[ninjarico]

Hi all I've been reading these forums for a while. Primarily the powerbook/ibook sections and I think I've decided on an iBook (pending how the LCD looks in the 12" model). I do have a few questions before I become more solid in my decision. It sounds like the memory upgrade is a really simple operation (I've built computers for several years now and done other electrical work) So in an effort to save money I'd like to just buy some memory (512) and add it to the base 256. Now the Hard Drive is my second concern. One post stated that from the factory about 18 gigs are used for software. Would I be able to use any HDD in a firewire enclosure for an iBook? Obviously it would be cheaper to purchase a large drive and cage for it to use through firewire as opposed to optioning a larger drive in the book. How does OSX manage multiple drives as far as paritioning/formatting is concerned? I think that's all for now, thanks for checking out the post! Also I will probably be using the laptop to do some web/graphic design and basic operation. I travel quite a bit so I didn't want to chance it with a PB. Thanks!

[the_glassman]

It's easy to install the memory yourself, if you have dealt with installing memory before it's no different. If you BTO (build to order) an iBook at the Apple store, their prices are decent for HD upgrades. You can however use a USB/Firewire hard drive. You can partition it anyway you please. You can even start up off the external disk if you so require. You're going to love it!

[agaul]

I just purchased a stock 12" 1.2G$ iBook and I can tell you it's great. The LCD is very nice, but you need to recalibrate it. Looks bad from the get go, but after a calibration the colors are much better. As for hard drive space, I have the 30 gb too, but it dosnt come that jam packed as you've mentioned. I think to start it was about 10gb full, leaving 17gb empty. However, by erasing some things I was starting off with only 8.5gb used about. I did this by first erasing all the other languages except English and French (freed about 800mb), erasing a few programs that I have no use for such as the World Encyclodpedia (over 1gb), both games (about 140mb). Since the 12" has no superdrive, you could also erase iDVD (another 1gb), although I kept it because I will build DVD projects on this computer to burn on another machine.

Installing memory is easy, although my keyboard was a bit stiff and slightly tough to remove. Also, make sure you replug the airport card back in properly, I didnt do this at first and got hardly any reception until I realized my mistake. You really have to plug in the cable to the antenna hard.

Anyways, an excellent machine and I'm very happy with it so far.

Amazing battery life, over 4hours with screen set to half brightness and just surfing web through airport and listenning to music with earphones.

[troymurray]

Originally posted by agaul:
but you need to recalibrate it

How do you do that? How did you also remove the other languages off the system? Would it be advantagous to just format and re-install the system from the get go?

[Luca Rescigno]

Apple's stock color profile makes the iBook's screen look really washed out. It's not a very good screen to begin with, but it'll look a lot better if you go into System Preferences, go to the Displays pane, and use the Color tab to adjust the profile. You can switch it over to the sRGB profile, which looks a lot better, or you can do your own calibration. You can also use a shareware calibrator like SuperCal, which is a lot more detailed.

Regarding the hard drive - as agaul said, it's not THAT full. About 8 GB used up out of the box seems about right. OS X itself takes something like 2 GB to install, and after you add all the programs included with it, it'll consume a lot more. You can certainly get an external hard drive, but it might be more convenient to just use a larger internal one. OS X doesn't always give you perfect flexibility with your hard drive space - for instance, it seems to insist on putting your iTunes music library on the boot drive, or perhaps movie projects in your boot drive as well. But you should be able to work around it and store things wherever you want.

[d4nth3m4n]

Originally posted by troymurray:
How do you do that? How did you also remove the other languages off the system?

delocalizer

and it's never a bad idea to start over, but i haven't bought a computer since they stopped shipping with the os install cds (i think it's just a "restore" suite now, check me on that) so i'm not 100% sure it's possible to start from scratch, more like 98%

either way, there is a lot to discard and you will be more than happy with the purchase.

aside: my sister has a 10gb hd with full panther and has about 5gb free right now, you can make this pretty small.

[agaul]

Yes I used delocalizer too. Works great.

I tried to start from scratch, but with the restore dvd i wassn't able to customize it. If anyone knows a way I'd like to know. I also wanted to ditch the printer drivers I dont needs to free up more space but oh well, i'll live with it for now.

For more space, I'll probably buy an external dvdwriter since they ar epretty cheap and use patchburn to get everyhting working with iapps.

Anyways, like i said iBook is awesome. I just need to dish out for 512 or 1gb of ram, but I have yet to find a good place in Canada or that delivers to canada for not too expensive

[troymurray]

Originally posted by agaul:
I just need to dish out for 512 or 1gb of ram

I wonder if there is that big of a difference on an iBook between 768MB or 1.2GB of RAM

[Luca Rescigno]

Probably not... the iBook is not exactly a monster of a machine, so going to 1.25 GB probably won't really help a lot.

[agaul]

Originally posted by troymurray:
I wonder if there is that big of a difference on an iBook between 768MB or 1.2GB of RAM

I was wondering the same thing. Though I'll probably go with the 512 since it's cheaper and the 1gb more is not likely to make a huge difference, IMHO anyways