iBook upgrade

I still had 3 unused licenses of Leopard in my Family Pack (we had used 2, one for Kjersti and the other for me) and since the iBook had a bit better than the minimum requirements, I decided to try it. The main reason for this is that Firefox and some other software I wanted needed better than the Panther the iBook came with. So far so good, Firefox is up to date. I also upgraded to QuartzX11 and put on Inkscape and GIMP. I could not install iLife from the Panther disc with Leopard as the OS, it just couldn't even see the software. However, I was able to do it by taking the machine back to Panther intalling the bundled software and then upgrading to Leopard.

Jan had fun playing with Garageband and seems to prefer the ibook to the Compac which is running Ubuntu.

MacBook upgrade

A year ago I increased the memory in my old MacBook to 2 GB and I've been very happy but I am starting to run out of room so it's time to upgrade the drive. I'm going to a 320GB and I want to try using Virtual Box instead of partitioning to run Windows. I'm a bit concerned about activation but I do know the file I need so hopefully all will go well.

Compaq upgrade

Well, my husband finally got tired of Windows and was willing to try out Ubuntu, he's not 100% happy but he has adjusted pretty well. I considered a dual boot but he only has a 30 GB drive and I wasn't sure if I could fit on both and have room to run anything.

With nearly every computer job I've done with only online support, there is some bit of info that is missing. This one was no different. I had downloaded the latest build and all seemed to be going great until he tried watching YouTube. Didn't work. I searched online and found a ton of suggestions, again none worked. So I got the brilliant idea of checking for updates, after about 113 updates (to the latest build mind you) later YouTube plays perfectly. Now why couldn't anyone just say that online? Why all the rigamarol? It's a simple step and not even hard to do, just time consuming.

The machine still has issues like a bad battery but runs fine on the power cord. It also has the issues with the touch pad (okay the left click button) but the laptop is 7 years old and is on the 3rd owner.

Of course I am going to let him use the iBook too so he will have more computers than anyone else in the family, even if he is the least tech savvy.

Another iBook repair

2 years ago I wrote about repairing a 2004 iBook with a bad hard drive. My lovely daughter wasn't quite as careful as she could be and in about a year she had the same problem. After a lot of questions it turned out the computer had been knocked off the bed to the floor while playing a movie, yeah just lovely.

At first I didn't want to do that job again and talked her into getting an Asus eeePC with a solid state drive that is the ultimate in impact resistance. Only problem is there is no optical drive but she is happy with it anyway and loves it's light weight and small size when going to school. The keyboard is fine for her tiny hands so the only complaint I was aware of wouldn't be a problem for her. She loves Ubuntu and has been happy for the last year. Though her husband is in need now too.

But that old iBook kept nagging at me and I finally broke down and invested in yet another drive. I am glad that I made notes before, as no place online tells you to reboot after initializing a new drive. Thankfully I had that tiny bit of info in my notes from the 2007 repair. Now I am awaiting a fresh install of Mac OS 10.3. I doubt it will run Leopard very well and Snow Leopard is out of the question.

eMac software

I am also looking at installing several freeware on the eMacs that will not be in the Studio. The list is as follows:

iAntivirus (free version)
NeoOffice
GIMP
Inkscape and Wacom Drivers
Scratch
Possibly also Alice
Audacity (and LAME)
TuxPaint
KomPoZer
HandBrake

I am also looking at 2 astronomy software, Stellarium and Celestia. If any of my readers is aware of issues with either or why I might want one over the other feel free to give me a comment.

eMac Upgrades

We have a Multimedia Studio with of the last run of eMacs for Music Creation. These stations have become the most popular in the Studio so it was decided to purchase a new iMac to replace one and upgrade the other so we could have the same software on both.

I began by upgrading the memory to 1 GB from the original 512MB. This brought us up to a workable amount of RAM and everything else was compatible with Leopard. After a frustrating day trying to do software updates, I finally got past that and began the install of iLife. The only real glitch then was that the installed video card was not compatible with iMovie. Thankfully that was not a primary need for these stations. Because one of our staff heard of issues with iDVD we are also holding off on that upgrade as well.

We additionally have iWork 09 and will probably install it on at least 3 of the eMacs and perhaps one iMac (we have another as well.

MacPro corrupted RAID

Probably due to using a RAID as a boot drive. The suggested fix was to add a third drive to hold the software and just use the RAID as a Scratch Disk for Final Cut Pro. An added extra 2 GB of Memory didn't hurt either.