Got my Macbook back! Dude, I got a Dell!

I took my Macbook to the local Genius bar last Wed. They replaced the magsafe cord and kept it for a few days to replace the 'palm rest'. All covered under warranty! The only thing is, I lost my MacStyle in the process...perfect time to get another, though!

The Genius really dug my MacStyle and asked me a lot of questions. He said he saw them on the web but that mine was the first he'd seen in real life. He asked how hard it was to install and remove. He said that it really looked sharp and wanted to get a few for the Geniuses at the bar. I thought that was really cool.

Another thing: The Genius said that the repair would be two days. I gave it to them Wed evening. He said that they'd a lot of repairs to do, due to Spring break and college students, but that they'd give me a call around Friday-Saturday. I never got a call. I figured they were busy so I gave them a bit more time. I was off on Monday and wanted to see if they were done (I don't have a lot of time off to do this sort of stuff), so I called. The lady who answered asked if I'd gotten a call from them and I said 'no'. She said that if they hadn't called me, it more than likely wasn't done. I told her that they'd had it since Wed and that it was Monday...that was more than enough time to get it done. She went in the back of the store and checked...came back and said that it was ready to pick up. WTF. She makes a smart comment saying that they'd have called me if it was complete, then 2 minutes later says that it is done. I was a bit pissed. Why? They told me it would be done, gave me an estimated date, I went out of my way to not hassle them when that estimated date expired and got no call from them. I don't understand how or why she made it seem like I was badgering her store. This is exactly why I don't always like dealing with service-related issues...this is also why I typically buy my own parts and fix my own stuff...I hate depending on people with the heads up their anuses. A simple call would've been nice...I guess they were that busy. I understand that, but don't understand the attitude after waiting 2 more days than their estimated time. I should've been very vocal about this.

Oh yeah, I got a Dell Mini 9. I almost returned it so that I could order an Asus 10". I decided to stick with the Dell, though. Awesome machine. I can live with the non-standard keyboard. It has Ubuntu installed (Dell build), has a 32GB solid-state drive, and a 1.3MP webcam, otherwise its standard. I'd like to add another gig of RAM but the 1GB it currently has isn't giving me issues.

A lot of Dell Mini owners are installing OS X on their Minis. I'm not to that point yet. I did try to make my Ubuntu look like OS X but have to run Compiz in order to do it...that's a deal-breaker, as Compiz makes the unit lag a bit (moving scroll bar and such).

Basically, there's not much I don't like about this machine. I really like the fact that it doesn't make any noise (no fan). It gets warm but not as warm as my Macbook. About the only thing I don't like is the funkily-mapped keys (like the ' and | keys: I have to use key combinations to use those characters, which slows me down considerably when in CLI). Another issue I've seen is that I can't shell into some of my machines from the Dell. When I experience this issue, I immediately go to my Mac and try the same thing and it works fine. Note that this is not an SSH client or server issue. Looking at the SSH client debug logs, I don't see anything glaring. Looking at the remote machine's auth logs, I see authentications. Weird. It may be an issue with the wifi card. I do plan on replacing the stock mini-PC card with a card supported openly (it has a Broadcom card that works but I prefer something open).

I may look into doing a dual-boot of Ubuntu and OS X in the near future.

And I do plan on reconnecting my G4 Powermac again soon (so I can use it to serve and perform backups).

'New' Mac G4 Power Mac acquired!

I've not posted in QUITE awhile. Not that I've been idle, but I've been more active in my Slackware blog, documenting mostly security-oriented material, but 2 weeks ago, I got a surprise.

A friend of mine has purchased a sailboat with the intention of living in it, which means that everything in his current home has to be trashed, sold, or given away. He had a Macintosh G4 Power Mac that he needed to get rid of, so I took it off his hands! The image to the upper left is a spitting image of the machine that I now have.

The machine itself isn't particularly powerful, but it appears to be cutting-edge for its day: dual 550MHz PowerPC processors (!!), 30GB hard disk (this is the original disk), 768MB of RAM, a CD-RW drive, and a ZIP drive. I did not know that this was a dual processor system until I checked while typing this post...this is quite a surprise.

Now, I got the Mac and it was running Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther Server, but the drive immediately began to make noises and I got fed up and replaced it with a 100GB Seagate IDE drive, which was only $50. I could've went bigger, but these machines only recognize 120GB or so, due to BIOS limitations. There are workarounds to avoid this limitation, but I'm not going to spend a lot of money on a 7-year-old system if I can help it. I went out and bought the latest Mac OS X Tiger and installed it on the new drive without issues. The system runs very well. I think I'd much rather run Panther (Server) but my friend didn't provide me with the disks.

The stats of this system are below:

Machine Name: Power Mac G4
Machine Model: PowerMac3,4
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (11.3)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 533 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.1.8f5

This box is going to be a riot! Hopefully, I can even upgrade the CPU to something more substantial, but for now, I can probably get away with adding more RAM.  [EDIT 03/17/2010:  Not!  CPUs for this machine are EXPENSIVE!   I've also added more RAM and the system now has 1GB of PC133-333 (1x512MB and 2x256MB)...one slot is still empty.  It'll take 2GB of RAM when using OS X, but only 1.5GB if using OS 9.]

This system will most likely end up serving web pages and serving MySQL content.