Ask Jacob

The files you watch via Quicktime or Windows Media Player are often different file types than the ones you are watching online. Most TV channel, in-browser, content is Adobe Flash format. This has been a sore subject with Mac users for many years. Flash playback on Mac computers has historically been a resource hog, quickly driving up the system fans and stealing system performance from other applications. Just recently Adobe has released a new version of Flash for the Mac that tries to address these performance issues. In my most recent testing I have found the performance of Flash 10 to be much better and more reliable. It is particularly better during the downloading phase of the process - that is where you’re experiencing the greatest issue of choppy video. Your computer is having issue caching the content from the website and trying to play that same video back to you. I would recommend that you update your copy of Flash here.

If that fails to help, or the site you are watching video from is not using Flash, then you may just need to pause the video playback and wait a few minutes until the video has fully cached in the browser. There is often a secondary progress bar indicating the amount of video downloaded.

Upgrading a Mac OS is a fairly painless process, particularly when the new OS has been out this long. Mac OS 10.5.5 is a stable version and I have had very few issues as of late. If you are using Office 2004, then you might have the occasional issue, but Office 2008 works well (as well as any Microsoft app works anyway). Office 2004 does not always perform perfectly on Intel systems, but it should have been already been an issue for you in Tiger so it may not bother you. When moving to Leopard most things on Mac computers will work the same or better.

You do not have to upgrade your MacBook Pro to use Leopard, but now would be a good time. The new Unibody MacBook Pros are, hands down, the best-designed Apple Laptops I have ever seen. If you can afford it, then save your Leopard upgrade money and put it towards the new MacBook Pro. You will fall in love even before you turn it on; I did.

A forgotten password is a common occurrence on iPods, so Apple has a few ways to help get you past a locked iPod. The first way you can connect the iPod to the computer it was originally configured on, and open iTunes. When you disconnect iPod from the computer, it will no longer be locked. You then can go into the preferences and turn off the lock. If you don’t have access to the original computer or it just does not work, you can jump to the second method. The best fix for any iPod problem is the classic “restore your iPod to factory settings.” That this will erase all data on your iPod and take you back to day one, but you can just add your music and data back to iPod from iTunes. This is the true benefit of the iPod / iTunes relationship.

I was a Windows IT guy in another life but I quickly turned into a resident Mac guy for the Art Department systems. I got that job precisely because I rarely “clam up.” The same is true now but in the reversed direction, just forgive me if I am not as polished with the Windows XP world.

You could be encountering a problem with having a “Fixed IP” address in your work’s network. Many IT people use fixed IPs to control network access, preventing unauthorized computers being brought in from home. Follow these steps to make sure you have your system set to request an IP address from the DHCP server in your Airport router.

To enable DHCP in Windows XP, follow these steps:
• On the Start Menu, select Control Panel > Network Connections.
• Right-click the appropriate connection name and select Properties.
• Select TCP/IP Protocol, and then select Properties.
• On the General tab, select Obtain an IP address automatically.
• Click OK.

If it does not automatically obtain an IP address, you may want to restart the XP computer. If that has no effect make sure your Airport Extreme router is set to share its network connection via DHCP. Also you may want to try temporarily removing any Access password you set on the router, just to see if this is a password issue. If removing the Airport password helps, please re-enable it and let me know and we can try to get your XP system to use the password.

I would certainly not call the loss of FireWire a common issue, but I have seen it before. The B&W G3 had many FireWire issues because it used an add-on card that suffered power surges. Throughout the years I have seen FireWire fail on the logic board, and there is little that can be done to revive it. Before you write off the FireWire ports, check Apple’s Support pages and see if there is a Firmware update for your system. This is the software on the logic board and it can often resolve these issues. You should also test whether it is a software issue by trying to use some of the FireWire features that do not rely on the operating system on your hard drive. If you have another Mac computer, boot up your problem Mac holding down the [ T ] key. This will boot it into Target Disk mode - which makes your Mac into a FireWire hard drive. Connect the two Mac computers with a FireWire cable and see if it shows up on the other computers Desktop. If it does not work, then it is probably dead FireWire, but if it does, then you may need to reinstall your OS on the problem Mac.

If your FireWire ports are in fact dead, then you can buy a LaCie 107355 FireWire 400 PCI Card to replace the internal ports.

Both are great questions. It is my recommendation to spread your RAM configuration out to fill as many slots as possible without restricting your future upgrade needs. Filling the first four RAM slots evenly is a good idea. If your budget is geared to 4GB of total RAM, then four 1GB sticks is the way to go. Later you can put four 2GB sticks in the system and move the 1GB sticks to the higher slots. Here is a link to Apple’s Mac Pro RAM compatibility chart.

A Mac computers RAM setup is a lesser issue than the Graphics card. You need that bigger card for Motion. In some tests of the 2600 XT vs. the 8800 GT card, the 8800 GT card is nearly twice as fast. It will be the best $150.00 upgrade you could buy and a necessity for your graphics work.

Right now I am a big fan of LaCie’s Ethernet Disc for home-based network storage. Not only does it support PC and Mac computer file sharing, but it has a built in iTunes server. This will let you drop a library on the drive and have it appear as a shared iTunes library that all iTunes software can see. There is also a USB port on the drive used to backup your data to USB hard drive. If it holds your full library make sure you keep a backup some place, all drives will fail eventually.

The startup chime is mostly controlled by the Mac computers system volume that was set prior to being shut down or restarted. Under normal circumstances the volume information is stored in the PRAM, and on next boot your Mac will load that information into the active settings and then play the sound. There are times that this is not the case. If your PRAM battery has a low charge, the volume will default to its highest settings. This is the same when you” Zap the PRAM” via holding down the [option] [command] [R] and [P] keys.

Also a software glitch or system crash can have unpredictable results on the startup volume. If you can’t control the startup volume with the system volume controls, then check that your system has a good PRAM battery.

It depends greatly on what TV you have, If it is a HDTV then you would want to use these two cables; Apple Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter and Digital Video Cable - 1 x DVI-D - 1 x HDMI - 6ft - Black.

For standard definition TV you would want to use Apple’s Mini-DVI to Video Adapter.

Regardless of your TV’s video connection you will need the 6ft Startech audio cable to transfer the Audio to the TV. You can always use the MacBook speakers, but those may not have high enough output for you.

Your system can be kept awake when an application is actively working or crashed, regardless of Energy Saver settings. Older applications in particular have problems sleeping, and this cannot be fixed with “one little pill.” A good test would be to quit all running applications and see if the computer sleeps properly. If it does, then you just need to open application one at a time and put the computer to sleep in order to find the offending application.

If the computer still fails to sleep after you quit all running applications, then you will have to do further investigation. The best tool for this is Activity Monitor, which can be found on OS X Mac computers in the Utilities folder. In Activity Monitor, use the “Show” popup menu to display Active Process. After quitting all open applications, make note of all the non-Apple processes running. One of those processes could be at the heart of the problem. You can then force-quit suspect applications in Activity Monitor, and see if that allows your system to sleep again.

Practically any FireWire or USB drive would work for you. You could go with a stackable drive and hub combo that looks like it is part of your Mini, like this NewerTech 160 GB MiniStack Hub. Or you could get a slickly styled one (I own this one) like this LaCie 500GB Hi Speed USB 2.0 Drive.

I would also recommend that you upgrade to Leopard, if you have not done so already. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Time Machine feature is the perfect background backup utility for you. Every hour your Book will be backed up and you could go back to a previous version to recover deleted chapters.

There are two types of adapter cables that work for connecting MacBooks to an external monitor. The type of adapter you will need varies depending on what display connector your monitor or projector uses. Most new displays can use the all-digital signal of a DVI connection with a DVI to mini-DVI cable adapter. Older or less detailed displays use the analog Apple Mini-DVI to VGA adapter.

There is also a third adapter, called an Apple Mini-DVI to Video adapter, that allows you to connect your Mac to your television. If you travel often, it may benefit you to buy both monitor cables and the TV cable, so you can always connect your MacBook.

Yep, we think the screen on the 24 iMac is better than the 20″ iMac, and not just four inches better. The display is brighter, by close to a third the brightness of the 20″ iMac. This is important with glossy screens because it can counteract glare from overhead lights or a window, while still providing sharp color. Also the display has a greater viewing angle, 178° verses 160°. What this means is that you will have better color representation across the screen as your eye moves around. The lower the viewing angle the more washed-out images look from the corners of your eyes.

On a much more anecdotal note, I have yet to hear anyone complain about their 20″ iMac. Whatever you’ve heard could just be the number of 20″ iMacs sold compared to the 24″ iMac, but still, of the rare complaints I hear regarding iMac screens, all are about 20″ iMacs.

One of the wonderful advantages of the new Mac Pro is the ability to reconfigure the system over time. Drives can be easily added, optical drives can be added, and video cards can be upgraded or added. The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT video card can be moved to PCIe slot #2 down the road to make room for the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600. The only concern with adding extra video cards in a Mac Pro is that the PCIe bus supports 300 Watts. The 8800 draws 110 watts, combine that with the 175 wattdraw of the FX5600, and your video cards will eat up most of the PCIe bus’s power.

Currently the aftermarket FX4500 or FX5600 cards are not Mac compatible. There is much discussion about flashing a PC Nvidia card with Mac compatible EFI ROM but that is a little risky. You can also get the service part version of the card (PN 661-4461) but at an inflated price, apposed to buying it in a Mac Pro. If you don’t think you will need the better graphics card for six months, then waiting for a Mac FX5600 upgrade card to be produced may work for you. There are no guarantees that such a card will ever be produced but it may be worth the risk to wait and see. If you know that you must have this card in a few months, then you should just “bite the bullet” and order it in a Mac Pro now.

With the introduction of the Quicksilver G4 Apple stopped including a CD/DVD eject button on the face of the computer. Apple had switched to using a keyboard base eject button and with the proper extension in OS 9, that button would eject the CD tray. IF you do not have an Apple keyboard with the Eject button, then pressing [F12] will work in its place, but only under OS X. In OS 9 you had to use a script that is hard to find these days.

Apple included an eject script in the Eject Extras folder on original Quicksilver OS 9 install. This script would eject the CD/DVD tray when clicked on. There is also an eject button in the OS 9 version of iTunes that can be used. If all else fails, you can restart the computer holding down the mouse button and that will force the CD/DVD drive to eject. Here are Apple’s instructions on how to mechanically eject a disk from the DVD drive on a Power Mac G4.

If the drive has failed or is a CD-RW only drive, then you should upgrade it with an MCE internal 20X Power Mac upgrade.

Please also consider that if your copy of Tiger is gray in color, it may be hard coded to the computer it shipped with. Black-labeled OS X install discs work on most Macs, but gray-labeled Apple media is intended to restore computers to original factory condition.

The addition of Firewire 800 was a significant upgrade to the Aluminum iMac line. FW 800 opened up a large number of pro peripherals for use with the iMac, making it an alternative to the Mac Pro for some. Although there is one FireWire 400 and one FireWire 800 port, they do share the same bus. In most cases this is not an issue but it could be if your device requires the entire bus to function properly. That is a situation that would call for a Mac Pro with an extra FireWire card dedicated to your bus-hungry device.

It is difficult to be certain, but what you describe sounds like a Backup / PRAM Battery issue. The same issue would also manifest in your clock being reset after you remove all power sources from your computer. Newer Technology makes a replacement battery for your system, part number NWTBATPG3WS. Consider replacing this battery as part of the troubleshooting process.

The other possibility is the sleep reed switch magnet, that indicates that the lid is closed, was not installed properly after the hinges were replaced. This is less likely but it is possible. Damage to the sleep reed switch, or misalignment, could cause a variety of sleeping issues.

Displays, in general, often are not worth the cost to repair. This is true for not only Apple displays, but for any brand of monitor. Three years is the longest that Apple will cover a display’s repair costs and that requires the purchase of AppleCare for the display. Without AppleCare, it is covered for the Apple standard of 1 year. Sometimes Apple identifies higher than average rates of failure in certain products. When that happens they will extend the repair warranty on a product. Those products and conditions are listed on Apple’s exchange repair page.

Of course class action law suites are not listed on that page. This is the link to the Apple 17″ Display Lawsuit you mentioned, which has already ended. The settlement covered a yearly decreasing dollar amount for the repair covering to that three-year mark. As it stands the display can still be fixed if it is just an inverter board, like what is described in the lawsuit. That part (when you can find it) costs about $70 and Labor could run another $45.00 to install the part. The product is marked as “vintage” and that designation could make it difficult for you to find the parts in stock.

It may be better to invest that money in a newer Acer 19″ display.

Looking through Automator, I did not see a good way to export from Pages a MS document attached to an email. You could probably use an Applescript to achieve this but I am not a big user of Applescript, so that is not a definite yes.

Apple includes the built-in Automator function that will let you email a PDF of your document from the print screen. To access this feature, select “Print” from your File menu and then click on the PDF button. The drop-down menu will have a “Mail PDF” option. Select that option and Mail will open up a new document with that PDF attached.

I assume (ha!) you are using the Mac Pro wireless upgrade kit to add 802.11n to your pre-N MacBook Pro. In that case there is sometimes an “extra” antenna cable. There are two things to remember when dropping one antenna from a three-cable wire harness. The first is that you want to cap the metal end of the unused antenna cable. The second is that you want to use the black and blue cables with the new card, and cap the grey cable. If the cables are not color coded, the middle cable is the right one to cap.

Boy, those both sound like messy problems. Your problems in Apple Mail sound like a classic “Envelope Index” issues. The solution for that is to close mail and delete the Envelope Index file in your /Users/[your-user-account]/Library/Mail/ folder. Then restart mail and it should re-index from your saved mail.

The Microsoft office issue could be more difficult to deal with. When you removed Office did you use the official “Remove Office” application? It is located here: /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Additional Tools/Remove Office/Remove Office.app and is the best way to remove an Office install. After you uninstall Office, make sure that you look through the /Users/[your-user-account]/Library/Preferences/ folder for left over Office settings that could also be corrupt. Then, once again, install office.

Glad to hear you are joining the Mac community! Unfortunately the current 20″ iMac can’t have its base removed easily. The process would require the complete dismantling of the iMac, and there would be no way to stand the Mac up once the base was removed. The 24″ iMac is able to have its stand removed and it can be mounted to a VESA compliant mount kit.

If the new 24″ iMac is short enough without its stand, this may be a good option for you. You could buy a VESA wall mounting plate and attach it to the back of the roll-top desk. The iMac would connect to the plate with the adapter above.

It is not exactly what you hoped for, but perhaps it is just the excuse you need to buy that bigger iMac.

There is an easy way to get your Mac back to a “Factory Fresh” install of OS X. A set of Install / Restore DVDs is shipped with all modern new Macs, and are most often grey in color. Look through the box the mouse came in to find the discs. Insert the disc and restart the computer holding down the [C] key. When you boot up of the DVD you will pick your language. Then, from the Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. In there select your hard drive and use the Erase tab to wipe the drive clean. After you are done, close Disk Utility and continue with the installation from that disk. After you have finished installing, the computer will reboot, taking you back to the original “new Mac” screen.

What you describe sounds like it could be a Video RAM issue or an LCD screen defect. When the lines appear on the photos shown on screen those same lines do not print on the image, do they? As long as the lines stay on the screen you can be confident it is a video issue of some sort. The difficult thing with the iMac design is that most do not have “Video Cards.” Part of being an All-in-One design is combining the video card and logic board into one unit. It saves on space but it will require replacing the whole logic board, which is costly. It may also be a problem with the cable that runs through the neck of the G4 iMacs, this can wear out and may need to be replaced. The whole neck has to be replaced but that would probably be cheaper than a logic board.

Both repairs should be done through an Apple authorized service center.

I have been a fan of the Addlogix USB Wi-Fi adapter. It will work with Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, on an open USB 2.0 port. The USB 2.0 port is there requirement and I have heard mixed reports of it working on some USB 1.1 ports. Your best bet would be to get a USB 2.0 PCI card to add wireless to the G3 tower.

I am a big proponent of using your Mac for TV watching and recording. Most times I recommend the EyeTV 250 Plus because it has a hardware encoder for recording analog video. In your case you want to watch TV on the road, (figuratively; not when driving I hope), and for that I would recommend using the ultra portable EyeTV Hybrid. It has many of the same features as the 250 Plus but is about the size of a pack of gum. You will not have the internal hardware encoder but the EyeTV Hybrid is USB powered and would work in many remote places.

Both units ship with the EyeTV software, which makes all the EyeTV products shine in the Mac TV market. Both units will need a cable connection or an external antenna. Most TV antenna will work for Digital TV over the Air signals with the EyeTV system but you should look for one that will travel well.

You would want to use Office 2008 for Mac which includes PowerPoint.

You can also purchase Microsoft PowerPoint:Mac 2008 by itself - but for the money it may be better to buy the whole Office suite of applications.

There are other options for making PowerPoint compatible projects but they are not exactly the same. There is the Apple iWork application suite, which has Keynote, a PowerPoint-like application. Keynote will also open PowerPoint presentations, and is generally much easier to work with (as most equivalent apps are to their Microsoft counterparts).

If you’re referring to before purchasing, on every Powermax.com New Mac product page there is an info box listing: Features, Detailed Specs, Rebates, Related Items, and Recommendations. The “Detailed Specs” section contains useful information about the system, including the Installed OS.

On Pre-Owned Mac systems the Operating system installed is part of the main description, right above the price.

If you mean on your computer itself, simply go to “About this Mac” in the upper left hand corner (under the Apple logo). There, it will tell you a little bit about your Mac (more if you select “More Info”), including what version of OS you’re running. Leopard is OS 10.5 (often following by another digit indicating what update has been run on Leopard, for instance, 10.5.5 is of course more up-to-date than 10.5.4), so if you are showing 10.5.x, you have Leopard.

I believe that your friend’s issue is with the image attachment resize option in new versions of Apple Mail. Look at the bottom of the new message window. When an image is attached, the Message size is displayed on the left and a popup menu is on the right. This is the same for new and forwarded emails. From the popup menu you can select one of four options: Small, Medium, Large, and Actual Size. Selecting any of the first three options will change the image to an email-friendly size. Attachments over 2MB can be considered too large by some email applications.

I suspect that when your friend forwards these emails, that popup menu is set to “Small”. If he selects “Actual Size” from the menu, before he sends it, it will come through to the recipient just as he sees it on his computer.

I looked around to see if there is a way to add a delete button to Preview but it would take major editing of the Preview application to add that. Fortunately there is a keyboard combination that could effectively do what you want. In Preview, when you are viewing the image you want to send to the trash, you only need to press the [command] key and [delete] key together. The image will then be sent to the trash.

I cannot be certain but I would suspect this is related to WEP’s sometimes use of hexadecimal equivalents on some access points.

Here is Apple’s tech notes on joining non Apple WEP networks.

The main point being that you may need to add a “$” if a hexadecimal password was required to get the other computer on the network, use the same hex code, but add a “$” in front of it. Also if it is a standard password, use quotes.

There is no internal disk drive for the MacBook Air but you can get a Macbook Air SuperDrive.The other option is to use the disc-sharing feature to “borrow” the optical drive of a computer on your network. The data does not stay on the computer with the optical drive but instead gets relayed over the network to the MacBook Air. It is a cool feature and works well. Macs that are going to share their drive have to enable “DVD or CD Sharing” in the Sharing section of System Preferences. After that, the MacBook Air can request to use that computer’s optical drive.

Classic can often be installed from the original install discs that came with your computer. If your computer came with OS 10.4, there was a “Classic” installer on one of the Gray labeled discs. You did not need to boot up from those disks, just run the installer. Once installed you just need to double click on your old application and Classic will start. You can also install OS 9 on another drive and then use the Classic section in System Preferences to set that drive as your Classic source.

Note, if you upgrade to Leopard, Classic will stop working.

There is no way to uninstall a Mac OS. In most cases you can do an Archive and install of the older OS. This is an install option when booted off the Install Disc and it will move the previous OS to an archive and install a fresh operating system.
To go back to OS 9, you may have to format/erase the drive first. If you do not have personally-created info on the drive, than there is not problem. If you have documents you want to save you should back them up to a CD or other storage device before formatting the drive.

Unfortunately these direct to DVD video cameras are not Mac-compatible, nor do I consider them good cameras. I lost a full wedding's-worth of footage on one of those cameras and swore never to use one again. Years prior, someone filmed my wedding on another direct to DVD camera, I had to make an analog version of the video and then re-digitize it to edit my wedding.

No upgrade to your iMovie will help resolve this connectivity issue. The claim-to-fame for these cameras is that you do not need a computer to edit the footage and trying to put a Mac into the process is a near impossible.

Photo Booth is a simple application, built into most new Macs, that lets you use an iSight camera as a snapshot camera to take your picture. It does let you add crazy effects to the pictures but only before you take the picture. Kids love it, I often forget its there. The more useful application, iPhoto, is included on new Macs or can be bought in the “iLife” package. This lets you mange a large photo library and make adjustments to your photos to correct small imperfections.

There is a type of failure, on the combo analog/optical audio ports, that causes it the unit to think there is always an item plugged in. This happens because the port senses that a non-metallic item has been inserted. This is supposed to indicate that an Optical audio jack is in use.

You can try blowing compressed air into the port - but I have seen few reports where that solves the problem. In most cases, replacing the affected ports is the solution.

An alternative to running the Classic environment is to dual boot your system. When you have a PowerPC-based Mac, like you do, that is pre-Airport Extreme, you have options for running older applications. You can use Classic, which runs OS 9 and OS 9 applications in a virtual computer contained in Mac OS X. This lets you use both OS X and OS 9 applications side-by-side each other.

Dual booting lets you start the computer in OS 9 or OS X. Both versions of the operating system live on the same drive but you can only use one at a time. This is less convenient but lets you run many hardware specific applications that could fail in the Classic OS 9 environment. Try it in Classic but do not be afraid if it does not work for you. You can always boot the computer up in OS 9 via the Startup Disk system preference and try booted up in OS 9. It will likely work one way or another.

Not all text editors support the full range of characters available. Your friend needs to make sure they are typing in an application and font that supports a full Unicode (UTF-8) character set. It may be the application is misunderstanding the Unicode representation of the symbol being inserted. If possible, try a different font.

Like any complex system, an Apple-enabled home entertainment system can be configured more ways than could ever be described in a short article. The basics of using all Apple equipment (with an EyeTV for good measure) makes it easy to add components as needed. The base of your setup is the central iTunes server. To keep prices low while protecting your iTunes library, look at the Drobo external drive enclosure.

Once you have a new destination to store your library., copy it over and then use Apple’s alternate iTunes library instructions to associate with the new library location.

Start sharing that Library and make sure that iTunes will always startup when the computer is turned on by [option] clicking on the iTunes Dock icon and selecting “Open at Login.” For adding new TV content I recommend using an EyeTV device. Most cable companies prevent you from importing shows off the DVR. An EyeTV 250 Plus will let you take control of your DVR needs without fighting the copy protection of most cable content.The EyeTV software will take care of getting your iPod Touch content in proper format and allow you to export Apple TV ready iTunes files. Consider adding an Elgato Turbo.264 Video Encoder to help speed up your video conversions on that G4 tower.I know there are many more options for you but starting with a good media server and building from there is the best way to start.

The best way to get Mac Serial connectivity from a New Mac is to use a Keyspan USB Twin Serial Adapter. There is also this option for PC style serial connections.

It is important to know if the printer you are using has modern print drivers for Mac OS X. The connection is just 50% of the printing equation.

I have always held the opinion that any Intel iMac is the sweet spot for most Mac users. It uses a modern and fast processor, so the next system upgrade is years off. It has more than enough power for basic computer but that allows users to expand and do more, which is why we have Macs.

The existence of a monthly fee is a common concern with the iPod Touch due to it similarity to the iPhone. The answer is “no,” you do not have any monthly fees to pay with the iPod Touch. Apple has been charging for the feature adding software updates to the Touch and some applications cost but it uses Wi-Fi only and cannot switch to the Cell Phone data network like the iPhone. That means that as long as you have access to a Wi-Fi network you do not have to pay to use the iPod Touch.

Have you considered using the Mac Pro’s internal SATA ports via this eSATA extender cable adapter from Newer Tech?

This product works on all Mac Pros and allows you to use the internal SATA ports sitting dormant in your Mac Pro as two eSATA ports. I think this will get you the stability you want without the chipset worries.

There are software packages that can prevent your system from sleeping, even when the lid is closed. Two common ones I have know people to use are InsomniaX and SleepLess

Always use caution with this kind of modification as it can affect the stability of your system.

A lot of time has gone by and Apple does not seem to have any intention of dumping the glossy “iPhone like” iMac screen. I have heard many complaints about this and I only have two practical solutions. The first would be to buy one of our Pre-Owned Intel iMacs, pre-Aluminum. The other option would be to get a smaller-screened 20 inch iMac and a 23″ Apple Cinema HD Display and run them together. I do this at home and extended desktop works perfectly on iMacs. Make the 23″ display the primary and the iMac with its screen can be the pallet monitor.

Mull it over I think it may be the right solution for you. Remember that you will need an Apple Mini-DVI to DVI adapter cable to connect the two together.

Sometimes this can be caused by faulty hardware so you should run the Apple Hardware test that came with your computer on the gray labeled discs. You may also want to make sure you have run all the fan-related firmware updates. Search the Apple support site for “G5 fan” and then sort by downloads. It is also just as possible that the thermal sensors are mis-calibrated. The loud fans of some G5 units can be reduced by re-calibration so they do not run constantly. Unfortunately this is something that has to be done at an Apple Authorized Service center. It should be just the cheapest possible charge for labor only.

Well the display blacking out could be a few things. The system could have gone to sleep; you can wake it by pressing the space bar. The battery could have run out of charge. Press the button on the bottom of the battery to check the charge indication lights. If only one light flashes than it is not charged up. You could have also turned the display brightness down. Turn the brightness back up via the larger of the two “Sun” keys. The big and small suns will be printed on two of the function keys.

It could also be a failed backlight in the display, which is a big problem. You can test that by shining a flashlight on the display and seeing if you can see items on the display but darkened.

It is true that many new Macs have an optical audio in/out port. This is activated by the use of a special cable that has a plastic headphone jack on one end and a Toslink connector on the other end. It's called a Mini to Optical Toslink cable.

You can tell if you have this feature by looking in your System Profiler utility. In the audio section look for a S/P-DIF in and out notation. If you have that, then you can use the above cable.

As for file sharing to the whole hard drive, you need to make sure that you are logging in as an Administrator on the box you are connecting to or you can use a utility to give full access to any user account on the system. The application is called SharePoints.

From your description, it sounds like your computer rebooted into another User account. Do you have multiple user accounts? Try checking the “Accounts” section of your System Preferences to see if you have two accounts. Then change the “Automatic Login” to the proper account in the “Login Options” Section. Enter your password and restart the computer.

This is most likely what has happened. I hope this helps. And stick with the Mac. The additional problems you'd have with a PC will have this small issue pale by comparison.

When your iPhoto 6, or newer, library becomes damaged there is a way to auto-rebuild the library file.

Follow these six steps:

• → Quit iPhoto if it is open.
• → Hold down the Command and Option keys on the keyboard.
• → Open iPhoto.
• → Keep the keys held down until you are prompted to rebuild the library.
• → A dialog will appear with rebuild options. Select the options you want to use.
• → Click Rebuild to begin the rebuild process. This may take a few minutes to complete.

  More information on this can be found by checking out Apple's support page for rebuilding the iPhoto library.

The Apple TV is a special device that connects to HD TVs allowing you to view your iTunes and iPhoto content from your TV. The correct way to connect your MacBook to the analog ports on your TV is with the Apple Mini-DVI to Video Adapter and the S-Video cable and mini stereo jack to RCA cables you mentioned. You may also use an Apple Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter with a DVI to HDMI cable to connect to the HDMI port on your HDTV, if you have one.

I have looked around and did not found any residual support for upgrading the G4 iMac's processor. I remember when this process came about and it involved you sending back your old logic board to be upgraded or exchanged. I was never that fond of this because, unlike other processor upgrades, this required the old processor to be unsoldered and a new processor soldered on; risky business in my book. If it is not a socketed processor, it is not upgradable by my standards.

Even without a processor upgrade that is a good computer for the basics.

This is a wonderful question, one I wish more people would ask. I have found that many parents put little thought into their children’s computer usage. Often the result of this structureless approach is one of two extremes. Some parents choose to keep their kids completely away from computers altogether. Which causes the child to be unskilled with, what has become, a basic tool of our American lives. When the child is final introduced to computing they make judgment mistakes that their more computer savvy peers have already learned to avoid. For instance giving out personal information to stranger online.

The other extreme is the parents that choose to give full access to a computer to a child with absolutely no oversight or support. The best-case scenario for this child is if they destroy the computer before getting into massive amounts of trouble online.

The reason that Parents have these problems is due to the absence of computers from their own childhood. For better or worse we parents tend to draw from our own childhood to guide us in our parenting. Most parents today did not have computers until much later in life and possibly have yet to develop a functional understanding of computers. This is not an option for children living in the industrialized world. So parents need help with the digital side of raising their children. If you are willing to be that person for your nephew’s sake then I would say you are not stupid at all for wanting to get him a computer.

Getting a computer is only the first step. You need to be willing to be the administrator of the computer, or teach the parents. I would recommend sending a computer with Leopard on it so that you can screen share over iChat and make changes from across state lines. Also I would have you make one Administrator account that you use for his parents and your remote administration. Your nephew will have his own user account that you will put the Apple built-in parental controls on. Start with very few privileges. As the child to demonstrate proficiency with the Mac, you can slowly start to open the privileges up on his user account.

It would be best if you could configure the computer completely before sending down south. Test it out logged in as your nephew and make sure that it looks simple and secure. Remember to set the auto login account as his account and make sure his parents do not give him the Administrator user account password.

When it comes to finding a proper computer for him I would discourage you from choosing a laptop. Cheap Mac laptops are great for older children that are allowed to have computers in their rooms. This is because you have to confiscate the computer from time-to-time and this is easy with a laptop. My teenage daughter has a G4 iBook and I have to take it away when she breaks the rules. Younger children need computers with replaceable mice and keyboards. They will get trashed and smaller hands need smaller mice and keys. There are many small input devices available that work well for young children. Any computer given to a young child needs to be kept in a public space, so there can always be adult supervision. An iMac or Mac Mini would be a good choice. A used G5 iMac is close to your price range and the G4 iMac 1GHz would also work for you on the lower end of your budget.

There is much more to think about in regards to rules and instruction for your nephew but this should get you started.

You do not have to be in a war zone to have lost a laptop screen to an accidental drop. Most often, I hear about this happening with systems used in schools, but this scenario can bite anyone. There are several positives in regards to Macs with broken screens. In most cases your computer can still be turned on into what is known as Target Disk mode. Hold down the “T” key when you start up the computer. After 30 seconds or so you can let go of the key. After that, you just need to connect your damaged Mac to a working Mac via a FireWire cable. In a way, the Target disk mode turns every modern Mac into an external hard drive.The good news is that when you start a new Mac, you are given instructions on putting your old Mac into Target Disk mode. Once the computers are hooked together, it will automatically move all your old data over and setup the new system just like your old one. Even if your computer can’t boot into Target Disk mode, you can put the drive into an external drive enclosure, or another similar Mac, and move the data over as if it were on your used Mac. I have done this many times and it makes switching Macs as easy as changing a shirt.The other nice feature of your MacBook is that even with a broken screen you can use it with an external keyboard, mouse, and display. This will turn your laptop into a desktop, which is still better than tossing it away. Your MacBook will need an adapter cable to work with a display, and the cable you use depends on the connection on the display. Typically DVI displays are better and they use a Mini DVI cable adapter. Another option is a VGA display adapter.You can use any USB keyboard and mouse you like. I personal like the new Apple Aluminum keyboard and a Logitech wheel mouse.

Even though the Intel switch has changed the efficiency of virtualizing a PC on the Mac, virtualization's RAM needs have remained the same. Just like using Parallels or VMware, Virtual PC needs a ton of RAM. The truth is that you can never have too much RAM for increasing the performance of a virtual machine. However, a general guideline would be double the RAM you would want in any one of the operating systems you are running. If your Power Mac runs well by itself with 2GB of RAM, look at taking it up to 4GB to comfortably run the Windows OS next to the Mac OS.

You can use less, but in general that will get you to the optimal position. Use no less than 1GB of RAM to run a Virtualized system on your Mac.

I do not put too much faith in most hardware testing software. The software I do use most is provided by Apple for their authorized service techs to use, and is not freely available to the public. You can however use a simpler version of the same software called Apple Hardware Test (AHT). Most people do not know this but for many years Apple has been including the AHT software on the gray-labeled software install disc that come with new Macs. Insert the disc that contains the AHT software (often it is the first one), and restart the computer holding the [Option] key. On newer Macs you boot up the computer holding down the [D] key to start AHT.

This is the only hardware testing application I would recommend using. Even with that recommendation, I would not trust it to find every error or be beyond giving false positives. AHT is just one step in trouble-shooting hardware.

Most external hard drives will work with older versions of the Mac OS, as long as it can connect to the computer. Some drives are only USB 2.0 drives and about half the used eMacs are equipped with USB 1.1 ports. You often can use an external USB 2.0 drive with a 1.1 port but it is slower than what you probably want. Firewire 400 based external hard drives are best for PowerPC Macs like yours. You may have a drive with both. Any time you get a new external drive, you should erase it with the OS X Disk Utility on the computer you intend to use it with. This will make it compatible with whatever version of the Mac OS you are using.If it the drive has FireWire (AKA IEEE 1394) ports or your eMac has USB 2.0, then open that drive and erase it. After that you should be able to start moving your archived files to the drive.

Sorry to say, AppleCare is only offered on New and Apple Refurbished products. PowerMax Pre-owned will have our 90-day PowerMax warranty, and we do have an option to extent that to six months.

The slowness you are experiencing is the product of your computer's limited processor and RAM, as well as your internal hard drive being full.
The hard drive is the only thing left to upgrade, and it is something you will have to take into an Apple Authorized Service center. A 120GB PowerBook hard drive can be installed into your iBook to replace your current internal drive. You may have to pay extra to the service department to move the data over, but you could also clone your drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and your external drive.

Almost all your problems stem from your internal hard drive (aka Startup drive) being full. In general, you need to have twice the available hard drive space as RAM installed in the system. For you, that would mean having 640 MB X 2 empty space on your hard drive at all times. You can delete the old “System Folder” used by classic and the “Applications (OS 9)” folder if you do not use Classic applications. That may be a good starting point.

Your PC seems newer, and by processor power it probably is over twice the speed of your Mac, but the Windows OS does slow down a system if it's not well maintained, so your actual benefit from switching to the PC could be lost.

Sadly, no, the Aluminum 20-inch Apple Cinema Display will not work with your Pismo G3. It is a shame because the Aluminum 20-inch Apple Cinema Display is a beautiful display, I am working on one as I type this.

The problem is not just your video card and processor, but the type of external video connection the Pismo came with. You have a VGA connection on your Laptop and you need a DVI connection to run an aluminum 20-inch Apple Cinema Display. You would also need a better video card with extra VRAM. It is probably not the best choice for older Macs. There are many LCD displays that will work with your VGA connection.