Rebuilding batteries: good for discontinued models

We Rebuild most hard-to-find laptop batteries

This company rebuilds LiOn and other batteries. It's not cost-effective for batteries that are still being sold, but it makes sense when a battery is off the market.

Nice feature of 10.4 Preview: See effect of different color profiles on an image

Macintouch iPhoto (Part 13): "This behavior can be confirmed by dragging the image to Preview and choosing Tools > Assign Profile before and after making an edit. In fact this feature of the Preview app is a great way to see what happens when a different ColorSync profile is selected."

Apple acknowledges some Mac Minis have defective analog VGA out

Troubleshooting: Reduced brightness with some VGA displays and Mac mini

...If you tried all of the steps above and the computer still won't display video as expected, contact Apple technical support (1-800-APL-CARE in the U.S.) or take your computer to your local retail Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) for diagnosis.

So they've finally acknowledged this defect. Overall, however, the Mac Minis have an exceptional reputation for reliability.

Smelly iBooks: a problem with the keyboard glue

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

I'd heard of this. I'll have to check it out though I think I'm out of AppleCare coverage. Good reason to buy a new machine!

[MacInTouch Reader] I've had my G3 iBook for about four years now and as a result I've got an embarrassing problem with it - it smells...


[Kirk McElhearn] Quite a few people have had this problem - there's a thread somewhere on Apple's discussion boards about it. I had it on a G3 800 iBook. After researching the problem, it turned out to be the glue that holds the sticker on under the keyboard that smells - it seems to degrade over time, and from the heat. I had to fight with Apple, but they eventually replaced the keyboard (the iBook was under AppleCare). Others have had their's replaced as well. There seems to be no other solution, since this sticker is very big, and there's a heck of a lot of glue.

Dell 1600n multifunction printer for OS X?

Dell Printers

It's time to replace my Apple LaserWriter Select 360. I can still find compatible cartridges, but when I bought a low end personal HP LaserJet for my mother I realized how big and loud that old tank is. For my current purposes the HP would make more sense.

Or I could get an integrated fax, document scan and print solution. Something like the Dell 1600n, which is said to be a "rebadged Xerox WorkCentre PE120i". The latter has some OS X drivers. At least one person reports a Tiger machine recognized this device. Here's the manual.

I'm going to check this out. It's intended to be a stanalone fax/copier, so lack of fax software may not be so important as long as the network printing works. For scanning and document management I can attach it to my PC if need be.

Update: web reviews are sparse and often unhappy. Smells kind of fishy.

OS X WYSIWYG HTML Editor: RapidWeaver

Realmac Software - Reviews

This gets quite good reviews, but despite my intereste in the domain this is the first I've heard of it. Odd.

Gordon's Tech: OS X 10.4.2 and iPhoto 5.0.3 together fix some of Tiger's problems with Color profiles (ColorSync)

Whew. This is complex. I've made enought updates to a prior blog posting that I think it's worth drawing attention to: Gordon's Tech: OS X 10.4.2 does not fix Tiger's problems with Color profiles (ColorSync).

The bug may be interesting from a design perspective -- Apple might have been trying to improve color management for non-experts, but they ended up messing up their solution. The bug fix requires patches to both 10.4 and iPhoto together.