[allap]

Make sure you aren't just buying it for the novelty of a laptop cuz it wears off fast and you find yourself with a slow desktop with a tiny screen for 3000$ CAN (what mine cost me in september).

Also if you plan on doing any filesharing as in p2p, your going to either spend alot of time in Kazaa over VPC (which by the way is incredibly slow on an ibook) or using the various B grade p2p apps such as Aquisition (gnutella = shitty) Neo (almost usable), Carracho (sorry i don't have 20GB of stuff to share) and Direct Connect (great concept but its too damn unstable).

What can i say, i'm thoroughly dissapointed with my purchase, even as i type this post, the cursor lags behind making writing any real document a pain. Come on Apple, i spend 3000$ on this machine and i can't even type up a simple word document without waiting for the cursor to catch up?


It's not all bad though, at least OSX is stable, then again Windows XP is relatively stable as well, and i could have bought an amazing desktop for the 3000$ i spend on this pretty little machine. Bottom line is, before you purchase a new mac, make sure you investigate all your options or else you'll end up a miserable wretch like me

BTW, anyone wanna buy a good as new 700Mhz, 348mb RAM, 20GB, 12.1" ibook?

[Peter]

no because you are wrong ... sorry, my 700Mhz iBook with 128Mb RAM is fast as hell. You dont go out and buy a iBook if you want lighteningly fast Photoshop or create pro. movies in Final Cut Pro. You buy an iBook because its small, neat, well made, fast enough for day to day usage, perfect student machine, runs OS X well and most importantly it is an ... APPLE!!!!!
My 128Mb types without lag so I dunno what you are on, or perhaps you are one of the users who thinks its important to have about 20 programs running all at once (iTunes, iPhoto, Chimera, Mozilla, iChat, iCal, Appleworks, DVD Player, Word, Excel ... )

Also if you plan on doing any filesharing as in p2p, your going to either spend alot of time in Kazaa over VPC (which by the way is incredibly slow on an ibook) or using the various B grade p2p apps such as Aquisition (gnutella = shitty) Neo (almost usable), Carracho (sorry i don't have 20GB of stuff to share) and Direct Connect (great concept but its too damn unstable).

thats OS X not iBook, I use limewire and its brilliant.

[Gatorzx2]

Hmmm, I consider my iBook that I bought back in July one of my greatest purchases ever. Couldn't be happier.....

[D'Espice]

Don't feed the trolls... if you don't like your iBook then sell it and get a PC laptop if that's what makes you happy

[iDaver]

Originally posted by allap:


What can i say, i'm thoroughly dissapointed with my purchase, even as i type this post, the cursor lags behind making writing any real document a pain. Come on Apple, i spend 3000$ on this machine and i can't even type up a simple word document without waiting for the cursor to catch up?

Sorry to hear you're so dissatisfied. There must be some kind of software problem with your machine because I've never seen the kind of keyboard/cursor lag you describe on my iBook 600.

[ravenfan]

allap- I suspect that this is a trolling post and not some relevant opinion. My main 'puter is an AMD 1gig Athlon, Radeon 64DDR VIVO, 512SDRAM, Soundblaster live... and Windows XP Pro. Do I expect that the iceBook 800 combo will blow it away?

Nope.

Will I get rid of said Winders machine now that I have the iceBook?

Nope. I personally like Win XP. It's the best thing Billy has ever put out.

Am I glad that I'm now OS X compatible? That I can watch DVDs anywhere I want, and I can burn CD's of programs and/or music any time of day that makes me happy?

Hell yeah

[allap]

is there some sort of "defrag" or any other optimization programs i can run for osx?

also, off topic, i dragged an application installer on to the desktop from a disk image, but now i can't remove it because it is locked. I've tried to unlock it from within the get info dialog without sucess. What should i do?

[pat++]

Originally posted by allap:
is there some sort of "defrag" or any other optimization programs i can run for osx?

also, off topic, i dragged an application installer on to the desktop from a disk image, but now i can't remove it because it is locked. I've tried to unlock it from within the get info dialog without sucess. What should i do?

Open Terminal, type the following command (do not press return at the end)

sudo rm -rf<space>

(where <space> is a space character)

then drag&drop the file you want to delete on the terminal window,
you should end up with something like :

sudo rm -rf name_of_the_file

Then hit the RETURN key and enter your password...

[Dex13]

Yeah i would also like to know if thier is some sort of defrag. Also would a clean install of Jaguar (finally got it) be better for my imac? Besidesi don't use 9 anymore.

[Mac_Nacho]

Try MacJanitor. I don't want to go through technicalities but it does some optimisation.
cheers

[allap]

ravenfan, i don't expect my ibook to blow away a 1gig athlon, but my ibook seems noticibly slower than my old 700mhz celron i bought a few years back...what's the deal? And no, my intent was not to "feed the trolls".

Oh and thanks pat++ it worked like a charm

[ravenfan]

allap-

I'm new here and I don't even have my iBook yet. So I'm sorry if I come across wrong. If my iBook comes up short of what I expect it to do, I'll be the first to slam it.

I hope there are some solutions to your problems, and I apologize for suggesting that you might have been trolling.

My bad. I'm a MacNN newbie and I've just made a bad name for myself :o.

[skyman]

Originally posted by allap:
Make sure you aren't just buying it for the novelty of a laptop cuz it wears off fast and you find yourself with a slow desktop with a tiny screen for 3000$ CAN (what mine cost me in september).

Also if you plan on doing any filesharing as in p2p, your going to either spend alot of time in Kazaa over VPC (which by the way is incredibly slow on an ibook) or using the various B grade p2p apps such as Aquisition (gnutella = shitty) Neo (almost usable), Carracho (sorry i don't have 20GB of stuff to share) and Direct Connect (great concept but its too damn unstable).

What can i say, i'm thoroughly dissapointed with my purchase, even as i type this post, the cursor lags behind making writing any real document a pain. Come on Apple, i spend 3000$ on this machine and i can't even type up a simple word document without waiting for the cursor to catch up?


It's not all bad though, at least OSX is stable, then again Windows XP is relatively stable as well, and i could have bought an amazing desktop for the 3000$ i spend on this pretty little machine. Bottom line is, before you purchase a new mac, make sure you investigate all your options or else you'll end up a miserable wretch like me

BTW, anyone wanna buy a good as new 700Mhz, 348mb RAM, 20GB, 12.1" ibook?

My wifes 700MHz iBook kicks my poor PISMO's ass!

And to think all this time I thought my 400MHz PISMO powerbook was fast.

I run my entire business on my 400MHz PISMO powerbook and frankly I am very happy with its performance. I would love to upgrade to a new Ti PowerBook but I really do need to.

[Dave Hagan]

Something must be out of whack with his iBook because I remember running Jag on one the 600 models (from the last round), and it ran pretty decent on only 128 MB of RAM!

[allap]

Does anyone know if there are any tests/benchmarks that i can run to find out if my ibook performs below par?

[CheesePuff]

Run Xbench, found on www.versiontracker.com . Post results here.

[engaged]

I've got the best of both worlds... I use my iBook with a mouse and external monitor and keyboard.

Works just fine, thank you very much - and I have the best of both worlds; the portability of a great laptop and the comfort of a desktop with a 17" monitor.

Admittedly, it's not gonna be as fast as a PowerMac...

Sorry to hear of someone so uunhappy with an iBook.

Just my

[khufuu]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Don't feed the trolls... if you don't like your iBook then sell it and get a PC laptop if that's what makes you happy

I think that D'Espice's comment needs repeating...

[RealMac]

I have an ibook/800 (latest revision) with 256mb of ram and a g4/867mp with . Other than some lagging when the machine goes to page out memory (probably because I only have 256mb ram), everything is snappy.

I'd monitor how much cpu different programs are taking under osx through top through terminal.app. I noticed that iCal was using 70% of my cpu on my desktop machine when it was caught in an update loop.

What are your typical usage patterns. Like the other posters, if you spend a lot of time doing disk intensive operations, you'll see a big hit compared to a desktop machine.

You could always sell your iBook. People seem to pay a decent amount on eBay. Here's a recent auction of mine.

We on this forum understand your frustration and aim to assist you in what we feel is a correctable problem.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by Dave Hagan:
Something must be out of whack with his iBook because I remember running Jag on one the 600 models (from the last round), and it ran pretty decent on only 128 MB of RAM!

That sounds out of whack to me. My 800 MHz iBook ran Jag really poorly (didn't run OS 9 too well either) with 128 MB of RAM. Bumping it up to 640 MB helped it a ton. It's gone from barely usable to very usable.

[ringo]

Pfft...I have a 500 with the old 66 bus and my cursor never lags when I type. The "novelty" of a laptop? Buy a desktop if you need a desktop, but there's no "novelty" when I cart mine around in my backpack or take it traveling.

To anyone considering an iBook: go to an Apple store and make up your own mind about how fast it is. I'm really satisfied with mine, but I could be fibbing (or maybe someone else is). See for yourself.

[snerdini]

Originally posted by allap:
Make sure you aren't just buying it for the novelty of a laptop cuz it wears off fast and you find yourself with a slow desktop with a tiny screen for 3000$ CAN (what mine cost me in september).

Also if you plan on doing any filesharing as in p2p, your going to either spend alot of time in Kazaa over VPC (which by the way is incredibly slow on an ibook) or using the various B grade p2p apps such as Aquisition (gnutella = shitty) Neo (almost usable), Carracho (sorry i don't have 20GB of stuff to share) and Direct Connect (great concept but its too damn unstable).

What can i say, i'm thoroughly dissapointed with my purchase, even as i type this post, the cursor lags behind making writing any real document a pain. Come on Apple, i spend 3000$ on this machine and i can't even type up a simple word document without waiting for the cursor to catch up?


It's not all bad though, at least OSX is stable, then again Windows XP is relatively stable as well, and i could have bought an amazing desktop for the 3000$ i spend on this pretty little machine. Bottom line is, before you purchase a new mac, make sure you investigate all your options or else you'll end up a miserable wretch like me

BTW, anyone wanna buy a good as new 700Mhz, 348mb RAM, 20GB, 12.1" ibook?

The problem with this post is that speed is a relative thing. My new 800 is plenty fast for me. I also realize what I bought: the entry-level consumer laptop. If had wanted a desktop replacement, I would have bought a Powerbook.

[allap]

Originally posted by CheesePuff:
Run Xbench, found on www.versiontracker.com . Post results here.

My iBook scored 62.54

How come some of the tests ran better than on the author's 800mhz dual g4?
Floating Point Library 113.71 5.11 Mops/sec
Allocate 128.50 67.60 Kalloc/sec

Thanks everyone for your constructive responses

[dvd]

allap: i have to agree with you about the toy thing. in the end of october, i bought a 700mhz ibook, i had 356mb ram in there. i sold it last month when the 800mhz ibook came out. When i had the ibook i experienced the samething as u, text lagging, overall lag. The ibook made me wonder why do i even bother with macs anymore. But then i sold it for 1200 and bought a 667mhz tibook for 1700, thats another story though.

[slider]

Well, I don't know if you're troubleshooting or bitching, if you're troubleshooting then give the specs, what version of jag are you running, are you using an hp printer? I may have missed you ram config, what is it? For the record, I have a 466 iBook with the 66Mhz bus, I don't have any cursor lags. It sounds to me like your running into the hp driver problem.

[iDaver]

Originally posted by allap:
[B]My iBook scored 62.54

Out of curiosity, I ran XBench on my October, 2001 iBook 600 DVD. My score was 48.60.

I have never experienced the typing lag mentioned at the beginning of this thread. As others have suggested the problem may be a result of trying to run too much stuff at one time.

I also have a PowerBook 667 DVI and I don't really notice a difference in speed between the two unless I'm ripping MP3s or running filters in Photoshop or something like that.

Perhaps a clean install of the OS is in order. Wish I had other ideas.

[fibroptikl]

I agree, make sure you buy an iBook for the actual use of one, and rather not for the novelty of one. Mine will hit eBay in a couple of days.

[jsnyder]

I gave up a 2.4 GHz P4 PC (which i built myself) with 240 GB of disk space and GF3 for this iBook (well I haven't sold the pc yet, but I plan to).

Why? you ask...

1. I've had numerous hardware failures in the past 2 years (2 ram stick failures (crucial), 1 doa ramstick (corsair), 1 PSU failure (powerman), 1 HDD failure (IBM 75 GXP))

2. While XP may be stable, from the ground up the whole thing feels like a kludge. Programming-wise, interface-wise.

3. 2 words, battery life

4. OS X gives me a unix-like environment under the hood. cygwin may work fairly well, but it doesn't integrate with the operating system as well as i'd like


To boil it down, I'm sick of the windows environment, and I'm sick of hardware failure (the hardware failure may just be terrible luck but I wasn't overclocking or doing any crazy tweaking).

[ravenfan]

I haven't had that many problems over the years with Widows desktops. One of the biggest reasons for me getting an iBook (besides the great price) is the finicky nature of wintel laptops. Every time there is a driver update available, you really need to make a restore point in the (somewhat common) event that the new driver has "issues" with your particular laptop.

Even service packs and other updates can upset the delicate balance of many portable wintels. My father has a HP Pavilion AMD 475 K6-2 and to this day, Windows update says that a new sound card/modem driver is available and suggests that you should download and install it. NO! The sound card/modem refuses to work with any of the newer drivers! AHHH!

So... I don't see an iBook running into a lot of retentive behavior like that

[fibroptikl]

Originally posted by jsnyder:
I gave up a 2.4 GHz P4 PC (which i built myself) with 240 GB of disk space and GF3 for this iBook (well I haven't sold the pc yet, but I plan to).

Why? you ask...

1. I've had numerous hardware failures in the past 2 years (2 ram stick failures (crucial), 1 doa ramstick (corsair), 1 PSU failure (powerman), 1 HDD failure (IBM 75 GXP))

2. While XP may be stable, from the ground up the whole thing feels like a kludge. Programming-wise, interface-wise.

3. 2 words, battery life

4. OS X gives me a unix-like environment under the hood. cygwin may work fairly well, but it doesn't integrate with the operating system as well as i'd like


To boil it down, I'm sick of the windows environment, and I'm sick of hardware failure (the hardware failure may just be terrible luck but I wasn't overclocking or doing any crazy tweaking).

Yes, you did have some bad luck. However IBM 75 GXP hard drives were bad, and even IBM admits it; and I've never heard of Powerman PSU. The RAM thing was just a little odd. Hardware isn't normally that bad.

[razzy]

allap,

still wanna sell your iBook?

[mikerally]

If you video chipset is a Rage 128 Mobility, set it to "Thousands of Colours"

That will speed things up.

[milhouse]

Hi allap,

My $0.02...

Your ibook is not "slow". It runs OS 9 lightening fast and as fast or faster than even the latest and greatest wintel workstations run XP or Win2k.

OS X is still basically a resource hog but it can run rather well on even older ibooks so I'd guess that you just need some "tweaking".

These are my recommendations for a snappier OS X + iBook experience.

FWIW, I just ran xbench on my icebook 700 (16MB VRAM) with 640MB RAM. My score was 62.27.

This is a fresh install of Jag 10.2.3 and the disk was not optimized or defragged.

IMHO You should download and use the following apps on your icebook for regualr maintenance:

MacJanitor for regular 'nix maintenance.

Diskwarrior or Drive 10 for defragging and optimizing (I own each of them and both apps work well and are on bootale CDs)

Jaguar Cache Cleaner to delete your caches periodically.

Use diskutility (in your utilities folder) to repair permissions after you install a few apps and if you've never used it, do it now.

I grabbed Renicer (shareware) to increase the "priority" given by the OS to the dock, finder and window server which seem to speed things up. (benicer works too and is free.)

While its not for maintenance WindowshadeX (turns off shadows and draws window border) and does result in a snappier OS X.

I've also used Mox Optimize in the past and it's helped as well.

You can also boot to single user mode and use "fsck -y" to fix minor file system stuff that might slow down the machine.
(If you are not familiar with that command I'd recommend that you do some reading to familiarize yourself with the CLI tools before you try.)

I have used Office X on a 600 MHZ iBook with only 8MB VRAM and it was VERY usable but I "tweaked" my OS X install as above. The 700 should be much better.

I run macjanitor daily and the other apps ~once a week.

MY deskop is a dual 1GHz with 1.5 GB RAM and a 128MB FGF4 Ti so it's VERY VERY fast.
With regular "maintenance" the iBook is still VERY nice to use for most things and the perceived difference in speed for everyday stuff does not create problems for me.



HTH

P.S. Limewire Pro works great for me for P2P stuff and newsgroups are still pretty kick @ass if you don't mind "poking" about for whatever you need( I use Thoth because I paid for it a while ago but there are other newsreaders to choose from).