02-19-2005, 12:23 PM

Okay, so my iBook came in a few days ago, and I'm loving it! I cannot imagine how I would live without it now. I just have a few questions.

My battery sticks out about 1 MM from the case, is this normal with iBooks? It doesn't affect the usage of it, but it's a cosmetic issue thats bugging me.

Right now I'm using the stock 256MB of RAM. It is sluggish with it and I plan to upgrade. I would like to go for a gig chip and max this out, however I am concerned that it will significantly reduce the battery life of the unit? If this is the case I'll go with a 512MB chip and live with it.

What do some of the shortcut symbols mean? Namely the highlighted odd ones in the attached screenshot.

Are the speakers inside of the iBook supposed to be really bad? The soundcard doesn't seem to be that bad, but when I use the internal speakers, I feel like they can barely put out any sound. In all but the quietest environments, and even then, the sound levels are low. I understand that it is a laptop, and I shouldn't expect anything awesome, but even with mild background noise I have to bring my ear near them to hear sound.

One last question. When I'm SSHed into another machine from terminal, I can't seem to get 'alt' to be simulated properly on the remote machine. Does anyone have any suggestions for this?

Thanks in advance, everyone.

02-19-2005, 01:29 PM

Im still a noob with my ibook, but i can tell you that my battery also sticks out alittle. Yes it is very annoying, but i cant really see anyway to fix it.

hope someone else can help your other questions.

dave

02-19-2005, 01:43 PM

Originally Posted by bhanson

Right now I'm using the stock 256MB of RAM. It is sluggish with it and I plan to upgrade. I would like to go for a gig chip and max this out, however I am concerned that it will significantly reduce the battery life of the unit? If this is the case I'll go with a 512MB chip and live with it.

I don't see why it would decrease the battery life of your iBook. If anything, it might increase the battery life because your iBook won't be struggling trying to process information with only 256MB of RAM

02-19-2005, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by bhanson

Okay, so my iBook came in a few days ago, and I'm loving it! I cannot imagine how I would live without it now. I just have a few questions.

My battery sticks out about 1 CM from the case, is this normal with iBooks? It doesn't affect the usage of it, but it's a cosmetic issue thats bugging me.

Right now I'm using the stock 256MB of RAM. It is sluggish with it and I plan to upgrade. I would like to go for a gig chip and max this out, however I am concerned that it will significantly reduce the battery life of the unit? If this is the case I'll go with a 512MB chip and live with it.


Are the speakers inside of the iBook supposed to be really bad? The soundcard doesn't seem to be that bad, but when I use the internal speakers, I feel like they can barely put out any sound. In all but the quietest environments, and even then, the sound levels are low. I understand that it is a laptop, and I shouldn't expect anything awesome, but even with mild background noise I have to bring my ear near them to hear sound.


Thanks in advance, everyone.

My battery doesn't stick out. I guess just some books have this problem. I maxed out my memory and this machine is incredible now. It probably does improve battery life, as mentioned before, because it doesn't have to work 5 times as hard to run the same programs. Plus you can run more programs at the same time when it's maxed out. GOT TO WWW.ARCHMEMORY.COM because I got my 1GB stick for $230 no tax and free shipping. I hear about CRUCIAL.com but the prices weren't that great to me. My memory from Arch works great. And YES the speakers are awful and the only remedy is headphones or if you want to hear it in the open invest in a Sub.

Mac OS is where it's at! :robot: Windows is tur-mun-nated

02-19-2005, 04:19 PM

cant figure out some of those shortcuts either. if its sticking out 1cm you have a problem. but its not.probably a mm??

02-19-2005, 05:00 PM

Hah, what a mistake, yes, it sticks out about 1-1.5 MM, not CM.

Interesting point about the RAM, I figured adding more hardware to it would increase the power consumption, I guess I should think outside the box.

Thanks so far guys, any other comments?

02-19-2005, 05:05 PM

newegg.com has Kingmax 1GB modules for about $180. If I had known when I bought my book at CompUSA I wouldn't have gotten my 512 MB for $110 less $30 rebate. I have been monitoring memory usage and I have never "maxed-out" my 768 MB yet. You definitely need more than 256--Apple should be punished for selling OSX computers with less than 512MB standard. In fact, they are shooting themselves in the foot because people who don't upgrade will think their computer is slow compared to a PC.

02-19-2005, 05:16 PM

I know the shortcut symbols, the first one is your control key ⌃, the second one is your alt or option key ⌥, the third one is your command key ⌘, and the last one is your tilde key ~ pronounced (till-duh), it's located right below your escape key ⎋.

02-20-2005, 05:02 PM

Does any one know how I go about either wiping the hard drive or reformatting the ibook. I've totally messed it up!

02-20-2005, 05:19 PM

Originally Posted by Bazuzu

Does any one know how I go about either wiping the hard drive or reformatting the ibook. I've totally messed it up!

Put in your OS X restore disc 1 that came with the computer. Restart the computer and hold down C as soon as the computer starts to boot. This will boot from the disc and you can do a Erase and Install to get rid of everything