I purchased my MacBook in 2008. At this time, it was running OS 10.5.x Leopard. I upgrade it to Snow Leopard and then Lion. Starting on 2011, my MacBook began to run slower. I'm turning on the computer, I can already hear the fan running (quietly) and when I'm watching videos online, literally after ONE minute the fan runs louder. 

[edited] oh! and the battery drains faster also. One day, I turned off the MB with 43% left and the next day the battery was at 20%.

I would like to know what should I do?

Poll #1840142
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

What should I do?

Poll #1828504 Recommendations welcome
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 0

I need a new HD for my Mac Book Pro 15", mid-2009. Any recs of brand/model?

I keep reading mixed reviews for pretty much everything online, so I decided to ask. Feel free to elaborate in the comments if you feel like it :)

Current Mood: contemplative

I'm starting to freak out because my mac is acting generally strange. These are the symptoms:

• Slow start-up. It takes a while for it to go from blank-screen to Apple logo to the spinning-wheel-thingy.

• Start-up chime isn't always immediate.

• Slow app load. Apps bounce on the dock for a while before actually opening.

• Mouse cursor freeze. Sometimes (not often) the cursor stops responding.

• Slower than normal response. Menus and such aren't as snappy as they should (specially for a system with this much RAM).

• Ever-present rainbow beach ball of doom. Keep seeing it quite often everywhere.

• Random and suddenly apps just quit while in use.

• Memory leak. Despite having 8GB of RAM, often there's only 80mb free with only safari, photoshop, twitter and a mail client running.

Disk Utility says the HD is fine O.o Any ideas what to do/is wrong with it?

System info:
Mac Book Pro 15", mid-2009 model bought in January 2010
2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 750GB HD, 8GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.7.3 Lion

Current Mood: anxious

Hey, I could do with some feedback here. Here are some details about my mac. I have been having problems with it. It is running extremely slow & I don't understand why. I am a photographer & have a mountain of editing to get done but my mac is running so slow. Can anyone shed some light in to why this is happening? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated because I am cracking up! The internet is running extremely slow too.

When I bought it, it only had 1GB of RAM but I bought 2x2GBs, which I put in myself. When I first put it in about 6 months ago, it did seem to run a wee bit faster to begin with, but not it is back to how it was before I added the RAM.

So please, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.




(x-posted)

I'm not sure if this is normal, but I just did a wipe and restore (or at least I thought I wiped everything out) on my early 2008 MacBook Pro as I'm selling it. The box says it has a 200 GB hard drive. Finder says it's capacity is 185.99 GB. But it says after I erased and installed the OS that it's at 168.72 GB with 17.27 GB used on disk.

Is that normal, or is some of my stuff still floating around in there somewhere (if it is, I can't find it)? It just seems that over 17 GB used already after a fresh instal is a bit much.

Thoughts?

What can be done for a small chip in the case? My mid 2009 MacBook (which I have taken very good care of since I got it in July 2009) has a small chip that developed tonight. I went to take my wrist off of the computer and it occurred.

This is what it looks like…




Also, anyone know why on earth when I go to start up the computer on occasion, the thing will not show the menu bar properly. It'll show the desktop and the dock with no problem but sometimes I have to click the top of the screen to get the menu bar to show up. I'm running Lion but this has been happening off and on since I installed Snow Leopard.

I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Lion the other night.   Other than being unhappy about the conversion of "Panels" to "Mission Control", I guess I can deal with most of it.

HOWEVER, I'm having a problem with the machine freezing to the point I'm having to power cycle it to get it back.  I ---think--- I've narrowed it down to the point that it might be Time Machine that is causing this to happen.  Anyone else having/had this issue?

Should I do the deed of reformatting my Time Machine drive and see if that fixes the problem?

Is there something else I should be looking into?

**ANY** suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

jack

Current Location: Mesquite, Texas
Current Mood: distressed

I downloaded a .avi file, double-clicked it and Quick-Time Player opened with a message that I needed additional components to play this video.

The continue button took me to this page:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/components.html?os=OSX&ctype=696d6463&csubtype=48323634

But there was no clue as regards what component I needed. Can anyone help please?

I'm not interested in playing with iCloud and i'm wondering if there's a good address book for the Mac to replace the Address Book app. I have android mobile devices, so something that syncs with Google's contacts would be nice.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

I put some notes on my iPhone and it synched them with my MacBook Pro. What I don't know is where are the notes stored on the computer, and can I write notes on the computer that will then sync with the iPhone. Any help please?

one
I know Mac computers tend to have maintenance software that runs on its own. However, it has been several years (four, I think, since I purchased the new computer) since I've done anything to tune-up my iMac.
I'm slowly growing concerned about the computer's performance. She spends more time than usual switching between applications and such. Is there anything I can do? Defrag the hard-drive? Dump everything, re-partition the drives and reinstall everything from Time Machine? Anything?

two
Our department understands that most publications are going online/software/virtual. For a year now, we've tried to integrate with our web design/program team. It has become obvious now that they are a very non-cooperative bunch. So our department is going to move on to designing/programming/publishing through smaller hand-held devices. We are going to seek training in designing/publishing on iPad, iPhone, iPod, and other similar devices. Anyone know of a good source for beginner information?

I have to say that I am terribly disappointed with Apple. After having what was a remarkably reliable 2002 Quicksilver G4 which finally became unstable and died in late 2010 and I held off getting a new Mac, first because there were multiple other Macs in the house, and then because i knew a mini refresh was coming. The mini refresh included Lion.

Right out of the box things looked okay, but I was preoccupied with migrating my last viable backups from 10.5 to 10.7 and the first thing I discovered was Migration Assistant would only work one revision backward, so I had a brand new system I could not migrate to, after being told by Apple store staff that that would not be an issue. So I order Snow Leopard, which would not run not the quicksilver, or any other available machine in my house. Instead I wind up having to recover individual files ( such as my contacts list from Address Book, by exporting them from a cloned version of my old system and importing them into lion) all while fighting random crashes, Spinning Beach Balls Of Death (SBBOD), where the machine required rebooting to escape the locked cursor, and cases where all input simply stopped responding.

It finally got to the point where the time until a freeze was so predictable that took it to the Apple Store in desperation and (thank science), it failed repeatedly on the test bench. Diagnosas, bad logic board. So after a week, where I never spoke to the same employee twice, I was told that they were actually replacing the whole machine, but I had to bring in my time machine backups (which have multiple users on the same disk). I had to ask for a receipt. The next day I was called to pickup the newly imaged machine and was told they got the data off the mini itself,and had not needed the TM backups. Unfortunately the machine they gave me did not have the same HD configuration as the one I had bought on my original CTO. They had to take the machine back, swap drives and reimage again! They had not even looked at the configuration and apparently their internal systems reported a different configuration for the part number assigned to my machine than what I had actually ordered and had shipped. (A big plus for the Apple Tech who actually fixed this, otherwise going to the store in King of Prussia, PA was like going onto the trading floor of the stock exchange, loud, crowded & chaotic).

Now I could finally discover the disappointment that is Lion. If I had not bought a machine with Lion already on it, I would be wiping it and reinstalling Snow Leopard. More, See comment-

That I uploaded was uploaded on my new iMac. Apple has changed iPhoto so that the folder looks like a picture rather than a folder. Which confused Safari…so when you go to upload a photo to LJ's scrapbook it doesn't open the folder, it just uploads the folder icon.
SoI try this in Firefox…guess what Firefox could tell that the icon was in fact a folder. Its kinda sad that Apples own web program can't work with its own operating system. WTF Apple…I think you area slipping. I remember back in the 90's Apples were in fact actually superior to PC's in everyway…now that isn't true.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

Current Music: Through The Eye Of Terror - Bolt Thrower

We lost a great visionary….Steve has died

Apple has a thing on their website where you can e-mail condolences. I already did.

I also have an idea that I shared with the peeps @ appleworld that we on LJ can do in memory of such a great visionary. For one week, let's all use as a default icon a photo with an Apple theme to it. For instance, I am using this lovely pic of Josh Groban using a MacBook from a photo shoot with InStyle magazine from a couple of years back.

Now this tribute can be like mine or it can be anything Apple related. The Apple logo, a photo of an Apple product…hell, it can even be an old Apple advert. Just as long as it is Apple related.

We as the members of Apple Nation owe it to Steve to remember the great man he was.

RIP, Steve. You did a remarkable job and taught us all to "think different." Now it's time to go home to rest. God speed.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Josh Groban-Un Giorno Per Noi

  I just got my refurbished 21.5 iMac with a 1tb hard drive ,its a 2011 model running OSX10.7.1. I have a couple of issues that I'd appreciate any insight on. 
1. Sometimes when I wake the computer up the screen will go black again and only pressing the power button seems to help. This actually happened when I first turned the computer on! I messed with the brightness buttons and nothing,but pressing the power button did the trick. Why does this happen? It doesn't bode well, whatever the issue is.  
2. Why can't I see my user library anymore? Does apple think we are that stupid, that they need to hide it from us? I know its there because when I open a file from FAangband( a rogue like game) it shows the path, leading to it. 
EDIT: I was able to find my user library by the GO column in the finder and then go to :/Users/( your account name)/Library/Preferences/ Once I found it I dragged the icon to the sidebar in the finder window. 

Other than those issues this computer is a huge improvement over my 2003 G4 powerbook. I love the screen and the magic mouse is cool as well. 

Current Location: home
Current Mood: scared

Hello,

Can anyone recommend a good external hard drive that is (1) 1 TB of greater (2) compatible with  OS X Tiger and OS X Lion?

Thanks

Does anyone know if there is a way to get ICal to show times using 24 hour clock?

I have four internal disk drives in my Mac Pro, some which contain bootable partitions. Sometimes, for whatever reason, despite my boot drive preference remaining the same, the system will pick a different disk to boot from. I'm wondering if there's any way I can temporarily "cripple" a drive (short of unplugging it) so that the system couldn't boot to it if it wanted to, but I could still access the files, and potentially boot it again at some point the future.

How can I get image dimensions without opening image with application?

I know that Finder somehow can get to image dimensions, since in columns view, when displaying preview it will also show image dimensions.

I have found "Image Events" application, which have property "dimensions" of class "image", which inherited from Finder's standard class "item".

I just can't figure out how to ask "Image Events" for image dimensions.

Upd: Problem solved! The issue was that "Image Events" does not report any errors.

set imageFile to choose file

tell application "Image Events"
	launch
	set my_image to open imageFile
	set my_dimensions to dimensions of my_image
	close my_image
	set my_x to item 1 of my_dimensions as integer
	set my_y to item 2 of my_dimensions as integer
	quit
end tell

How can I safely transport my laptop to work on my bike? How much do I have to worry about bumpy roads?

So I have a MacBook Air, and bike <1 mi to my carpool spot in order to get to work. I don't always take my computer to work, but when I do, I tuck it in a protective sleeve and then put that in the inner, laptop-shaped pocket of my pannier.

Some of my commute is over broken streets, the kind where the asphalt has worn away to reveal cobblestones underneath. Should I swerve to avoid the near-potholes? (It's usually an empty street.) Should I avoid letting my bike bump down over the curb or the few steps out of my apartment? I can be paranoid if need be, but I don't necessarily think so proactively pre-coffee.

Because I couldn't find a sleeve I liked at the store where I had a credit, I just took a page from this Instructables. (It's temporary until I determine what I really need.) Would a proper neoprene sleeve make much a difference?

x posted to bikes.

Any suggestions for a complete server noob on documentation on setting up a Mac Lion server?

I was trying to update my OS last night and ended clicking the wrong thing and erasing my entire mac! Luckily this is not may main computer and most of my important stuff is backed up. My question is, all my iTunes were on that one and my only real back up is my iPod. Can I transfer my files back from my iPod into my itunes library?

Current Mood: anxious

If I am using imovie HD 6.03 and my audio is longer than my video, how on Earth do I clip the extra audio? I just can't see to find anyway to do it.

It seems like I have to export the whole thing and then reimport it so the audio in merged with the video. Only then can I cut off the extra audio.

Anyone know any good alternatives to Dreamweaver that will work with Lion?

I have an old version that will not work with Lion (GRRR! I hate that) & I can't afford to buy the new version right now. I have Sea Monkey which has a good editor but I need something more powerful.

I'm new to Lion, not to Mac. My last computer was a TiBook running 10.4, so this jump is a definite adjustment.

For grad school, I need a word processor that allows document collaboration and track changes with my co-teacher who uses Word 2007. She would prefer not to learn a new technology (such as Google Docs), and I would prefer not to get Word 2007. I didn't mind Office X, but now that's not an option on my MacBook Air.

So: Can Pages collaborate with Office 2007? Even better, can Open Office or another open source word processor? More to the point, can they do it well?

My backup scenario is to use my boyfriend's computer whenever I need to collaborate on a document with the co-teacher. He has Word 2003 or whatever was the PC version previous to 2007.

Bonus question: What is your favorite app to block all distracting things on the internet? I was using SelfControl before, but am interested in what is available for this new shiny box.

Thanks!

The last couple of times I've restarted my MBP (mid-2009 running Lion), I've gotten this dialog message that I have no idea where it's coming from:



Any ideas? What the heck is "ninjad"? *confused*

It will respond to my Apple TV's remote, for instance. After upgrading to Lion and observing this behavior, I re-paired the Mac's remote, but it's still listening to the ATV's remote.
Anyone else seen this/have a fix?

For those of you, like me, who are waiting for Apple to refresh the Mac Mini, there are no Minis on display for sale at the Apple store in King of Prussia, PA. Looks like they are draining their pipeline.

Current Location: home

I'll be going back to school in the fall and, likely next weekend, will be replacing my Nov. 2007 MB with a MBP. For a few reasons, I don't really think the MB product line is right for me this time - I use a wheelchair, and I know from my June 2004 white iBook that a white MB will look like it went through a brushfire after a few months of transfer of dirt from floor->wheelchair->hands-computer. On top of that, I have poor vision and finicky eyes - I tend to use my MB in dim rooms a lot on account of that, and would *love* the backlit keyboard so that I don't have to use the computer's screen as an impromptu flashlight on the keyboard.

Having said that, I'm very torn between the 2.3ghz and 2.7ghz. I'll be mostly doing work in Pages or MS Word (I'm going to try to avoid having to get MS Office through use of iWork and Open Office. I also anticipate reluctantly purchasing the student version of Adobe Acrobat, as attorneys work with more and more PDF files lately and, due to my disabilities, my handwriting is extremely poor - I'm willing to buy Acrobat's student version to access typewriter so that I can edit/add text to PDF files as necessary, and expect to be using that feature often, particularly as I get closer to returning to practice. I'm not a huge gamer, but I may play with some SimCity/Civilization-style games if the computer can tolerate it. I'm a heavy iTunes user and I have a very full iPhoto; if the computer can tolerate it, I'd probably like to use it more for watching video than the current one is able.

So, basically, anyone have thoughts between the 2.3ghz and the 2.7ghz? I know some people like upgrading to the solid state HD, but I'm already using 140GB on this one, it'd take a huge chunk of change to upgrade even the 2.3ghz to a large enough solid state HD, an amount that's hard to justify - I'm basically down to only one choice - 2.3 or 2.7. Having said that, I want to do this right, I don't want to regret my purchase two years from now.

Secondly, any thoughts on if I'll be able to squeak by with just iWork, or do I need to get MS Office as well?

Thank you :).

Current Location: Phoenix, AZ
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: 西野カナ - Wishing (Thank you, Love)

I have a MacBook Pro 15" from mid 2009 (model 5,3) with 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HD. This HD I'm looking to replace with something newer and bigger, so I'd like some advice.

I am not looking for a SSD at the moment because those are still pricey in large capacities and I'm also gonna upgrade the RAM, so my budget is not limitless. My questions are basically: What exactly should I be making sure the drive has? Any particular model/brand you recommend? And, any store you recommend I get it from?

Basically, which HD should I get? (Anything over 500GB sounds good to me and links are very much appreciated if you happen to have them).

Also, any procedure/app you prefer for the copying/swapping part?

Thank you :)

At work I have a large external monitor that I connect my MacBook Pro to, but I also like to take it with me to meetings and presentations sometimes. Whenever I do that, I unplug it from the external monitor, and all the windows that were on that monitor jump back to my primary display; when I bring it back to my desk and reconnect it to the large monitor, there's no easy way to get them all back to where they were. I have to drag windows back to the large monitor one by one.

Do any of you know of tricks for restoring my careful arrangement of windows on the external monitor when I plug it back in?

P.S. I know I could set the displays to mirror each other, but that partly defeats the point of having the second monitor. I'd rather be stuck dragging windows by hand (and occasionally leaving my MacBook at my desk when I'd have liked to have it with me) than have mirrored displays.

Hey guys, could really do with some feedback here before I throw my damn iMac against the wall!

I have had my iMac 2 1/2 years now but gradually over the past 6 months it has become really slow. So I bought an external hard-drive (forget the capacity it can hold - maybe 1TB?) thinking that was the problem & started to put all my stuff on to it instead of onto the actual computer memory.

I am a photographer so I put a hell of a lot of stuff on my Mac, which is why I then bought the external hard-drive. But just last night I was working with Photoshop, I tried opening a few wedding images at once when this warning came up:



When this came up, I then couldn't open all the images that I had wanted to open up at once. Another thing that happens is when I am using Photoshop, after a while my toolbar will turn black & you can't make the writing out. If I click out of Photoshop & back in, then this gets rid of the problem.

Also here is a screen dump of my computer information:



Hardware Overview:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Any suggestions on what the hell is wrong? I run Norton Antivirus on my computer every Friday, never seems to pick up any viruses. From the above information, I thought I had lots of space on my computer but obviously something is making it very slow.

I'd really appreciate some replies because this is really affecting my business in terms of the length of time it is taking me to edit images in Photoshop because of how slow my damn computer is. :(

Thanks a million.

(x-posted for as many replies as possible)

I turned on my MacBook Pro this morning and it booted up - I could hear it - but the screen was blank. I also have an external screen and that was blank too. I have tried rebooting with and without the external screen but all I get is blankness. Anyone any idea what might be wrong please?

I recently upgraded the hard drive in my MacBook. I used Carbon Copy Cloner, then tested by booting from the external drive, then physically swapped the drives.

Now, the MacBook gives me the question mark file folder error when I do a standard restart. However, if I hold down Option (to use Startup Manager), I see the new hard drive, can select it and successfully boot from it.

I've already checked/repaired permissions... but that didn't help. Any thoughts on what could be causing this?

Update: Wow, all these years and I never noticed the Startup Disk preferences pane... how is that possible? Even my Google-fu failed me trying to figure out what step I missed! Many thanks to notgruntled and jennielf for the tip.

I have Safari 5.0.4 and for some reason I cannot force Safari to open links in new tabs. I already went into Safari/Preferences/Tabs --> Open pages in tabs instead of windows: chose Always.

At first I thought it was an issue with Glims. So I uninstalled Glims and still no dice on tabbed browsing. Is anyone else having this issue?

And also curious, who out there is using Glims in Snow Leopard?

I don't know if they're related... but I'm worried, so here's the list:

1) I do a Verify Permissions Check more or less weekly and EVERY SINGLE TIME a repair is needed. I don't remember this happening on my old PowerBook G4, so is this normal on MacBook Pros?

2) About every two/three weeks when I do a Verify Disk check it needs to be repaired from the install DVD.

3) Since January this year, already TWICE has my mac turned off on its own and when restarted it would have changed the date to ~ten years ago O.o It happened for the second time this morning.

4) I have CheckUp installed, so I ran a test some hours ago to see if I got any clues as to what the heck is wrong and got this message: "Smart Crash Reports Input Managers Detected. This technology is no longer supported and can make your system unstable". I have no idea what that means or what to do about it.

5) Reboot time is quite slow. I find myself doing other stuff while the mac starts up. This is fairly new for me :/

6) As of lately (a couple of months?), my dock icons have been bouncing for much longer when I launch applications.

My system profile is this:
MacBook Pro 15" (model 5,3)
2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1067 Mhz DDR3
OS X 10.6.7

And here is a copy of the report Disk Utility gave me: click

I don't know if I'm more worried or appalled as this computer is about a year old and my last mac lasted me five good years :(

Thank you in advance for any help!

(x-posted to macintosh)

Current Mood: distressed

Can anyone recommend a good free YouTube to MP3 converter for OSX? By “good” I mean reasonably fast, reliable, high quality. I just downloaded Fastest Free YouTube Downloader last night and so far I've only been able to make one successful conversion. The error message states this may be a temporary issue, but I'm open to trying a different program. I'm running OS 10.5.8. Thanks.

 For the past week or so, I have not been able to watch Youtube videos in Safari.  (Safari 5.0.3 and OS 10.6.6)  However, in Firefox they work just fine.

I don't have any extensions installed, having removed Adblock after a suggestion that it may have been the culprit, but its removal has not helped.  I've also uninstalled and reinstalled Flash, per Youtube's troubleshooting help.  Nothing has worked.

I'm hoping someone else might have an idea of what's going on here.

I have a drive with three data partitions: a HFS+ one for OSX, an ext2 one for Ubuntu, and a FAT32 one for XP. Everything I've read on the internet says that you cannot backup non-HFS+ formatted volumes with Time Machine. When I view my Time Machine backups, the only partition which appears as viewable is the HFS+ one; the rest are greyed out in the Finder sidebar.

However, when I go into the dialog box where it says what the backup will exclude (eg the backup disk itself, any USB sticks I've plugged in, etc), it doesn't list my XP partition as excluded, and the size it gives for the files being included is 65.0GB. My HFS+ only has 48.79GB of files, according to Finder...so what else is being included? If you add the files on my XP partition to that total, you get 65.04GB - but they don't seem to be in the Time Machine backup, because I can't find known files by searching.

Is the dialog box wrong in how much it thinks it's including, or is Time Machine actually backing up my FAT32 partition somehow?

*In before all the newbies hit the comm.* ;)

I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly when this began but I assume right after my last set of updates. I used to be able to scroll down the page (any page - on LJ, FB, Brizzly/Twitter...) and if a video was posted, it posed no problem. Now, when I come to a video that's posted in the feed, the scrolling stops dead and I have to move the pointer to the side of the video to continue scrolling.

Is there anything that can be done to override this? I checked in system preferences under trackpad but the only semi-related option was scroll with/without inertia. (I've tried it both ways just in case that was it.) I use a MBP with Snow Leopard 10.6.5 and Safari 5.0.3. Thanks!

Current Mood: annoyed

Does anyone know of a way to delete the Divx registry/registration? I've tried everything, and DivX themselves (very helpfully *eyeroll*) are saying that its 'not possible' on a mac... Surely not?! I *really* don't want to format my hardrive, and even then it might not work. Grrr. Someone please say its possible... 

This is verbatim from Apple PR circa 2003:

Home away from home
Ever thought you could carry your home in the palm of your hands or in your pocket? You can. Panther's Home on iPod feature lets you store your home directory - files, folders, apps - on your iPod (or any FireWire hard drive) and take it with you wherever you go. When you find yourself near a Panther-equipped Mac, just plug in the iPod, log in, and you're "home," no matter where you happen to be. And when you return to your home computer, you can synchronize any changes you've made to your files by using File Sync, which automatically updates offline changes to your home directory.

I'm pretty sure Apple never implemented this feature, but I still think it's a good idea. Does anybody know if anyone ever tried to make it happen in 3rd party software? Or if it was something the UNIX community managed to pull off? I like the idea of carrying some user preferences with me, not necessarily the whole user directory, but just something that could quickly flip some switches on, say, a guest account, and have me on my way.

I'm potentially in the market for a new MacBook, as my current Nov. 2007 MacBook is maybe about to bite the dust, it seems (it's presently being assessed for a post-AppleCare repair which may or may not make financial sense, depending on what comes back).

So I'm looking at either buying a MacBook or a MacBook Pro.

Except for a backlit keyboard, I'm unable to determine the difference between being either:
1) A base-model MacBook Pro out of the box for $1,200.
2) A MacBook with an additional RAM for $1,100.

(all links to the Apple Store's website on specs)

The other specs (video card, hard drive, processor) seem to be identical, leaving the only difference to be the backlit keyboard. Why should I pay $1,200 ($100 more) for a MacBook Pro when I could build the same thing on a regular MacBook for $1,100? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I've always wanted to upgrade to the Pro line, but I'm not really seeing the value in the base-model MacBook Pro right now - is there something I'm missing? Is the MacBook Pro better built? I've always liked the idea of a backlit keyboard due to my poor eyesight, but will it die in short order?

Thanks for the help :)

Current Mood: curious

I am running Tiger 10.4.11. Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.16. iMac. Approx. 4.5 years old.

In the last couple of months I am getting a screen that comes down saying that MacOS X has quitted unexpectedly and to restart the computer. It usually happens when I've been editing a flash website or using Photoshop. Sometimes it will happen 3-4 times a day and then it might not do it for a week. Should I be worried? Could my computer just die from this? I'm getting a lot of the spinning beach ball with this.

Would upgrading to Snow Leopard rectify this problem? Also if i do upgrade to Snow Leopard, will the $39 upgrade be enough?

Should I be considering getting a new computer?

Sorry, not overly computer savvy but I think I need to get to the bottom of this ASAP.

X posted.

Late 2004 iBook G4, running Tiger.

( Screen pics behind cut )

Started Wednesday night. Has happened every time computer has been booted since then, either before boot-up has been completed (pic 1) or several minutes after (pic 2).

I'm assuming this is a logic board failure, but haven't had confirmation from anyone else yet. Thoughts?

Current Music: Vas - Varuna

I've recently found that iTunes has a reasonably priced season pass for my favourite tv show in hd format BUT after my last great iTunes wipe and general iTunes bugginess, I need to be about to fully backup the files.

Now I know the brought tv shows have a block on backing up to DVD - stupid if you ask me as you are basically paying for a digital dvd... but stepping away from my iTunes Store issues... Is they an application for MacOSX that will remove the block/convert the iTunes files and allowing me to backup my brought media? I'm crazy paranoid after having to re-buy stuff post-crash in the past, and also would like the option of watching on my TV or in QuickTime if iTunes decides not to like me :P

What the hell is the "Drop Box" for?


I've had this MacBook for a year and a half now and I don't know what that is for.

When I installed Skype it asked me if I would like it launched at startup and at the time I thought that would be a good idea. I have since changed my mind but cannot find how to stop it launching at startup; there seems to be nothing in Skype preferences.

Can anyone help please?

I am running Mac Os 10.5.8 on a MacBook Pro.

I have a 13.3" Macbook Pro (late 2009) running 10.6.5 with 5GB RAM and a 160GB HDD. I also have a 32GB USB flash drive.

I would like to partition the flash drive as follows:
- partition 1: 7GB (SL install disc)
- partition 2: 4GB (Win7Ult install disc)
- partition 3: 1GB (Ubuntu install disc)
- partition 4: 20GB (exFAT/storage)

I've tried using Disc Utility to partition the drive using the GUID option and the MBR option. I've tried simply copying the contents of the Win7Ult and Ubuntu discs into the partitions (having formatted both as FAT32 and exFAT). I've tried using dd to restore the disc images to the partitions.

So far nothing has worked. When I restart the Mac and hold down the option key, only the Mac's HDD comes up.

Am I missing something? Am I doing it wrong? Is it just not possible with a flash drive? Should I try with a 20GB external HDD (USB/FW400) that I have? Should I just give up?

TIA…

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Current Location: At home
Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: Tighten Up - The Black Keys

Computer: os 10.6.4

Printer: Lexmark x4600 series

I followed the installation guide The printer recognizes the wi-fi network. My computer recognizes the printer has been installed but says it's "offline." When I attach the usb cable the computer suddenly says the printer is now online and it will print.

I downloaded and installed a couple of drivers from the lexmark website and the gutenburg package. Still no go when the printer is not attached via usb.

The manual and mac help has no suggestions so I'm hoping somebody here can help!

Current Mood: frustrated