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Ok, so I just purchased a refurbished mac laptop after having owned an eMac g4 for the past 5 years. I'm completely new to the whole battery life, airport card, wi-fi thing of it all. I know the bare minimum.
What I'd like to know is about startup/shut down. With my g4, I click the mouse, it turns on, connects to the internet and I'm off and running. When I'm done, I put it to sleep. How exactly does it work with the laptop? My refurbished model is an Indigo clamshell ibook. Yes, I know it's old, but it's been extensively upgraded by a Mac technician and it has the features I wanted and I got a great deal. I'll also only be using this from home as it is replacing my g4 (I'm sizing down).
Anyway, back to the start up/shut down. It needs a new battery- all it has is a highly suspect one that will hold minimal charge. With the new one, do I turn the computer completely off when I'm done using it? Again, with the g4, I just put it to sleep. Can I do that with this? Will I lose settings if I have to completely turn it off? Also, can I start it up from cold with the power cord/adapter (which is all I'll have until the new battery arrives)?
Also any recommendations for batteries?
I'm sure I sound like an idiot to you guys who know about these things, but I literally have NO ONE in my life who knows about computers and everything I know is from my own research and experience (which isn't much- I just got a digital camera last year). But please help a newbie out on this one.
Batteries - not sure what to recommend for you in terms of name brand of battery, but I do have advice of a different type. If you use your laptop in a way that you have it plugged in most of the time, what you really need to do is pull the battery out and use it only when you need it. Supposedly this will extend the life of your battery a good bit.
A battery is a battery - I'd contact MacMall – #1 Mac Store, iPod nano, Mac Intel, Mac Computers & LCD TVs or (macsales) Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC or one of the other companies on the web that have the right one for your make and model. The harsh reality is that laptop batteries die even with ideal care given... they have a useful lifespan of about 2 years on average (give or take another year). It's just the way they are engineered (for a typical lithion ion battery internals start to rust soon after being first used... as the rust accumulates, the battery will die). It iss heat which causes this problem, and since all batteries get warm while being charged up, it is unavoidable.
Once you receive your battery just plug it into your ibook (do the intial charge up) and forget about it. When it is low on power just plug it into a power source and it will recharge - even if you are using your computer at the same time. I wouldn't ever remove the battery from your laptop unless it is being serviced... there's simply no need and it is an inconvenience to do so (and you might lose the battery) anyway.
Now regarding sleeping vs shutdown - here's what I think you should do with your new ibook... shut it down after each day. If you put it to sleep instead of shutting down nothing terrible will happen except that it has been my experience that operating systems refresh when shut down and sometimes that leads to fewer crashes or problems. Shutting down your laptop will be just as time consuming as putting it to sleep - so I would opt to shut down at least once per day.
Is this mostly for home use? i.e. its sitting on your desk most of the time?
If that's the case, I would just leave it be when you're done for the day. The laptop should automatically go into powersave mode after a period of idle time. You can change the power save characteristics through system preferences - click on the apple in the upper left hand corner and chose system preferences from the drop down menu. Then chose Energy Saver.
For the most part, the default settings will work. I have a Mac Book pro that I bring to and from work everyday... when I leave one location for the other, I just close the lid and it automatically goes into sleep mode (albeit some folks have reported issues with Mac coming out of sleep..). But, when I turn in for the night... the laptop just sits there on. the screen will sleep first... then the computer will after awhile.
There really isn't a need to turn the system off unless you are having issues.... and reboots are much less common on UNIX/Linux systems than Windows boxes.
You could find a website(Laptops & notebooks reviews: Laptop computers, notebook computers (http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/category/14/laptops-reviews - broken link)) which could help you to know more about laptop & accessories
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