You know how much I adore my computer, if you've been reading for any length of time. You know how I'm a zealous Mac convert who will never, ever go back. OK, as long as that's established: I'm having a couple of problems.
1. I have an iBook G4 that's 18 months old. I recently loaded Tiger (OS 10.4) onto my computer, and now it's running more slowly. Grrr. Planned obsolescence? Should I get rid of Tiger? (I haven't been using Spotlight. I like the dashboard, but don't use it as much as I might because it takes time to load.)
2. My fourth generation iPod, about 9 months old, keeps writing errors and then freaking out. Hence, I'm freaking out. The first time this happened, I was on the roadtrip, and when I got to Denver, I took it to a genius bar. They wiped the hard drive, reloaded iTunes from my computer, and all was well. For a week. Until it freaked out again.
3. Is there a Mac-specific word processing program that you love to use? I want to dump MS Word.
(Phaon is so punk rock. He's rebuilding part of his TiBook - new hard drive, more RAM - in hopes of its lasting another two years. It's already four years old.)
Posted by Cleis at July 14, 2005 11:36 AMThe best thing to do in the case is to add more memory. The standard memory the ibook comes with is way too low, anyway. I just bought a new ibook and bumped the memory up to 512 mb. I had problems with my G3 blue tower and adding more memory really helped speed things up incredibly.
Hee, I love mac. Less virus stress.
Posted by: amy at July 14, 2005 09:27 PM
Phaon is my god, man. I miss my old tibook, but after two years it was just so freaking unreliable I had to replace it. Then Mr. B. dropped it so now the case is cracked. It still works, sometimes, if it's on a flat surface (i.e., if you don't use it as a laptop). If Phaon wants to rebuild it for me, I will love him forever.
That said, yes, more memory for the ibook, I think. And I've started using Pages. It's pretty fun, and surprisingly I actually *like* the templates (templates in Word are retarded, and I hate them). The only down side to pages, as far as I can tell, is that (1) it does footnotes but not endnotes (hopefully they'll fix this in a future incarnation); (2) it *does* take a minute to open up files, but this may be because I've fallen in love with putting pictures in my syllabi and that's mostly what I'm using it for, or b/c I'm often opening up old Word files, or b/c (like you) I really need more memory. But yes. It is lightyears ahead of Word, and you can buy it at the Mac site and safe yourself a trip to the store.
Posted by: bitchphd at July 14, 2005 10:56 PMHow much memory do you have on your iBook? If only 256: then it might be a good idea to add a bit of memory (at least 512 for Tiger). Also: did you do a clean install of Tiger or an upgrade? If you upgraded, you could try to do a clean install instead.
Posted by: Marrty at July 15, 2005 07:55 AMGirlfriend, send that iPod back to Apple. They'll probably Fed-ex overnight you a box, and fed-ex overnight you a repaired and/or new iPod. One big word for ya -- WARRANTY. Use it, it is your friend. :)
iBook - I've been reading some Apple forums for you, and one of the suggestions was to look at the Activity Monitor (it's in Utilities) to see if something is hogging system space that shouldn't be. A lot of people were finding small strange conflicts with Tiger and other applications they had downloaded. It may not help, but it's worth a shot. I was also seeing a lot of suggestions for a clean install as well -- that it sometimes helped a lot.
And - thanks, bitchphd for the report on Pages -- I've been really wanting to switch also. Like Cleis, I too hate Word - it is evil. Since I don't use endnotes, I don't think it will be an issue. Although, on a related note I have also been wanting to get rid of EndNote and replace it with Bookends, but they don't play well together. A lot of folks on the Bookends website were recommending Mellel as a word processor. Has anybody tried it?
Posted by: stewgad at July 15, 2005 08:50 AMThanks, everyone, for the advice! I will definitely upgrade memory to 512 ($150 - yikes) and do a clean install of Tiger. And I'll check that other thing you mention, Stew.
And I'll go to the Mac site and look at Pages. I've never heard of Mellel....
And, Dr. B, if I ever dropped - goddess forbid! - the TiBook, Phaon would divorce me. Or maybe he'd stick around and never forgive me. I can walk into the same room as the TiBook with a drink in hand and he'll say, "aren't you a little too close with that drink?" and wave me away. If he had to choose between saving me and saving that damn computer in a fire, he'd decide that I could probably save myself.
Posted by: Cleis at July 15, 2005 11:03 AMHi Cleis,
I'm contemplating using LaTeX with BibTeX and Refworks for my dissertation. The style sheets for LaTeX are often already customized according to various university style guide specifications for theses. LaTeX will never crash, because it is simply a text editor. The drawbacks are that LaTeX is not what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) and there is a bit of a learning curve. The results are absolutely beautiful book quality text. LaTeX is also free and one fabulous thing is that you can make a change the style sheet and format your work according to any journal specifications (MLA, APA, Chicago). I use an old blue and white iBook and came across LaTeX when writing my last course paper with MS Word (the 2001 version of Office for the Mac) and having it crash continually to the point where I lost nearly every sentence I wrote. At that time I also tried a beta version of an open source project called Open Office (at the time I think it was dubbed NeoOffice/J). It crashed on me too. The newest version of MS Word for the Mac (the 2004 version of Office) isn't so bad. It has its bugs, but they aren't nearly as serious as they were on the 2001 version.
My old iBook is not compatiable with Tiger because it has no firewire. Maybe it is time for me to upgrade. I think the look of Tiger is pretty sexy. My friend was showing me Tiger on his souped up TiBook and I was impressed with its search features.
Jessica
Posted by: Jessica Shumake at July 18, 2005 11:30 AM