Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Arrrgghhh!!

I've lost out on another old Macintosh iBook on eBay, by a single dollar!! Not to say that I haven't missed out on a lot more in between, but usually by a hundred dollars or more. I swear I don't know what it is, but losing by just a dollar just kills me.

I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be easier/cheaper/better to just go ahead and get something that's maybe not exactly what I want, and then do the modifications myself. I see lots of clamshells out there with little memory, small hard drives, and no Airport card going for fairly cheap. I'm wondering how difficult it might be to pick up one of the lower end ones, and upgrade the RAM, HD, and put in an Airport card. I see lots of various component parts going fairly cheap on eBay.

One big question though, is going to be the software. Being pretty much a Windoze guy since it came out, I'm used to be able to install my copy of windoze on any machine I happen to have lying around with no muss or fuss. However, I'm given to understand that in the Mac world, such is not the case. It's been mentioned that a Mac OS for one machine, might very well not work on another machine. Who knew there were machine specific OSes?? Of course, they may be so much horse puckey, but who am I to know the difference, Mac Neophyte that I am.

I'll keep trying for a complete system on eBay, but I swear, I'm seriously considering trying to put together parts and pieces to make what I want. It's easy enough to do with Windoze/IBMClones, how much harder can it be with a Mac?



Casey



Oh, and the one that got away was sweet, little Tangerine Clamshell with the original box, CDs, and instruction booklets....absolutely perfect for someone like myself who's trying to learn about Macs.....

2 comments:

Tam said...

FWIW, for anything other than memory upgrades, adding an AirPort card, or swapping the battery, working on a clamshell is a right bloody bee-yotch.

If you want to be able to access the CPU and HDD, you may want to look into a Pismo.

Casey said...

Thanks for the tip Tam, but I think the Pismo might be out of my price range at the moment. Trying to get into Macs for <$150. I'll keep in mind to make sure whatever I get already has a decent HD on it, so that all I'll have to switch would be Airport or Memory though. Good thing to know...

Casey