G3 800MHz 12in iBook battery and converters

As it's mostly a static machine, is it better to leave it plugged in pretty much permanently? If so, anyh chance of lightning damage?
GrahameR wrote on :

Hi, a few very basic questions regarding a G3 800MHz 12in iBook.

  1. Does the battery have a 'memory'? That is, should I run it right down regularly?

  2. As it's mostly a static machine, is it better to leave it plugged in pretty much permanently? If so, anyh chance of lightning damage?

  3. As I'm new to OSX, do I still need graphics and text converters or is the OSX software capable of doing most/all such conversions?

TIA, Grahame

PS: this has been unsuccessfully asked elsewhere - can I get a .pdf manual for it? (or does the Apple Help pretty much cover most/all of the stuff a manual would?)

Bill replied on :

In article 1162802250.846454.27150@redacted.invalid, "GrahameR" grahame@redacted.invalid wrote:

Hi, a few very basic questions regarding a G3 800MHz 12in iBook.

  1. Does the battery have a 'memory'? That is, should I run it right down regularly?

  2. As it's mostly a static machine, is it better to leave it plugged in pretty much permanently? If so, anyh chance of lightning damage?

  3. As I'm new to OSX, do I still need graphics and text converters or is the OSX software capable of doing most/all such conversions?

TIA, Grahame

PS: this has been unsuccessfully asked elsewhere - can I get a .pdf manual for it? (or does the Apple Help pretty much cover most/all of the stuff a manual would?)

There is a paper on the Apple web site about battery management. Read that. You can find it in the Support area.

Fred McKenzie replied on :

In article 1162802250.846454.27150@redacted.invalid, "GrahameR" grahame@redacted.invalid wrote:

  1. Does the battery have a 'memory'? That is, should I run it right down regularly?

  2. As it's mostly a static machine, is it better to leave it plugged in pretty much permanently? If so, anyh chance of lightning damage?

  3. As I'm new to OSX, do I still need graphics and text converters or is the OSX software capable of doing most/all such conversions?

Grahame-

I'm fairly sure that model has a Lithium Ion battery. As such, you should NOT run it down for the purpose of battery maintenance. Lithium has a limited number of charge/discharge cycles, so you would be wasting its capacity. It does not have the memory problem of NiCd or NiMH.

It should not hurt to leave it plugged in, since the charger turns off when the battery is fully charged. If there is any chance of lightning, then there is a chance of damage, as you should know!

OS X seems to be tolerant of different text conventions. However, that model will boot under OS 9. Files saved in Classic Macintosh text format do not have the same end-of-line character as Windows computers use. The Mac can usually handle the Windows text file by adding an extra linefeed, but the Windows machine sees a Mac text file as one long, continuous line. To get around that, you can add the .DOC suffix to the Mac filename instead of .TXT. On the Windows machine, Microsoft Word will then open it and wrap the lines according to its default settings.

Fred

John Johnson replied on :

In article 1162802250.846454.27150@redacted.invalid, "GrahameR" grahame@redacted.invalid wrote:

Hi, a few very basic questions regarding a G3 800MHz 12in iBook.

[snip, other people have answered this one]

  1. As it's mostly a static machine, is it better to leave it plugged in pretty much permanently? If so, anyh chance of lightning damage?

Leaving the machine plugged in all the time is probably the way to go, IMO. You gain nothing from cycling the battery other than portability, and if there's power available why not use it?

Anything plugged into a wire (and even stuff that isn't) is subject to lightning damage. That said, what are the chances? I don't know how often your house gets hit by lightning. If you're worried about it, get a good UPS with surge suppression and you're taken care of. There's "better" solutions out there, but they end up being more work and I can't be bothered to describe them right now. ;-)

  1. As I'm new to OSX, do I still need graphics and text converters or is the OSX software capable of doing most/all such conversions?

Preview.app will open pretty much any graphics format you like. Textedit is a bit limited for my uses (e.g. it doesn't display .doc files' footnotes properly), but I mostly use BBEdit. I liked Mariner Write as a stand-alone word processor back when I used it, fwiw.

TIA, Grahame

PS: this has been unsuccessfully asked elsewhere - can I get a .pdf manual for it? (or does the Apple Help pretty much cover most/all of the stuff a manual would?) You mean something like the getting started manuals here? http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50014