Cool Mac Gear

New iBook G4 800 Report

From Travis Smith

Charles,

I emailed you about 2 weeks ago informing you that I was purchasing a new iBook G4 800 12.1" (and switching back to a Mac in our household). Anyway, I just wanted to give you & your readers a quick rundown on my initial impressions of this machine.

It arrived from MacMall on Thursday 10/30/03. Immediately upon unpacking the box, I released the keyboard, removed the Airport cover, and removed the stock 128M RAM. I installed a 512M RAM SoDimm. Then I replaced the Airport cover & installed an airport extreme card. I then replaced the keyboard, plugged in the AC adapter and powered the 'Book on.

After several days of operations (and running the battery thru 2 cycles), I have the following observations.

1) The machine is very fast, much faster than my old ibook 700 (combo) or my old TiBook 800 or my iMac 800. The last two might be due to panther versus Jaguar.
2) The machine is MUCH cooler than my other laptops (iBook or PowerBook k or IBM Thinkpad). I NEVER have heard the fan run. I'm sure it has run on low power mode, but never has kicked in to overdrive. However, it is VERY quiet and I have never actually heard the fan.
3) There are some minor build quality issues with these new books.

Upon noticing these things, I checked Apple's forums and realized that many other users are noticing the same things. They are as follows:

A) Battery sticks out very slightly in the front (about 1-2mm). Other users have report this as well.
B) The case (on the top - to the left of the trackpad) has a slight loose feel. It moves slightly (again 1-2mm) and squeeks slightly. Other users are experiencing the same thing.
C) The case (on the bottom under the display hinge) has a slight loose feel. Same symptons as listed in item B. No other users have reported this yet.

I called Apple on these concerns. They suggested I take to a repair center & see if it is these case issues are "outside the standard tolerances".

To be honest, I am not going to bother taking it in. These are very slight imperfections and they probably can't do anything to fix it as these are engineering issues.

Overall, I am VERY pleased with the iBook. Obviously, the quality is a concern (as you noted in a recent article), but this is one GREAT machine.

Sorry this post was so lengthy, but it may provide some good information for perspective buyers.

Travis Smith

Hi Travis;

No apologies necessary. Thanks for the interesting report, and it's great that the news is positive, especially the speed and cool running. In seven years of using my Apple laptops, I've only had cooling fans cut in three times -- all on my WallStreet on very hot days. To the best of my knowledge, the fans on my Pismo and iBook have never activated. 'Course, I live in Canada.... ;-)

Incidentally, I never noticed it before, but the battery on my 700 MHz G3 iBook also protrudes a tiny bit, however I don't have the other case issues you mention.

Charles

Email clients

From Pj Little

I'm a switcher. The G4 I bought 3 months ago is the first Mac I ever owned. I can list dozens of things I really love about Mac, and one thing that really drives me up a wall.

I have been unable to find a standalone email client that will allow the user (me) to configure multiple accounts from multiple sources on the same email client plus add and edit the sources (ISP) as needed. I could do this very handily in Pegasus or Calypso. Unfortunately neither of these mail clients are written for Mac.

Outlook Express 5 for Mac (OS 8.1- 9x) allows this, but MS did not release an OS X version. Netscape and Eudora handles multiple accounts but not multiple accounts from multiple sources. I am faced with either multiple browsers with built-in email clients, multiple standalone clients on the desktop, or switching from OS X to OS 9 to retrieve and answer mail.

I am at my wits end trying to find a simple solution.

Thank you,

Pj Little

Hi Pj;

I'm not sure I'm cognating precisely what you mean by multiple accounts from multiple sources, but check out my latest update of my omnibus Mac email client roundup, which lists every Mac email client program I have been able to track down.

I haven't used them all, but I hope you can find the functionality you're looking for among them.

http://www.applelinks.com/mooresviews/emailru03222.shtml

Charles

iListen review on AppleLinks

Mark W Modrall

Hi...

I'm trying to get some speech dictation software for my wife to use on her g3 wallstreet running os 9.1. She got a copy of ViaVoice ME from her professor, and i'm running into the problem after install that Speakpad just shuts right down after launch. I found and applied the 1.02 update to ViaVoice (which had a bullet point about correcting instances where Speakpad failed to start) but it didn't help.

After reading your review of iListen, it sounds like you're the ideal person to ask advice on this matter. Do you have any idea why SpeakPad launches and then shuts right down on my Wallstreet? Do you think I would be better off with iListen? I read on MacSpeech's website that os 9 variants are dead-ended at v 1.5.5; any of the later version are OS X only.

My wife has trouble typing, too, and it would be a real help if she could dictate her papers to the computer.

Thank you for any tips you might have.

-Mark

Hi Mark;

You didn't say which model WallStreet you have. I got ViaVoice ME to work reasonably well on my 233 MHz WallStreet, but it was far from fast. Even the faster WallStreets are marginal dictation performers, alas.

I find that all IBM voice software, for OS 9 or OS X, is buggy and cranky. When you can get it set up, it works pretty well, but problems like the ones you're experiencing are not uncommon. That said, ViaVoice ME would still be my choice for use on a WallStreet. The old WS really doesn't have the guts to run iListan 1.5 satisfactorily. Also, with any speech software, get as much RAM as your budget can stand. It makes a bog difference.

I don't know what's ailing ViaVoice ME on your machine. I would suggest trashing everything except your voice profiles (use the uninstaller function to back them up), then do a clean reinstall of the basic program and the 1.02 update patch.

Let me know how you make out.

Charles

Re: iListen review on AppleLinks

From Mark

Thanks for responding. Sorry I didn't mention more detail earlier. I've got a 266MHz G3 Wallstreet, just pre-Lombard (late '98 vintage) with 192 meg of memory.

I tried your suggestion of uninstalling ViaVoice and reinstalling it, then reinstalling the 1.02 patch, but still no luck. SpeakPad launches and then shuts right down. One interesting thing I noticed is that after install, the SpeakPad memory settings were ridiculously low (like 10 meg). I started upping the preferred and minimum memory settings with no luck, but i did notice an interesting change in behaviour. Once i got up in the 190 meg range for preferred, launching SpeakPad directly still failed quietly, but trying to launch in from the icon/menu in the start bar started throwing a "Speakpad seems to be missing" dialog. I'm not sure what that's about...

My wife would really like to use dictation software, but it really seems that the options are limited with this old a computer. And with IBM mothballing this edition, it's really hard to find anyone still using it...

Thanks for you help
-Mark

Hi Mark;

Sorry to hear of your continued frustration. I had a similar experience with my G4 Cube, on which ViaVoice ME simply refused to work. I never discovered why. Fortunately, the Cube had the power and RAM (574 MB) to run iListen quite well. I've had the best luck with ViaVoice ME on my Pismo 500 MHz PowerBook in OS 9.1.

I agree that your dictation options are very limited with the old WallStreet. Both iListen and ViaVoice X work well on my 700 MHz iBook, which is a fairly inexpensive platform these days. Small Dog Electronics had some leftover new ones for $750.

Charles

Mozilla's future

From Ryan

I've noticed a couple problems with your October 29, 2003 Moore's Mailbag. For one, you say HTML authoring will be discontinued. I don't think this is true, because there's already a very early standalone Composer build for Windows. I assume when it gets into later development stages it will be available for Mac as well. And you forgot to mention ChatZilla, which iBelieve will also turn into a small, standalone program.

And I believe eventually they will make a Mozilla suite, but instead of being like it is today, Mozilla 2 or whatever it's called will be a combination of Firebird, Thunderbird, and possibly ChatZilla and Composer.

Also, here's some text from the Mozilla roadmap: "We are not deprecating XUL in favor of front ends based on native GUI toolkits. Nor are we deprecating Camino, Mozilla's Gecko-based browser that has a native OS X front end."

http://website-beta.mozilla.org/roadmap.html

So basically they are not deprecating Camino.

BTW, they seem to have gotten rid of the problem of having a green search field on a green background. Check http://website-beta.mozilla.org

Hi Ryan;

You may be right. I don't have any inside info. However, I will be surprised if Composer survives the switch to a FireBird-based Moxilla, and I expect Firebird/Mozilla and ThunderBird to remain separate applicaitons. There may be a standalone Chatzilla app. too.

I never suggested that the Mozilla team were hostile to Camino. It's linked from their homepage after all.

Charles

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear