About to buy a used ibook

[Hellotalkie]

used ibook G4 12"
844mhz
640mb ram
with a super drive, airport etc

Well the thing is the guy is saying the motherboard battery is dead, thus the date and time are always reset. Also he said it causes the system not to boot on the first time if not charged fully...So basically if it is charged fully it will boot up fine, if it isn't charged fully then it will take 2-3 times to boot up, is this related to the dead battery? I asked him if it was a software issue or hardware and he says it is the battery(hardware) and asked a technician how much it would cost to replace the battery, since the battery is soldered on it would be 600! Anyways its going to set me back 300 for the laptop with the dead motherboard battery. It has tiger with a 30gb hard drive. Good deal? Though I don't know if the battery is related to the boot up issue.He said it has never failed to boot up after trying 3 times but this kinda worries me. Looks to be in good condition, i got it lowered from 450 to 300.

p.s this is the email he sent me:
its the motherboard battery. i talked to a tech yesterday and he said they are sautered into the mother board. he can replace it for $600 which is crazy. i found them on ebay for $50 and it would only take about an hour to fix. once i get a little money i am going to do that but if you are comfortable with doing it yourself you can try. it comes with the CD's, the power cord, the VGA monitor cord, and extra software on it already. the hard drive is 30 gig, it has the airport extreme that will pick up anything wireless. i think the stickers would come off with some goo gone or something like that, it has the dvd reader and the cd burner, the super drive will read and burn both. if you have anymore questions let me know, i dont want you to come out thinking anything different.

 

[Injury]

Doesn't seem like too bad of a deal IF you can fix it but if it were me I'd wait until I had a little more money and buy something that I know will work.



Is there a particular reason you're after an older machine on the cheap?

 

[Hellotalkie]

Need a laptop for my brother just for web browsing and word processing. Nothing extreme, don't know if i'll be willing to fix it

 

[Hellotalkie]

But otherwise, does a mac even have a cmos battery? I thought i read something about it charging a capacitor (from the main battery) to keep the clock times.

 

[Hellotalkie]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58445
There actually isn't a battery

but actually
http://discussions.apple.com/t....jspa?threadID=1173479

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: cr2250
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58445
There actually isn't a battery

but actually
http://discussions.apple.com/t....jspa?threadID=1173479

Seems like a great deal then.

:thumbsup: Good luck with it.

 

[Hellotalkie]

So hopefully that is the problem, then it would be a easy fix...ill just install leopard otherwise, any one else with an opinion
thanks in advance!

 

[erikistired]

technically you are below the minimum requirements for leopard by a few mhz. dunno if that is something that it checks or if it's a "at your own risk" sort of deal.

 

[bearxor]

Sounds like a decent deal for an older iBook.

My advice:
Stick with Tiger. We threw Leopard on a G4 867 here just for giggles to see how it ran and while it wasn't HORRIBLE, it wasn't exactly nice either. In all honesty, there's not much in Leopard worth upgrading from Tiger for. It's slightly prettier but on a machine that you're looking at, you're not going to notice a very big difference in the operating systems.

 

[Hellotalkie]

OK guys thanks for the responses, I finally got leopard to work with my amd setup and it is spectacular! So I think the ibook only supports up to 640mb or ram which is kinda bummer but honestly I think its a good deal...always wanted a mac but could never afford one

 

[Hellotalkie]

though isn't it odd that its 844mhz? I tried to search for a ibook with that speed and nothing came up, I asked him and he confirmed it was 844mhz

 

[erikistired]

where'd you find this deal at?

 

[Hellotalkie]

craigslist

 

[TheStu]

Frankly, I like Leopard, the under the hood improvements alone are worth the $129 for the license. But add to that all the other things (Time Machine, QuickLook, enhancements in all the major apps, and on and on) you get a really great OS. But, if you system can't run it, then there is nothing wrong with Tiger.

 

[erikistired]

i'd be kinda wary at this point, just my opinion. he's already told you 1) it has a battery which he's been quoted for when it doesn't, and 2) a possibly wrong processor speed. i looked around and i don't see an 844 mhz either. he could either just not know what he's talking about, or possibly trying to rip you off. just be cautious!

the g4 ibook came with a 800mhz/933mhz/1ghz cpu in it's first release. the 800mhz had a 30gb hdd and 12" screen (the other 2 had 14" screens and bigger hdds), so that might be what he actually has. all of them topped out a 640mb of ram. it also originally came with panther, not tiger, so i'd make sure he's including the tiger cds along with the original panther cds. they also came with combo drives (dvd reader, cdrw) not superdrives, and the airport express card was an option.

 

[bearxor]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Frankly, I like Leopard, the under the hood improvements alone are worth the $129 for the license. But add to that all the other things (Time Machine, QuickLook, enhancements in all the major apps, and on and on) you get a really great OS. But, if you system can't run it, then there is nothing wrong with Tiger.

Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and... disagree with you there.

10.5's not bad. It's just not a revolutionary jump.

I understand what you're saying about the core apps though. Running down Apple's master list of over 300 new features in Leopard, here are the things I don't use:
Address Book, Applescript, Automator, Dashboard, Dashcode, Desktop (put here because I don't use stacks, the only new feature listed), Dictonary, DVD Player, Front Row, iCal, iChat Instruments, Mail, Parental Controls, Photo Booth, Quick Look, Space, Spotlight, Time Machine.

For me, that drops the amount of spiffy new features significantly. It is the latest and greatest though, so I stick with it, just like I stuck with Vista.

But the argument about whether 10.4 to 10.5 is a worthy upgrade is a discussion for another time.