Bought 2 laptop's with 2 different sounds!

I

Imagine

Registered
Hi,

My girlfriend and I bought 2 (12"-1.33GHz PowerPC G4) laptop's. Her G4 came from MacMall and mine, from American Musical Supply.

Both are configured identical. Nothing was altered, added or subtracted.

What's odd is that her laptop is quieter than mine. The fan or drive noise is louder on my G4. I ran Disk Utility, and realized that her G4 has a 55.9 GB Toshiba hard drive, and I have a 55.9GB Fujitsu hard drive.

Could this be causing the up in loudness?

I don't quite understand it, but if someone could explain, I'd appreciate it.

Thx
Dean
 
The difference is likely because of the different hard drives. I have the 60 gig Toshiba drive on my new 15" PowerBook and it's so quiet that I sometimes have trouble determining whether or not the system is on. One of my friends at school has a much louder PowerBook which he bought last year, and while I'm not sure which hard drive he has, I suspect that Apple has switched to the Toshiba drives because of the noise difference. Your girlfriend's PowerBook was probably made more recently.
 
Henry,

Thanks for the heads up.

How do you determine which is newer? Is there a serial number on the machine itself?

Thanks again
Dean
 
I am not sure. However I urge you to report this to AppleCare because it seems to be important for future Macs.
 
Mine uses a Toshiba drive and it's pretty much silent. Even when the fans come on, its quite hard to tell unless you're in a completely silent room like a library.
 
And for your info: to get a serial number on a Mac laptop:

* Go to the Apple menu --> About this Mac and click on the bit of text that says "Version 10.3.5" or similar. This causes the text to toggle between the OS version, the OS build number and the serial number of the machine. It'll say something like "Serial Number UV12X1245"

* On laptops, release the keyboard by pulling back on the latch-tabs. There's one tab between the escape and F1 keys, and another between F11 and F12. You might also need to unlock the lock between the F5 and F6 keys by giving a half-turn with a small flat jeweller's screwdriver. Once you've lifted the keyboard out of its place, you'll find the serial number on the chassis underneath.

Oh yeah, another thing you might want to look out for, try different energy saver settings. The PowerBook fan can adjust its speed depending on the heat generated by the processor, so if you step down the load on the CPU, then after a time the fan will slow down.
That said though, I think it is likely to be the different drive hardware that makes the difference in sound.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top