Bought a PB, anything I need to know?

[agentbristow]

I just bought a G4 Powerbook (550Mhz, 512MB Ram, DVD-Rom, 20Gb Hard Drive) and I really want to know everything about it, so i can take good care of it. Is there anything I should know about the PowerBook now to help out? And how is it on games, like Halo, or will it do Halo?

[_pb_boi]

Congrats on the Powerbook!

To be honest, I'm not sure about playing Halo - I have a 1GHz Powerbook G4 and I don't *think* it will handle Halo, or at least, that's what I assume.

Your best bet is to try it out first. All the best mate :)

Andy.

[keysersoze]

Congrats on the Powerbook!

To be honest, I'm not sure about playing Halo - I have a 1GHz Powerbook G4 and I don't *think* it will handle Halo, or at least, that's what I assume.

Your best bet is to try it out first. All the best mate :)

Andy.

I don't think ANYTHING will handle Halo (well, an xbox would). I don't speak from personal experience, but I heard it a total bunk game, performance-wise. So if you play it and aren't happy, don't be too upset! Just get CoD or MOH which work great (although you may have to play around with the settings).

[virividox]

it can do halo but not very well; the new pb are okay tho with it i think 1.5 performs reasnably well; but the 1 ghz are just acceptable

[onemoof]

If you want to play games buy an Xbox. Otherwise your chasing an impossible target. It sounds like you need at least a fast G5 to even think about Halo

[mkrishnan]

I think getting a console and keeping all your games on it and off your PB is a very good maintenance suggestion. :)

I'm assuming this is your first Apple, or at least first OS X one -- you didn't say. The one maintenance thing in the Apple world I'm not totally up on, but which seems to explain a lot of problems people run into is "repairing permissions" -- it has to do with the privileges users and system processes have with respect to system files. It doesn't really have an analog AFAIK in the windows world, but its a good thing to do periodically to keep stuff smooth running.

It's not in the sys prefs and it isn't something that the computer seems to scream at you to do. Just something people on the boards seem to recommend. You do it with the program called Disk Utility that's in Applications/Utilities.

I don't know if there's a FAQ out there on this (I couldn't find one), so someone else would probably do better to explain in more detail, but you can look here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712

Oh, and make sure you keep a handkerchief handy to clean up your drool off the PB...you're gonna love it! :D

[rueyeet]

It really surprised me how little care and feeding the Mac needs. There's really just a few things:


Get yourself a backup strategy and back up your Mac!
Consider running some kind of anti-virus software. So far, there aren't any virii for OS X, but you CAN pass along Windows viruses in email attachments and such.
Run Software Update every so often. Best bet is to read sites like Macintouch ("http://www.macintouch.com) to know when updates are available, and whether they've caused widespread problems. Or just set Software Update to check automatically. The longest interval it allows is once a week.
After running Software Update, repair permissions.
There's some Unix jobs your Mac will run overnight if left on, and not asleep. They clean caches and do other under-the-hood tune-up things.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, that's it, for a superbly well-maintained OS X machine. Of the above, I run Software Update maybe once every few weeks, reading Macintouch first to make sure. Every blue moon or so, I'll run the Unix maintenance thingys manually from the Terminal, since my laptops are closed and asleep most of the time. I've had no problems stemming from my lackadaisical attitude towards proper system maintenance.

[7on]

Leave a piece of paper between the screen and keys when your PB is closed. TiBooks seem to leave a residue (not really scratches) on the screen from the keyboard. You might want to upgrade the hdd, and that's fine. I'd suggest it (mainly because mine has a 60GB and there's no way I could manage with 20GB in my main rig). Either that or get an external. Older Macs tend to hold up pretty well. One seems to be able to run them as long as the newest software/games isn't a must (however, OS updates seem to be excluded in this argument since they seem to make older machines faster).

Halo will not run on your Machine. Running Halo with everything off or low is barely doable on my machine (still slows to about 20FPS in multi-player games of heavy 16 on 16 combat). You might be able to run Quake 3 on it. And that's about it game wise.

Consider running some kind of anti-virus software. So far, there aren't any viruses for OS X, but you CAN pass along Windows viruses in email attachments and such.
Bad advise. I've never heard of anti-virus apps doing good (PC or Mac). I'm sure he won't forward email attachments with .exe or .pif attachments. That's just crazy. Anti-virus apps just take up RAM and processor cycles. And if any viruses are released for OSX, Apple will fix it. Microsoft even fixes virus problems with patches. Most people just don't ever update Windows.

[agentbristow]

All this advice is good, and this isnt really my first Mac, or my first OS X mac, but i only had my other one for about a month so I only know so much. And also, im a gamer so i have all three consoles, but i couldnt find out the graphics card info for this powerbook, so I didnt have any clue about the FPS ratings. Anyways, thanks for the info, and especially the repair permissions stuff i never knew that. But if you have more info for me, please tell me. Thanks

[PlaceofDis]

if your gonna be traveling a lot with it a good bag is a must! but thats obvious, there are some cool apps out there for OSX, take a look at versiontracker.com for em, theres tinkertool, OnyX, Transparent Dock, and much more that can help you to personalized your computer! have fun and enjoy your new system!!

[andypress]

Is this the one- http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5100140383&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1 ?

[BrianKonarsMac]

a 550 will play Halo like crap. a Dual 2 G5 plays Halo like crap. Halo is crap. if you already own an Xbox why play Halo on a computer? Halo 2 will be out soon...not to mention Starcraft: Ghost (WHERE ARE YOU!?)!

[agentbristow]

Nope, I got mine on the forum.

[7on]

http://apple-history.com/frames/body.php?page=gallery&model=pg4_giga

[andypress]

If you don't mind, for how much?

[agentbristow]

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