red Hat didn't make a PPC version.
is with a web-based interface. Say they set up a system where you log in with your browser and your student ID. Then a web-based player (that should be able to work in linux, windows, and mac) has a library of music for you to pick from. Let it save playlists and even let students access it from anywhere (unless there are too many restrictions). I can see this as potentially very cool (say you want to have an 80s party, for example, you can set up a playlist with a bunch of 80s songs that you might not have otherwise had), but I agree that it should NOT be forced upon people. I might pay for it, depending on what music is offered, but I know many who wouldn't (and also LOTS that would).
I was at my parents house for a couple weeks this summer and had my iBook. I noticed a Monkey Island disk (which had 1 and 2) in a stack near my parents PC. I remembered ScummVM, downloaded it, and played for hours and hours. I'm looking forward now to getting Sam and Max and many of the other classics. IMO those were the best games I've ever played, thank you for your hard work!
I went to CES this year and heard the (vastly overpriced) high end sound systems. One thing that struck me on one pair (Avantgarde Duo) was the dynamics. It was a simple recording with male vocals and guitar and every sound could be heard from quiet to loud. Obviously the recording must have been very dynamic and lacking the amount of compression that is used on most new recordings to make them louder. I cringe when I hear very compressed songs and get bored easily. Louder is not better! Dynamics are!
You should always plan on getting an extended warranty. I have an iBook thats less than a year old and had some hardware failures so they sent me a replacement (and upgraded, brand new retail box!). Also with the replacement comes a new 1 year warranty. Before my year is up I'm definitely going to get AppleCare. I've heard stories of over 2 year old powerbooks being replaced with brand new ones because of failure, not bad. Apple really does they customer service well and AppleCare is really good. Free overnight shipping on repairs too, they send you a box next day, you tear off the outer label and put your computer in, then have it picked up and sent to Apple next day. Then they fix it and send it back next day. That ~$200 or $300 will be worth it eventually (i.e. your first hardware failure). --Ryan
and it's called a palm pilot! I used my Sony Clie to kill tons of valuable class time playing nearly all of the popcap.com games. My gf has a high res color Clie (T615s or something, $90 at Best Buy refurb) and the games look awesome on it. My point? For under $100 you can already have a sweet Palm OS based gaming device that does all that productivity stuff too...
Thomas Distributing
I've heard good things about them from digital camera people.
They gotta pay off those expensive iGlasses somehow, right?
I have a 900 mhz iBook and it never runs "hot." I really use it as a laptop sometimes and after a while the fan will come on but other than that it never comes close to burning me. Its only rated to 35 C on their website but I don't see how a hot tiBook would be any better, maybe you could call Apple. The iBooks are relatively inexpensive and very well made. My girlfriend has a Dell Inspiron and my iBook just feels so much more solidly built. The $1299 model can burn CDs and play DVDs (very well I might add, I did it on the plane a little while ago) and is also very portable (about the size of a piece of paper length and width).
If you need a PC, I've heard the Centrinos are great but haven't used one myself. Good luck!
--Ryan
$40 a lot??? I just finished recording a family friend and the amount he's spent on recording equipment (or if he had bought studio time) far eclipsed that amount. If your music isn't good enough to sell ~75 songs (about what it would take to break even) then you probably shouldn't bother. Also, that $40 buys you something: CDBaby doesn't just pocket it, they encode your album, send it to the company, and set it up for you. That sounds like a downright steal, even if they took 25% afterwards. Look at what most artists deal with when working with RIAA labels: unless they are enormously successful, they end up owing money to the record company. I think that at 9% (which calculated in an earlier post gives over 50% of the original sale to the artist) I'd feel very good about buying an entire album from a CDBaby artist. We need more labels like CDBaby and I honestly hope them the best of luck in destroying the business model of RIAA labels.
I've used 2 different DLink DI-614+ Router/AP's now and have had great luck. One has been there about a year and was rebooted twice and the other is about 2 motnhs old and hasn't needed a reboot yet. The range is pretty good and the transfer rate is OK. My wired connection is very fast and I get 10,000+ kb/s from computer to computer. They are very cheap (the one I just got was $50 + tax after rebate) and reliable.