Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

redheadfred · Mar 16, 2005, 11:14 PM

Hey all, I just (today) got my brothers old 800mhz powerbook. It's really beat up, but still gets the job done. So far i'm loving OSX, as well as having a laptop. Depending on how well these next few weeks go, I might have to buy a new powerbook when tiger comes out (which looks awesome).

I've been lurking for a while and decided to wait to post until I actually had an Apple. I saw how you check your battery capacity, and mine sucks apparently. It's like 729 when it should be around 4000. Is there any place to get an old powerbook battery easily? I went to the apple store and they didn't have one.

Thanks guys, looks like a great place here!

-Dave

hldan · Mar 16, 2005, 11:48 PM

Hi, welcome to the Mac community. If an old and beat up Powerbook with OSX will make you happy then the latest and greatest will blow your mind. Good idea to wait for Tiger before your new Mac purchase so in the mean time here is a link to one of the best web sights to get Mac accessories. It's called Other World Computing and they sell batteries and memory for older Mac computers.
Have fun.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/powerbook/batteries/

redheadfred · Mar 17, 2005, 12:03 AM

awesome, thanks for the link! Yeah, I'm sure this thing would seem slow to some people, but I still have my windows desktop for intensive stuff (counterstrike...). At least my bro put 1GB of RAM in the thing. Will I be able to transfer a stick of 512 to a new powerbook, or will I have to get new RAM?

Thanks again.

-Dave

iREZ · Mar 17, 2005, 12:25 AM

800mhz and 1gb of RAM is no slouch. You got a pretty good PB there that would wipe the floor with some of the 'books that people are using on these forums. Welcome to Mac and enjoi your stay.

redheadfred · Mar 17, 2005, 01:42 PM

good to hear that it's not a slouch. I wasn't too worried considering the kind of work my brother does, but 800mhz just sounds so slow!

So, will I be able to transfer some ram to a newer powerbook or no? that'd be nice to save some money...

Voch · Mar 17, 2005, 01:56 PM

Those of us who are still fairly happy at 667Mhz salute you.

Voch

iREZ · Mar 17, 2005, 02:20 PM

Nope...RAM types aren't interchangeable with any of the Alu PB's, neither is the Airport card. You could swap HD's but the new Alu's come with way more HD space than any Ti did and I'm pretty certain your Bro didn't upgrade the drive with a 100GB drive so that point is moot. You might be able to interchange the optical drive, but again unless your Bro has a Superdrive and you don't wanna pay for the superdrive option (1x your Ti, 8x new Alu) then you could swap them, but again to keep your Applecare in tact you'd have to have a pro install it and they charge a fortune, so again you'd be best off with the stock Superdrive. Just use the machine to the fulliest and when the upgrade bug gets ya, then think about all this stuff.

redheadfred · Mar 17, 2005, 02:42 PM

thanks Voch

drat, guess I'll just have to go for the whole deal when i decide to upgrade. thanks for the info tho iREZ.