Every Apple owner writes to say "hello"
I’ve got kind of a funny story this week... some of you may recall that I told the story of my purchase of a gleaming new Apple Ibook in last week’s column. Well, that column was picked up by MacDailyNews, which suggested that every Mac reader send me a note welcoming me to the Apple fold.Nice sentiment but I wasn’t aware of this welcoming gesture when I was sitting in my computer repair shop and decided to check my e-mail (using a Windows machine, naturally) and received so many emails that Outlook Express choked on its own lunch and died a horrible, flaming death.
So thanks for the nice notes, even if I have to FTP in and manually retrieve them one by one someday.
I am enjoying my Ibook and am undoing my years of Windows programming. I have found most of my applications, even.
One of the first things I did was install a 1 gigabyte memory chip from Crucial.com, which triples the installed memory of the Ibook. I would not say this would be required for most applications because the Ibook is plenty peppy out of the box but I plan on using the Ibook for a couple of memory intensive applications going forward.
For $159, the 1 GB chip improved the performance of the Ibook noticeably. In particular, Microsoft Office applications and Adobe Photoshop applications were much faster; the latter was 60 percent faster opening a 4 MB photo.
Installing this is a do-it-yourself affair if you have a couple of small screwdrivers; you take out the Ibook battery from the bottom of the case then remove the keyboard by twisting the little nut between the F5 and F6 keys and moving the latches next to F1 and F11.
Remove the four screws holding the metal plate down, carefully insert the memory stick until it snaps into place, then reverse the steps. That’s all there is to it.
If you don’t need a full gig, Crucial.com will sell you 512MB for $69. Just make sure you order PC2700 memory for the Ibook; the manual that comes with the new Ibook has a misprint. (The memory selector on the Crucial Web site is correct.)
For details hit www.crucial.com
As for protecting the thing, so far I am using a Glove (a neoprene protective case) from RadTech. It is form-fitting, soft and has a strong zipper. Then I can put the Ibook in a regular briefcase and not scratch the heck out of the thing.
It’s $29.95 and comes in any color you want as long as it’s black. You can see the details of this at RadTech (www.radtech.us)
Some of you may have other suggestions for backpack cases... I’d love to hear them assuming you don’t all write at once.
I also am experimenting with Virtual PC 7, which allows one to run Windows XP or 2000 on the Mac... I just got it installed and patched to the latest version and have successfully installed XP Pro. I do confess it’s pretty odd to see the XP desktop on the lovely Apple hardware. (And, a second confession, when you compare the two desktops, the Apple desktop is elegant and refined and the Windows XP desktop is pretty clunky looking.
Next step is installation of Microsoft Office but I have to wonder if I need it given Appleworks, which I have not had time to fully examine yet. I am guessing it is along the lines of Microsoft Works, which I quickly outgrew but you never know.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Want to see some cool icons, images, desktops, themes and more? Head to Pixel Girl Presents (www.pixelgirlpresents.com) for some great stuff for XP and OSX.
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His email address is jim@cyberdads.com
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