HI All,
The other day i borrowed a friends Powerbook G4 17" (10.5, 1.0ghz, 1gb) which he no longer uses as I wanted too see if i could live with OSX before buying an Air.
Its all going pretty well but i have one issue and one question.
The main issue is that there seems to be a problem with the battery/power which is unsurprising given the age of the machine i guess but I would like to get to the bottom of it and possibly solve. Here is what happens:
The laptop will fully chagre (green plug light) and the OS says the battery has finished charging. If i then unplug the power the battery shows full on status lights underneath and in the OS nearly 4hrs of power remaining.
The machine runs fine for a couple of hours then with 30% left it goes into sleep/standby and will not come out of that without me plugging in the power.
At that point the machine takes 2hrs to charge and we are pretty much back to the beginning of the loop.
Last night i left it off with full charge and no power connected and in the morning it showed 99% so it is holding a charge and today i ran on battery again and at 30% it went to sleep.
When i turned it over and hit the status button on the battery showed 1 flickering light and upon plugging in, 0% charge.
So, my question is... does this sound like a faulty battery or more like something within the machine itself? If its most likely the battery then i think i will grab a new one but dont want to waste the money if it isnt likely to solve.
My other question is about the USB. I am aware that this machine has two USB 1.1 ports and they are painfully slow but i saw on Ebay that it is possible to pick up a PCMCIA card which gives me two 2.0 slots (e.g. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....m=380060896865&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=025 ) does anyone know if there is a MAC recommended make/model which i should buy for this function?
Thanks all.
The other day i borrowed a friends Powerbook G4 17" (10.5, 1.0ghz, 1gb) which he no longer uses as I wanted too see if i could live with OSX before buying an Air.
Its all going pretty well but i have one issue and one question.
The main issue is that there seems to be a problem with the battery/power which is unsurprising given the age of the machine i guess but I would like to get to the bottom of it and possibly solve. Here is what happens:
The laptop will fully chagre (green plug light) and the OS says the battery has finished charging. If i then unplug the power the battery shows full on status lights underneath and in the OS nearly 4hrs of power remaining.
The machine runs fine for a couple of hours then with 30% left it goes into sleep/standby and will not come out of that without me plugging in the power.
At that point the machine takes 2hrs to charge and we are pretty much back to the beginning of the loop.
Last night i left it off with full charge and no power connected and in the morning it showed 99% so it is holding a charge and today i ran on battery again and at 30% it went to sleep.
When i turned it over and hit the status button on the battery showed 1 flickering light and upon plugging in, 0% charge.
So, my question is... does this sound like a faulty battery or more like something within the machine itself? If its most likely the battery then i think i will grab a new one but dont want to waste the money if it isnt likely to solve.
My other question is about the USB. I am aware that this machine has two USB 1.1 ports and they are painfully slow but i saw on Ebay that it is possible to pick up a PCMCIA card which gives me two 2.0 slots (e.g. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....m=380060896865&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=025 ) does anyone know if there is a MAC recommended make/model which i should buy for this function?
Thanks all.
