I spent last week at a conference in Des Moines with my trusty Refurbished iBook G4. I got this from Apple about 3 years ago and it has worked well on this little trips. However, I started getting Netbook envy sitting around my fellow teachers. Everything in the laptop world is a compromise. Those 17 inch widescreen laptop are cool, but the are a beast sitting on the tabletop elbow to elbow with several other overweight 8-10 pound laptop. I like the netbooks. The cute little screen and keyboards are a pain to view and type on. So I'm a stuck in a muddle, with wanting something light and big. I could get a Mac Air, but but I think the High priestess would freak over $2000 on a whim. Beside I spent far too much this summer.

So I'm typing away on the iBook G4. (No, she doesn't have a name. But I guess she should have. Something like Candy, Bubbles, or something in the lap dancer category since she spend most of her time on my lap anyway. I should think about that.) Anyway, she has been a little sluggish because her 60GB drive is almost full. I wanted to play a couple of hours of World of Warcraft, and since I haven't updated the patches in awhile I spent those extra hours downloading the patch. At the last patch window, the program says I only have 2.5 Gigs left on my hard drive and I need 3.5 Gigs. I dumps my Itunes Library and some other crap. I get 4 GB free. I download the patch. Then I get a message that the install will take another 6 GIGS! I find the space somehow and get everything install. This event just makes me say, "Fuck IT". I hop on Other World Computing and start looking for upgrades. YEAH! I can get a new drive for $50 and another 1 GIG of RAM for another $50. This is perfect. Prices for this model are just at that sweet spot. Low demand parts because my iBook is an older model, but not so old that the part are consider rare and expensive. I order the parts and they arrive back home awhile I'm still at the conference. Yippie, there is something to be said for ordering stuff at 5 AM.

I spend Friday night work on the old girl. The memory goes in place in about 5 minutes. I guess Apple wants you to do this upgrade. The Hard Drive is another story. I have to first backup the old drive. This is similar to the PS3 upgrade I did awhile back. Fortunately, OWC has a hard drive enclosure and drive package deal for $130. OK... more than I wanted to spend but I get a bigger drive in the deal. I put the new drive in the enclosure and "Clone" the laptop drive onto the new drive. After 3 hours of backing up, I'm ready to swap out the hard drives. I can tell Apple does NOT want me to do this.

There are more than 30 little screws that need to be removed and their locations noted. The whole laptop pretty much has to be disassembled, not a Pretty Sight. Thankfully I found some step by step instructions with pictures on the web. I get the drive installed and start closing up. I notice I got more screws than holes left and I forgotten a few parts still on the workbench. I take the iBook apart for the second time to get everything back inside. I close her up again and cross my fingers. I press the power button, and get a heartbeat "Bong". She LIVES!

Stacy..(hmmmmm Do I like Stacy?) has a new 250Gb Hard Drive (over the 60GB is had from Apple) and 1.5 Gigs of Ram. She works fine and she is a lot peppy too.

(Aside: I forgot to take pictures while doing this, so I swapped this picture from somewhere else.)