be aware that your hard disk, with it's current (maybe private) data on it, may never come back to you.
Sadly, I don't think Apple is very different from other computer manufacturers in customer service. Public trust in computer repair has fallen below auto repair, which was never high. The good news is that computers fail less often than they used to, but when they do, basically you're screwed.
Good news!
I've still got a year left on AppleCare so I took the computer into the local Apple Store. I was able to get a same-day appointment. It took about 45 minutes but they have me back up and running. They did an Archive and Install and I am now happily re-updating my system to 10.5.3.
I've still got a year left on AppleCare so I took the computer into the local Apple Store. I was able to get a same-day appointment. It took about 45 minutes but they have me back up and running. They did an Archive and Install and I am now happily re-updating my system to 10.5.3.
Thanks for the help, guys!
Glad to hear it was a simple fix. Meaning, not hardware.
This is a good example of why you should do occasional disk maintenance with a utility like Disk Warrior.
If Apple replaces the drive your old drive is not returned to you (in my experience).
Correct. It can be if you specifically request it and if it gets manager approval.
Note for warranty replacements you will likely NEVER get the original drive back, as Apple has to get reimbursed by the drive manufacturer for the bum part. For a 3+ year old drive this isn't the case, but standard policy is to not ship the dead drive back.
Guys im entering a competition which requires me to write a story (10k 1st prize !). I have word on my old PC but was wondering what programme i have already got (but dont know it) on my imac to do it as i like the keyboard better...im using leopard.
Guys im entering a competition which requires me to write a story (10k 1st prize !). I have word on my old PC but was wondering what programme i have already got (but dont know it) on my imac to do it as i like the keyboard better...im using leopard.
Or maybe there is a free one i can download. Tks
Personally, I'm fond of Google Docs, but there is also OpenOffice which is free.
Personally, I'm fond of Google Docs, but there is also OpenOffice which is free.
Open Office will look familiar to you, as its GUI is based on Word. Works fine. Did your machine come with iWork? There's a text processor in it called Pages, which will probably be adequate for simple documents.
Abiword is supposed to be good, but can't figure out how to download it? I gave up.
I hear great things about Scrivener, which is supposed to be ideal for book/screenplay writing, and its only $40. I tried it, liked it, but bought Word since my kids needed Word for school.
Doesn't OpenOffice require running it inside X11? I wanted my mom to have as simple a setup as possible so I set her up with NeoOffice.
Yes, that was my understanding as well. Seems Neo is more geared towards Mac OS X - i don't know much beyond that. All I know is I put NeoOffice on MrsIt's Powerbook not too long ago, and was very impressed. It's super light, easy, but familiar (and free ).
Familiar to someone who's worked on a Windows system. To me it's fugly.
Yeah yeah.
But seriously, is there a non-Microsoft word processor that can integrate with Mathtype and EndNote (de facto standards for scientific paper writing)? If it exists, I don't know any colleagues that use it.
Sigh, I upgraded my quad G5 to 10.5.3 a couple days after it came out. Ever since then it's been locking up more and more often. Before then it never did. Now I can't even boot the box, firmware throws up a 'no' logo in place of the apple logo. Nothing else changed, and when it is running there's no indication that anything is wrong with hardware... cooling seems to be fine, the temps are stable and not growing rapidly. I can't even boot in to firewire target mode. Going to have to haul the box up to the apple store this weekend and see what they can do. :cry
Yet another case where AppleCare saved my 4$$. Long story short, 3.5 hours in the SouthDale apple story at the genius bar trouble shooting and we finally tracked to down to processor 0 being borked. 2 seconds of serious work on it and it locked up tight. A couple days later and they called to say I could come up and get it. AppleCare covered the entire cost of repairs, I was just out two drives to the twin cities from here. (~350miles total) and a few hours of sitting around at the genius bar and otherwise wandering the store and mall.
One thing I re-learned and want to pass on to everyone... if you take a mac in for repairs and don't expect to be leaving with it the same day, especially if it's a long drive for you... TAKE THE ORIGINAL SHIPPING CONTAINER!!! I saved mine specifically for the case of needing to ship the box off for repairs, or moving with it, or selling it later... but did I take the 15 minutes to pull it down from the rafters and toss it in the car when I headed up? NO. idiotic move on my part there. They would have return shipped it back to me for $12. Note that this is a quad G5... the heaviest mac ever made. Most shippers would want 5x that to ship it.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Are there any good sites to look at to determine the value of an old mac, other than ebay? I am thinking about selling my G5 and Macbook and moving to a Macbook Pro, but I want to figure out what they are worth.
Here are the basic specs.
G5 dual 2.7ghz, 8gb ram, 250gb hd, superdrive.
Macbook, Core Duo 2.0ghz, 2gb ram, 60gb hd, superdrive.
Can drives be daisy chained out of order/connection type?
I am looking at some new drives, but they come with 2x800FW and 1x400FW, so could I go from my Macbook 400FW to the 400FW on the first drive, then out of the first drive via 800FW to the second drive's 800FW connection?
I found a partial solution, a 400 to 800 cable, but I am still curious if the drive can have a cable in via 400 and out via 800 or maybe even USB.
Can drives be daisy chained out of order/connection type?
I am looking at some new drives, but they come with 2x800FW and 1x400FW, so could I go from my Macbook 400FW to the 400FW on the first drive, then out of the first drive via 800FW to the second drive's 800FW connection?
I found a partial solution, a 400 to 800 cable, but I am still curious if the drive can have a cable in via 400 and out via 800 or maybe even USB.
FW is designed for daisy chaining, if the drive has more than one connector of the same type then odds are good you can daisychain through that bus. If they're not the same type (i.e. 1x400 + 1x800) then it's a crap shoot if the bridge board designers did it right to daisy chain. In my experience, about 2/3 to 3/4 of them get it right and you can diasy chain across speeds. In you case of course the limiting factor will be the fw400 link.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Anyone have any idea why my MBP won't start up in SafeBoot? I hold the shift key down after the chime, and it doesn't initiate SafeBoot.
I was trying to follow these instructions from macfixit.com for upgrading to 10.5.4:
Update procedure recommendation
General principles.
Leave all Apple-installed components where they are. Don't, for example, move Safari out of /Applications, or move your user Home folder.
In System Preferences > Software Update, make certain that "Download important updates in the background" is not checked. If your computer has multiple users, do this for every user. It might also be wise to uncheck "Check for updates"; one user, the administrator, should then be responsible for checking manually for updates from time to time. (To do so, choose Apple > Software Update.)
When an update is available in Software Update, do not press the Install button in the Software Update window. Instead, download any desired update packages individually and without actually performing the installation. Software Update allows you to do so, but this feature is not at all obvious, so here are instructions:
Make sure there is a checkmark at the left of all and only the packages you want to download.
Choose Update > Download Only. After performing the download(s), note the location, on your hard drive, of the downloaded material.
[Note: Alternatively, go to http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ and click the download link for the desired package. In the case of major system updates, this is the way to obtain the full "combo update", which is often better than the incremental update offered by Software Update.]
Restart into Safe mode, by holding down the Shift key from the moment you hear the startup "bong" to the moment the "spinning gear" appears. Expect this startup to take longer than usual. Don't be alarmed if the fans whir loudly during the "spinning gear" display. Eventually you will be presented with the Safe Boot login screen. Log in as the administrator.
Without launching any other applications, double-click one installer package and perform the installation. Do nothing else; just sit there and wait until the installation is complete.
Repeat step 3 after every installation. Finally, restart normally. This, too, may take longer than usual, and you may experience a "double-restart." Be patient!
Seriously, David, going through all that voodoo to install an update if you're not having problems is a waste of time.
Download the Combo updater and install it, and you're good to go. You will get a double reboot -- they all double reboot these days.
I figured, but I wanted to try out the voodoo. My main concern is that my lappy won't boot into SafeBoot no matter what I do. It just boots normally, as if the shift key weren't held down, and my SHIFT KEY works! <<<<
SafeBoot has some important uses and it concerns me that I can't access it. I saw that knowledgebase article, and it's not answering my question.
Comments
Sadly, I don't think Apple is very different from other computer manufacturers in customer service. Public trust in computer repair has fallen below auto repair, which was never high. The good news is that computers fail less often than they used to, but when they do, basically you're screwed.
If Apple replaces the drive your old drive is not returned to you (in my experience).
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I've still got a year left on AppleCare so I took the computer into the local Apple Store. I was able to get a same-day appointment. It took about 45 minutes but they have me back up and running. They did an Archive and Install and I am now happily re-updating my system to 10.5.3.
Thanks for the help, guys!
Glad to hear it was a simple fix. Meaning, not hardware.
This is a good example of why you should do occasional disk maintenance with a utility like Disk Warrior.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
1980 Apple III
1983 Apple IIe
abandoned to Windowsland
2004 PowerMac G5
2008 Mac Pro quad core desk top and Mac Book Pro
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Correct. It can be if you specifically request it and if it gets manager approval.
Note for warranty replacements you will likely NEVER get the original drive back, as Apple has to get reimbursed by the drive manufacturer for the bum part. For a 3+ year old drive this isn't the case, but standard policy is to not ship the dead drive back.
Or maybe there is a free one i can download. Tks
Personally, I'm fond of Google Docs, but there is also OpenOffice which is free.
Open Office will look familiar to you, as its GUI is based on Word. Works fine. Did your machine come with iWork? There's a text processor in it called Pages, which will probably be adequate for simple documents.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
The way I see it they break down like this:
And MS Office is $149.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Abiword is supposed to be good, but can't figure out how to download it? I gave up.
I hear great things about Scrivener, which is supposed to be ideal for book/screenplay writing, and its only $40. I tried it, liked it, but bought Word since my kids needed Word for school.
http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Also, Mellel is said to be very good as well: ($49)
http://www.redlers.com/index.html
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
Familiar to someone who's worked on a Windows system. To me it's fugly.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
But seriously, is there a non-Microsoft word processor that can integrate with Mathtype and EndNote (de facto standards for scientific paper writing)? If it exists, I don't know any colleagues that use it.
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
Yet another case where AppleCare saved my 4$$. Long story short, 3.5 hours in the SouthDale apple story at the genius bar trouble shooting and we finally tracked to down to processor 0 being borked. 2 seconds of serious work on it and it locked up tight. A couple days later and they called to say I could come up and get it. AppleCare covered the entire cost of repairs, I was just out two drives to the twin cities from here. (~350miles total) and a few hours of sitting around at the genius bar and otherwise wandering the store and mall.
One thing I re-learned and want to pass on to everyone... if you take a mac in for repairs and don't expect to be leaving with it the same day, especially if it's a long drive for you... TAKE THE ORIGINAL SHIPPING CONTAINER!!! I saved mine specifically for the case of needing to ship the box off for repairs, or moving with it, or selling it later... but did I take the 15 minutes to pull it down from the rafters and toss it in the car when I headed up? NO. idiotic move on my part there. They would have return shipped it back to me for $12. Note that this is a quad G5... the heaviest mac ever made. Most shippers would want 5x that to ship it.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Here are the basic specs.
G5 dual 2.7ghz, 8gb ram, 250gb hd, superdrive.
Macbook, Core Duo 2.0ghz, 2gb ram, 60gb hd, superdrive.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Gene
I am looking at some new drives, but they come with 2x800FW and 1x400FW, so could I go from my Macbook 400FW to the 400FW on the first drive, then out of the first drive via 800FW to the second drive's 800FW connection?
I found a partial solution, a 400 to 800 cable, but I am still curious if the drive can have a cable in via 400 and out via 800 or maybe even USB.
FW is designed for daisy chaining, if the drive has more than one connector of the same type then odds are good you can daisychain through that bus. If they're not the same type (i.e. 1x400 + 1x800) then it's a crap shoot if the bridge board designers did it right to daisy chain. In my experience, about 2/3 to 3/4 of them get it right and you can diasy chain across speeds. In you case of course the limiting factor will be the fw400 link.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
I was trying to follow these instructions from macfixit.com for upgrading to 10.5.4:
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455?viewlocale=en_US
Seriously, David, going through all that voodoo to install an update if you're not having problems is a waste of time.
Download the Combo updater and install it, and you're good to go. You will get a double reboot -- they all double reboot these days.
I figured, but I wanted to try out the voodoo. My main concern is that my lappy won't boot into SafeBoot no matter what I do. It just boots normally, as if the shift key weren't held down, and my SHIFT KEY works! <<<<
SafeBoot has some important uses and it concerns me that I can't access it. I saw that knowledgebase article, and it's not answering my question.
Could it be that you can't access SafeBoot if you've set up an Open Firmware password? <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ear.gif" border="0" alt="" >
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
You could easily test this theory by deleting the password.
There is a high possibility of this. Safe mode does disable all kinds of startup key actions.
So... when it arrives, what should I expect??
www.tednghiem.com