Apr 06

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O dear, this is a tragic topic. Nevertheless, I just installed Windows XP on my Intel Macintosh and it was easy! Windows XP set me back $115, but innotek VirtualBox, the program that let me run windows, was free. It’s pretty fast – it takes about 20 seconds to start Windows (that’s faster than my OSX boots!) and about 6 seconds to turn it off. Continue reading »

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Mar 26

This is the results of a survey I conducted over a year to see what different models of the G4 ibook are affected by the logicboard fault.

In this article I described the fix for the G4 motherboard fault, but it seems from the comments that more models are affected than what I described there.

SYMPTOMS:

  • After being on for a few minutes, your ibook gets a blank black screen, the fan turns on, and the computer freezes.
  • You can’t do anything at all except power down the computer by holding the power button.
  • You restart and it doesn’t boot up.
  • You squeeze the bottom of the computer tightly together just to the left of the trackpad, and it boots up.
  • It tends to boot up when it is cold, but then stops working when it warms up.

Still unsure? Read more about the symptoms here and here.

Here are the results of a survey regarding the affected models:

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Feb 19

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This hint is not strictly Macintosh, but it’s so good I have to write it up. Did you know you can get what they call a Continuous inking system (CIS) for most big name inkjet printers? It continually feeds the ink into the printer so you don’t have to change the cartridges! You can see the big containers of ink in the photo above – they sit next to the printer.
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Feb 12

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If you’ve got an Aluminium Powerbook, they are a great machine, my personal favourite laptop, but after a few years the hinge can get a little loose. Thankfully this is not like the old Titanium powerbooks where the hinge was broken, it is just a matter of a few screws that need to be tightened! Here’s how to do it.
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Nov 09

I’ve been having a problem with mail – I can’t do a search on ‘entire message’. It is greyed out. There are all kinds of ‘fixes’ available on the internet, but most of them didn’t work. Finally I fixed it and here’s a summary of the most useful advice, try it in this order:

1. Have a look in ~/Library/Spotlight and make sure there are no plugins that might be causing problems. For example, I had an old Mailtags Plugin that was 2 years old, so I deleted it.

2. Make sure you haven’t excluded your mail folder in the spotlight privacy tab (spotlight preferences)

3. Reset the entire spotlight database by opening a terminal window and typing 

sudo mdutil -E -i on /Volumes/*

(It will ask for your password)

4. Open Mail and click on Mailboxes:Rebuild.

That resets spotlight and mailboxes, which I think just about covers all options.

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