Hi all,
Just back from holiday in France with my new Powebook which I got from Dixons at the Tunnel Terminal. First off top marks to Dixons tax free shops. They have a policy of 28 days return on items bought there. The dead pixel on the first "quadrand" of my screen would have been laughed off by Apple (apparently up to three dead pixels are acceptable to them), but Dixons was quite happy to arrange for a new Powerbook to be reserved for me at their Oxford Street store as an exchange as soon as I returned.
I picked it up this afternoon. It is the best notebook I have ever owned!
I also noticed that the power supplies of the iBook and the Powebook look exactly the same. The only difference in them is the small print of the output at the bottom of the brick. What would actually happen if I tried charging with PB with the iBook's charger? When I first plugged it in it went orange, but being the chicken that I am I quickly removed it..... will it damage the PB? If so why on earth did they make the bricks the same size? If you own both notebooks you would have to deface one of them to make sure you are charging with the right one...
N
Nic P wrote:
When I first plugged it in it went orange, but being the chicken that I am I quickly removed it..... will it damage the PB?
I can't comment on whether it is a good or bad thing to interchange them, but on the PowerBook (maybe the iBook too), when the battery is being charged, the light is orange, green when battery is fully charged, and red if it is shorting (I've noticed it a bit on mine because the connection is a bit loose on mine - hopefully you wont see this much).
If so why on earth did they make the bricks the same size? If you own both notebooks you would have to deface one of them to make sure you are charging with the right one...
Because who on earth is going to be rich or lucky enough to own both.....oh, right! ;)
Ta, S.
Simon Liddle simon_liddle@redacted.invalid wrote:
Nic P wrote:
When I first plugged it in it went orange, but being the chicken that I am I quickly removed it..... will it damage the PB?
I can't comment on whether it is a good or bad thing to interchange them, but on the PowerBook (maybe the iBook too), when the battery is being charged, the light is orange, green when battery is fully charged, and red if it is shorting (I've noticed it a bit on mine because the connection is a bit loose on mine - hopefully you wont see this much).
I was not alarmed to see it go orange, I was more worried that it was charging the battery with the wrong voltage output therefore buggering up the machine. I have seen all three colours of the charger, the red one was when the tip was dipped in a bit of water which I spilled on my desk a few months ago. I quickly picked it up immediately and the light went off. Charger has been working fine since then.
If so why on earth did they make the bricks the same size? If you own both notebooks you would have to deface one of them to make sure you are charging with the right one...
Because who on earth is going to be rich or lucky enough to own both.....oh, right! ;)
It is a disease.. wanting to constantly upgrade your computers :-)
Actually my old iBook (Dec 01) has now gone to my girlfriend, her old grape Mac DV sold for a sum of £250!
Well, you may be glad to know that the replacement PB has also turned out to be a LEMON! This seems to have a badly put together chassis as the right hand side of the armrest is creaking if pressed lightly all the way from the bottom of the speaker all the way down to the combo drive entrance as if there is no support underneath it.
Also the trackpad seems to be very erratic. When moving the cursor around the screen it sort of jumps to another place from time to time and freezes when the processor seems busy. There is also a weird high pitched noise coming from the machine when I am using Safari and am on the Citibank website. As if the DVD drive is getting accessed but there is no disc in there. Will have to call Dixons and arrange yet another swap. (Just in case you think I am being paranoid, please let me say that I have just bought the top of the line machine from Apple, and got to use the one with the dead pixel for two weeks which did not have any problems with creaking or the trackpad)
Although I still maintain that this is the best laptop I have ever owned, I have to say that in the last year I have bought two new Macs and have opened five boxes meaning that over half of them have a problem when they are boxed. Since the resellers are happy to exchange them then my only inconvenience is having to reload the software, but then again for a laptop that costs half the price of a new car I expect to get something near perfect...
N
Nic P nikos.no@redacted.invalid wrote:
What would actually happen if I tried charging with PB with the iBook's charger?
It would get hotter and charge slower.
-z-
zoara me3@redacted.invalid wrote:
It would get hotter and charge slower.
But it would not break the circuit board or the charger thing-a-magic, right?
I also noticed that the iBook chargers have a subtle difference. You know the bit where you stick the cable into? It has a little disc where the plug goes in and completes the "brick". On the iBook chargers it is plastic and the wall plug has a plastic earth pin. On the powerbook it is metallic and the plug is has a mettalic earthing pin. While on holiday I kept getting a small buzzing feeling in my hands when the PB was charging and my bare feet were on the ground, obviously I was grounding the unit!
N
Nic P nikos.no@redacted.invalid wrote:
zoara me3@redacted.invalid wrote:
It would get hotter and charge slower.
But it would not break the circuit board or the charger thing-a-magic, right?
Correct.
I also noticed that the iBook chargers have a subtle difference. You know the bit where you stick the cable into? It has a little disc where the plug goes in and completes the "brick". On the iBook chargers it is plastic and the wall plug has a plastic earth pin. On the powerbook it is metallic and the plug is has a mettalic earthing pin. While on holiday I kept getting a small buzzing feeling in my hands when the PB was charging and my bare feet were on the ground, obviously I was grounding the unit!
AFAIK, that's not a difference in model, it's a difference in age. The newer charging units have a grounding pin, the older ones don't. ICBW. Probably because Merkin plugs don't have ground pins, so they didn't think of it when they first designed it.
-z-
Nic P nikos.no@redacted.invalid wrote:
zoara me3@redacted.invalid wrote:
AFAIK, that's not a difference in model, it's a difference in age. The newer charging units have a grounding pin, the older ones don't. ICBW. Probably because Merkin plugs don't have ground pins, so they didn't think of it when they first designed it.
You mean to say that the older powerbooks also did not have a mtalic grounding disc?
Yes. And newer iBooks do.
But this is based on vague recollections (it's not something I check and remember when I'm looking at a powerbook/iBook) and reports on the net; I remember some review of iBooks/PowerBooks that mentioned the 'new' grounding disc, and also wonder whether reports of earlier PowerBooks giving slight electric shocks was because the first ones weren't grounded.
-zoara-