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Happy Bday ibook : ) !!! When will my ibook die ??

I

igmolinav

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 15, 2005
1,126
4
Hi,

In one month, more or less, my ibook G4 will turn 4 : ) !!! It has been great having it around and I am most satisfied : ) !!!

However, after four years with it. One wonders, how long is the life of an Apple laptop ?? or for that matter of any laptop. This is my first laptop, so no previous experience.

I use my ibook G4 to surf the internet and with very simple applications. I don't give it much work, beside the five to six hours I use it everyday. I just wonder if there is a life span to my computer ??

Thank you very much, very kind regards,

igmolinav.
 
I have a PowerBook G4, 667 DVI, circa 2002, and it is still running well (except for a shorted out screen I replaced). Many times, it still runs circles around new PCs.

My dad is using my "old" PowerBook, an original G4 500, and it is running excellently.

TEG
 
Hi,

Thank you for your answer : ) !!!

How old is that Powerbook G4 500 ??

Kind regards,

igmolinav.
 
I have an iBook G3 that I used as primary computer until about a month ago. It is six years old as of April and it still runs great, considering it is only 900MHz. From my experience, Apple computers are far more likely to have problems right out of the box than after years of use, but that's just me.
 
My iBook G4 is 5 years old and runs perfectly. It survived fire and water, and a fall from 3 metres when it fell off the theatre room when i was on a lecture in my university.
I'm going to buy a new MBP ubody when snow leopard launches. so long iBook, you've been a great friend, and now it's time to say goodbye, my mom in Russian will use it. I will ship it to my mom, she doesn't what computer is, so i'm gona send it to her.:apple:
30GB hard drive is small, so at home i'm running it from external 320GB fire wire hard drive.
 
iBook G4 going on 5 years now and is still going strong as ever!! and as someone else said, it is still running circles around some of my friends new (low end) PCs!! Good luck!
 
I just this week replaced my 3 year old iBook G4 with a uMBP. It was fine once I maxed out the RAM and added a 120 GB hard drive a couple of years ago. Now I'm doing a 7 pass erase on it as I type, getting it ready to sell. I loved it for about 18 months, then I was ready to upgrade. But that's more to do with me than the iBook. ;)
 
If you don't encounter problems within the first 18 months, it will probably last another 10 years or more. You might have to replace the hard drive, but maybe not even that. I sold a 9 year old Powerbook G3 last year (no problems except it lost its rubber feet) and my 5 year old 12" Powerbook G4 is still alive and used nearly everyday.
 
Ntombi said:
Now I'm doing a 7 pass erase on it as I type, getting it ready to sell.
Click to expand...

lol. Sorry, but:

So how many overwrite passes do you need [to wipe your data]? One. Data is so incredibly difficult to recover after being overwritten that even people with electron microscopes, advanced statistical tools, and specialized programming skills are not going to be able to recover data from your drive. It just isn't going to happen. You can search the Internet for examples where overwritten data were recovered and you will not find even one event where a person recovered more than a couple of bits of a byte.

So the paranoid can rest easy. They can follow the Department of Defense standards to help them sleep better at night, but one overwrite is enough to protect your data from being recovered.
 
uberamd said:
lol. Sorry, but:

So how many overwrite passes do you need [to wipe your data]? One. Data is so incredibly difficult to recover after being overwritten that even people with electron microscopes, advanced statistical tools, and specialized programming skills are not going to be able to recover data from your drive. It just isn't going to happen. You can search the Internet for examples where overwritten data were recovered and you will not find even one event where a person recovered more than a couple of bits of a byte.

So the paranoid can rest easy. They can follow the Department of Defense standards to help them sleep better at night, but one overwrite is enough to protect your data from being recovered.
Click to expand...
If there's no reason not to, why not? I'm selling it to a stranger, and it's not like I was using it anyway. I've completely switched over to my MBP, so it's just sitting there waiting for me to clean it. I may as well take advantage of the time. :p
 
If you made it to 4 years already, then you might not have to worry about your graphics chip effing up on you which requires a new logic board. Changing the hard drive enough is not for the faint of heart.

Only other thing to worry about on an older computer is it's hard drive, make regular and frequent backups. :)
 
Hi,

Thank you very much for your answers again : ) !!!

Very kind regards,

igmolinav.
 
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