[Rabid Duck]

Does anyone know of an easy way to protect the built-in speaker in the new G4 Quicksilver models? We're looking to buy a few for our publications/photo lab at our high school, but the speaker won't last a month without adequate protection. Yet another great move by Apple...

[Herr Newton]

Originally posted by Rabid Duck:
<STRONG>Does anyone know of an easy way to protect the built-in speaker in the new G4 Quicksilver models? We're looking to buy a few for our publications/photo lab at our high school, but the speaker won't last a month without adequate protection. Yet another great move by Apple...</STRONG>

If you don't mind physically altering the cases, just go to any local store that deals with car audio and see if they have any 2" speaker grills. Most of these have four, screw-down clamps which hold the grill in place. If you get a grill with a finer mesh, it should adequately protect the speaker.

Or, if actually using the speaker isn't a concern, yank its lead from the motherboard and attach a piece of plexiglass over the speaker with silicon adhesive. (Or any adhesive that is safe to use on plastic---superglue would probably eat the case.) As long as you're doing that, do the students a favor and run a 3' cable extension from the headphone jack so they can bring their own headphones if they like, and not have to dink around on the back of the machine to plug them in. (Heck, yank the speaker and surface mount a headphone jack in the plexiglass!)

[seanyepez]

Why won't it last a month? Will students physically abuse their own eqipment?

Sometimes, the kids in the states don't appreciate technology for what it's worth, something I absolutely despise about this country.

How many Quicksilver Power Macs are you planning on buying? That solution will work if it's only for one of them, but I don't think it's scalable unless you want to enlist student help (which might defeat the purpose in itself).

[Brian McHale]

I can certainly understand why people are concerned about the Quicksilver speaker; it wouldn't take squat to poke a hole in it. I'm not worried about mine for two reasons: I don't have kids and I don't use the internal speaker (I have my headphone jack hooked to both a set of computer speakers for casual use and my home stereo for higher quality when needed).

My first thought when I read your post was: do kids in a publications/photo lab even need sound? If not, who cares if the speaker gets trashed?

Then it occurred to me you probably wouldn't be asking if you didn't need sound output. I kind of stared at the front of my computer trying to think how I would protect the speaker and the only thing that occurred to me was: foam rubber. Circular plugs of foam rubber could be inserted into the opening (and could even be glued in to provide a semi-permanent installation). I would think that this would provide protection from casual damage, though it probably wouldn't do much if someone intentionally tried to take the speaker out.

This would probably degrade the sound to some extent, but it should still be usable.

Good luck.