Yeah, the 8100, 8500 cases were some of the worst designs ever. You had to completely remove the processor, all the expansion cards, and pull the motherboard to upgrade the RAM.

Heh. I mean, damn.

I was annoyed that replacing the HD of an iBook required major disassembly of the laptop, including prying the display apart. Apple recommended against users doing it themselves. (BTW, anyone want a G3 iBook with a dead HD?)

They made replacing the HD easy on the MacBook. I'm planning on replacing the 60MB HD on mine with something far larger, so I can store my 60MB of music on it.

BTW, anyone want a G3 iBook with a dead HD

I do. Andi's iBook has a dead C on the keyboard and I could use the spare parts as spare parts. Or her hard drive in yours.

I really wish her previous Mac laptop (The one bought from Noisedesign, A powerbook G4) hadn't encountered a blunt force injury right at the center, including shattering the Hdd. She loved that thing.

How much do you want for it?

Does this:

[link]

seem like a good value for pretty much going on the internet and/or using in the costume shop to take notes/type out emails to send later (no internet in costume shop). Frankly, I am attracted by the flexpay option that HSN gives.

I'm caving and going back to Firefox. Camino is not as cool and Opera isn't fitting my style.

Extensions I should install? (I've got Tabbrowser extensions, greasemonkey, an extended opera-style statusbar that shows time and page size and images loaded, FireFTP (in case I don't want to use Cyberduck for some reason), ImageZoom, AdBlock Plus, and Foxposé. I've also got Greasemonkey - any cool scripts I should be sure to get?

• DownloadThemAll (makes downloading a bunch of files from one page a breeze)
• Linkification (converts text links in to clickable ones)
• It\'s All Text! (compose posts like this one in your favorite text editor)

DownloadThemAll rocks, btw. I just used it today and it was very handy and timesaving.

(BTW, anyone want a G3 iBook with a dead HD?)

Ha! I have a G3 Powerbook with a dead HD. Remember just over a week ago when I said I thought it was nearing its lifespan? I had my browser open to the Apple Store when it stopped spinning.

I honestly STILL haven't found a text editor I love on OS X. I'll take suggestions for that, too, as I mostly still use vim in a terminal. So I don't think I'll get ItsAllText for now. That linkification thing looks cool, though, so thanks! And I already got DownloadThemAll, right after posting here.

Firebug is the best thing EVER. I already used it to deconstruct the forum software for my website and fix something in my custom theme.

I suppose it depends on what you're using the text editor for, Gris. For HTML, I use Smultron, which is free and handy; and for writing, I use Writeroom primarily, with Word and TextEdit as backups for various other functions as necessary. I absolutely adore the full-screen feature of WR, and it has proved to be the most effective tool for me to write with. TextEdit is crap for extensive work, especially if you're using HTML or working with some formatting, because it wonks it out ridiculously.

Sophia, I generally advise against Gateways. I've never been pleased with them, in my experience. Half of what you get a laptop for is durability, and the other half is portability, and Gateway has never been sufficient in either of those realms for me. I think you could get a comparable Dell for less/similar cost, and I believe there are financing options, though I don't know from experience. If I was going to purchase a new Windows machine, I would purchase a Dell. But then again, if you don't plan on taking it much farther than your apartment, it would probably work for you.

Regarding FF extentions--I use a lot of them, but unfortunately I'm using Safari right now so I can't pull them up for you. I think it's actually DownThemAll, not Download, but it remains one of the most useful extentions of all time. All in One Sidebar is a must for me. Deepest Sender, for blog posting; Tab Preferences is hugely resourceful; Greasemonkey, and the multitude of assorted scripts, completely betters your browsing experience; VideoDownloader grabs videos from Google, Youtube, etc; Forecast Fox is a great weather thingie; there are more, but I can't recall them right now.