newbie iBook owner questions...

[gerbick]

high there... just a couple of quick questions...

is it possible to upgrade the optical drive in an iBook?
since I don't have a burner, I guess the versions of 10.1 "floating" around will do me no good, eh?
what is a good amount of RAM for the machine? (currently, 192mb)

thanks in advance...

 

[themacko]

I don't think you can upgrade the CD drive in your 'book. I believe it's physically connected to the logic board. (sorry) You can probably find a decent usb or firewire CD-RW on ebay.

As for the RAM, you really can't over-do it on an iBook. a 256 mb stick + whatever your iBook came with should work great for anything you plan on doing (save playing 3D games ... but thats the chinsy 8 mb of Vram we get). Your 192 mb of ram should take care of most of your needs anyhow.

 

[oldmac]

You can't upgrade the drive. Now that 10.1 is officially out, you probably should consider it; eventually you'll be using it. Just because you don't have a burner, you'll still use 10.1. Your RAM question can be answered with a question: what do you do with the computer? If you do a lot of photo editing with Photoshop, 192Mb is a minimum. If you write documents in Word or AppleWorks, do Quicken, or surf the web, 192 should be enough.

 

[gerbick]

I use the iBook mostly for web... for now. I wanted to see how far Macs have come - first Mac I have owned since the Apple IIgs - no joke

as far as the iBook goes, the CD will be good enough (wot!? I can't upgrade - now THAT sucks, my Dell was upgradeable)... the RAM as well. All of my PC's have at least 512mb of RAM, with 2gb being the most. But, they are mostly my design or programming platforms - Linux, Win2k, WinXP. Besides, until Photoshop works with OS X - I was not fortunate to get a 10.1 CD, nor does it look like I will anytime soon - I am not going to dive back into the Mac realm for any under OS X operating system (old UNIX fan here!)...

oh well... thanks for the replies all

Originally posted by oldmac
[small]You can't upgrade the drive. Now that 10.1 is officially out, you probably should consider it; eventually you'll be using it. Just because you don't have a burner, you'll still use 10.1. Your RAM question can be answered with a question: what do you do with the computer? If you do a lot of photo editing with Photoshop, 192Mb is a minimum. If you write documents in Word or AppleWorks, do Quicken, or surf the web, 192 should be enough. [/small]

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