I ordered a copy of iLife 08 (Family Pack) from the Australian Apple Store late on Wednesday and it arrived early on Friday morning. Maybe I am new to the whole web ordering thing but I think that is sensational service.
We will be using iLife primarily for iPhoto – not much else will run happily on our G4 and earlier Macs.
Migrated Kylie from her Sage iMac (450MHz G3) to her “new” eMac (1.25GHz G4) last night. All I need to do is install iLife (which should arrive tomorrow from Apple). The big advantage is the USB2.0 ports on the eMac – allowing her to read camera memory cards and use her iPod a little more effectively.
As a result of the upgrade I moved the RAM (a single 512MB stick) from the iMac to my dual-G4 500MHz PowerMac, giving it a total of 1GB of RAM! This is my first home computer to reach the magical 1GB mark 🙂
I will be keeping the iMac – it is too nice a machine to get rid of.
Edit: Yes, this means that Kylie’s Mac is the fastest in the household and the only one running Mac OS 10.5. And I am OK with that…
In an effort to be independent from whatever ISP I happen to be using, my website is now hosted on the Google Sites servers. Here is the URL. I guess I am now tied to Google (what with email, Blogger and now Google Sites). At least Flickr is separate…
The old Optus webpage will be removed and redirect to this one shortly.
Firstly, why replace a working solution for people on site with one that only works for a very limited number of sites (certainly not out main client sites)? Secondly, is there any rational use for Windows Domains? *
* I know the reasons that domains are used, they just seem to be the main cause of grief for me at the moment.
I have finally decided it is time to upgrade my 12″ G4 PowerBook (1GHz).
First up I am replacing the non-functioning combo optical drive with one from eBay which works. I have a FireWire external DVD-RW drive so I don’t see the point in spending up big on a SuperDrive (I don’t burn DVDs away from the office, or very often at all actually).
I am then upgrading the slightly full 40GB HDD (1.5GB free) with a 160GB one. Having a camera that can take 5MB digital photographs can chew up disk space quickly.
I have previously upgraded the RAM from 256MB to 768MB and added an Airport card.
Finally I am upgrading to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). All of this will probably take a few hours to do but I should end up with a very usable Mac as a result. I just can’t justify spending the cash on a new one.
I recently purchased a Newton MessagePad 2000 (upgraded to 2100 specifications). It came with:
The battery, wallet and stylus are being used with my Newton MessagePad 2100 at the moment. Once I get the Stowaway keyboard driver working that will travel with me also.
I picked up my fourth PowerBook 100 yesterday – a working unit (I haven’t confirmed this yet) with an external floppy drive. No power supply but I have a few of these now. Hopefully it will have a working hard drive and more than 4MB of RAM (I can hope).
With enough time I intend to build as many working examples as I can. The other three have power-up issues (although at various times ALL have worked).
For those wondering, “Derringer” was one of the alleged code names for the PowerBook 100 in production (see this photo). Derringer/Deringer is also the last name of a gentleman who made small firearms. Given that the PowerBook 100 was Apple’s second attempt and first real success at a laptop/notebook computer (the Portable being barely that), I can see the link.
Edit: Sadly, it doesn’t boot (why am I not surprised?). It does have an Apple 20MB 2.5″ Connor SCSI drive that may work though. As far as RAM goes it looks like 4MB (again, still searching for the elusive 6MB upgrade card).
I just purchased a Belkin Flip (a two computer KVM setup). It works as advertised and currently shares my monitor, keyboard and mouse between my Mac Mini and my Power Mac G4 500MHz DP. I am impressed with the quality of most of the cables. My only gripe is the paddle that allows you to switch between inputs is a little flimsy (and the cable is very thin). For the price, however, it is excellent value.
An original Apple Airport Base Station (the “graphite” one). This was easy to reset (to clear the existing configuration and password) and set up. I have it configured in bridge mode, basically extending my wired Ethernet network. I’m not really planning on using it much (all my computers are in one room and most don’t have wireless) but it is a cool piece of hardware nonetheless.
This reminds me that I need to update the computer collection page.
(PS: if you understood the title of my previous post you qualify as a nerd).
Just scored a new Power Mac – a dual 500MHz G4. The machine currently has a 40GB HDD and 512MB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.4. For some reason I have always wanted a dual CPU Macintosh (the earlier 604 based models always seemed to be too expensive or rare). Thanks to David for this one – much appreciated. To top it off, it has on-board gigabit ethernet (although I have nothing else that has this, rendering it cool but redundant at the moment).
I am not 100% sure of what I will use this computer for, but I think it will fill the role of home server nicely. I have already installed my USB 2.0 PCI card in it (allowing it to access the 160GB USB 2.0 HDD I have already). I have also fitted a PCI SCSI card as I have a few 18GB SCSI drives lying around that it could use.