Living With The iBook Long Term

This is a Motor Trend-type long term review of my iBook, now four years old and still chugging along well. Cars should have this kind of endurance.

Four years and counting.

Well, you know me. I have always wanted the perfect writer’s computer. One with a minimal keyboard with 55 full sized keys on a nine inch base, with a comparable wide screen above it, and little else, including any drives. And two pounds, maximum.

But, there still isn’t any such device, and it looks like Apple is not going to make one any time in the foreseeable future.

Instead, I have lived with a 12 inch iBook on my lap for the past few years. It is nice, sitting in my recliner, in front of the big TV and Stereo in our den, listening, watching, thinking – and writing with such a sweet computer on my lap.

This iBook weighs in at 4.9 pounds, being the 500 MHz model, now four years old. Lucky for me, since we bought it right after the 466 MHz 6.9 pound iBook was discontinued.

Originally, this iBook was my wife’s, gotten so she could complete her degree. I inherited it after we bought her a new iMac desktop model a year and a half ago. So you can see it had already taken quite a pounding once I got it.

Before that, I was using a Linux box mini ITX that my son and I had built into a small enclosure with a super fast hard drive, flat screen monitor, and assorted goodies. That thing was always trouble, despite using the supereasy Linspire OS. The last time it died, I picked up and started using the largely unused iBook, and never looked back.

I said it is a sweet computer, and it is. Easy to hold on your lap, not too hot underneath, with a large enough screen and a great keyboard.

It doesn’t have a Combo drive, so I can’t burn CDs from it, but I use a large capacity USB keychain drive to both back up and move data, so the lack of the burner drive is no big deal.

I am not all that happy with the touchpad on the iBook, but I use it without ever thinking about it very much, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. A tiny two button mouse would be great, but then it would be awkward on my lap in the recliner anyway.

This iBook is fast enough to do most anything, except to watch video online. Even over our cable modem, it has high drop rates, so it is hard to check out the new CARS trailer. The cable modem is the fastest connection to the Internet you can have on a computer, but it is the 500 MHz processor speed that is the bottleneck here. I can, however, watch DVDs or listen to CDs just fine. iTunes works well too, without dropping bits even when I am writing or surfing. But, since I have TiVo and cable, right in front of me, I rarely watch movies on the iBook.

The tiny built-in speakers are pretty good, but using a headset with a booster is much better, especially for a partially deaf guy like me.

What is wrong with this iBook?

Very little. Somewhere along the line, the TAB key got itself lost, but the key still works, since there is a nub underneath that you can hit instead. How did it get lost? Somewhere between my wife owning the iBook, and my using it, it just walked away. She blames me for that, but what’s new? You know, you can’t buy just one key for this keyboard – anywhere?

I don’t know if other people using the iBook have problems with keys going away or falling off, or not. A few people have said they have this problem too. After all, the keyboard is SO thin. The keys are made of durable plastic, but the way they connect to the substrate is by way of a minimal rubber nub.

My wife hates touching the iBook now, because there seems to be a bit of dog/cat hair gunk (or worse) under most of the center keys. Guess sitting here and using the iBook every day and night, over a year’s time, the stuff has accumulated. It is true my black Lab and my black cat most always nap at my feet, so the keyboard has gotten a definite black cast to it, under those semi-transparent white keys.

I have tried blowing the stuff out with a can of compressed air, but all I succeeded in doing was blowing a couple of the end keys off. They reattached easily enough, but there wasn’t any hair or goop under those.

Perhaps I should go online and look for a tool to unsnap all the keys and then clean the thing off with a tiny paint brush.

Or, I could just buy a new keyboard for under $70 online.

But I do keep the computer relatively clean. I have always used KemWipes on the keyboard, screen and touchpad on a regular basis, to keep the iBook all clean on the surfaces. This is something everyone should to to their computers, since the surface of most keyboards harbor more bacteria than a toilet seat.

But even doing that is not clean enough for my wife, whose office, computer and peripherals are like an Intel clean room. She is probably the woman who instituted the phrase, “all men are slobs/pigs/beasts/et.al.”

Me? Nah. I am as clean and unscruffed as the next man. What’s the big deal? My computer works well, and looks clean (except under those few keys), but you can’t touch that part of the computer anyway.

The other thing that is wrong with the iBook I am using is that about a month ago, it would suddenly go to sleep while I was working. Turns out that it wasn’t really going to sleep, since in the right light, you could still see the desktop. It took using a flashlight, and moving the cursor to the upper left hand corner, clicking on the Apple menu, and hitting the Enter key nine times, to actually put it to sleep, so it could be woke again by touching a key. This was the only way to get the backlight to come on again.

What had happened is that the connection cable between the screen and the base has gotten too much use – too much bending at the hinge, and so it got a little frayed. A replacement cable is $40 bucks online, and requires a complete disassembly of the iBook. You can get the whole schmeal about this at the Discussion forum at Apple.com

But, if I never close the lid and manually put the iBook to sleep from the Apple menu, the thing works just fine. So that is what I do for now. I just set the iBook asleep on the little table next to my recliner with the lid open. Works fine.

The final thing is that the battery slowly began to lose power a few months ago, so that now it only has a few minutes of life. But I leave the iBook plugged in to the wall with its little power brick, so that is not a problem either. At least it doesn’t keep me from using the iBook to do serious work. New batteries for this model run between $90 and $130, but you should buy it from Apple even if it is more, because some places sell really sub-standard units. Apple gives a good warranty on theirs.

What is to come?

All in all, this $1600, four year old, iBook is a trouper, and I have written nearly a quarter million words on it. Lots of stories, blogs, articles, a bunch of replies to forums and emails, and a couple of novels too. That should say something about the excellent design and the quality of manufacturing of this particular Apple computer.

But, fixing what is wrong with the screen cable, getting a new keyboard and battery adds up to a sizable hunk of change. I should just bite the bullet and buy a new MacBook instead. Apple does have a rebate plan that would allow me to turn in (recycle) this old iBook on a new model, so that I would not have to keep it around or feel guilty by junking it. This iBook has too much use to really try to sell it to anyone, and if I fixed everything on it, I probably wouldn’t break even selling it.

I still wish I had a smaller MacBook option, though, but I don’t.

The new MacBook, just introduced, is slightly bigger than this iBook, with a wider screen (13.3 inches) but is no heavier on your lap. However, it does have an Eyesight camera, a Combo drive and is a heck of a lot faster.

I do wonder though, if I can get used to typing on those chicklets they call keys on the new MacBook. I also wonder if it will be a lot hotter on my lap too, since Apple seems to have some issues with their thermal paste, or its lack, under the CPU.

Well, since this iBook still works, and I can still write, surf and listen to music, perhaps I will wait a while and see if the new MacBook is a good replacement or not. Maybe I should go the distance and see just how long it could last.

We have a few other long lasting Macs around. A neat little Color Classic II, and a bunch of Mac LCs. Most of these sit in the classroom of a private school where my wife and I teach part time, and one belongs to my elderly mother who plays Klondike and Shanghai on it. Where we live, you can buy old Macs like these for under $20 at the thrift stores.

If I thought the new MacBook couldn’t fill the bill, there is always the more expensive MacBook Pro with real metal keys, properly shaped, that also light up. But even that new laptop Mac has heat issues, and it is a bit heavier too. Besides, it has a 15 inch screen, which means the whole laptop will be much bigger.

Maybe I just need to watch for a used newer model iBook for sale.

– and keep hoping that some day Apple will build an Intel eMate replacement.

Regards,
Roger Born
“Sigs are so overrated.”

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