I decided to break down and get a new computer, two of them actually, because all three of my laptops are running on processors that are quickly being phased out by Apple. I’d like to do a little video editing and my PowerPC G3 and G4 machines won’t even run the newest version of iMovie. The new version of iPhoto with Faces looks like fun too and that won’t run on my older machines either so it was definitely time to upgrade.
The machines that are going to start to fade into the background at home, and in my office, are:
A PowerBook G4 Titanium (1Ghz with 1Gig RAM)
A PowerBook G3 Pismo (900 Mhz upgraded process & 768 MB RAM)
A PowerBook G4 Aluminum 12″ (1.33 Ghz & 1Gig RAM)
The Titanium & Pismo have DVD drives that have been made region free through the use of a very nice firmware patch so they will still be useful for playing DVD’s from the U.S. and Japan. The little 12″ PowerBook is going to become my wife’s personal laptop as it is still able to keep up with most of the daily tasks required of a laptop.
Anyway, before I start rambling on any further, I wanted to quickly chronicle a big mistake I made with the used MacBook Air I recently purchased. The OS had been shaved down and was originally installed with Japanese as the main language so I decided to reinstall everything and start out with a completely fresh system. I got out my Mac OSX Leopard package that I purchased from a store last year and proceeded to install it on the MacBook Air using the SuperDrive that came with the Air. Once the install was finished I was a little perplexed to see the SuperDrive dead. The strange thing was that it ejected the DVD but then when I restarted the Air the drive no longer responded to anything, no power at all. I also started noticing other odd things like; the track pad on the Air was very jumpy and didn’t seem right, for lack of a better way to describe it.
In short, you have to use the discs that come with the MacBook Air because there are proprietary drivers etc. for the SuperDrive, the special trackpad etc. Luckily I finally figured out that I can shutdown, restart while holding option, and then insert the Software DVD in the SuperDrive and reinstall. It took me a while to figure all this out but once I did I was able to reinstall everything (in English) and am writing this post now on my ‘refreshed’ MacBook Air.
Experience is the best teacher but doesn’t always get you to your destination in the shortest amount of time.
Peace
Jason
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