I’ve used and owned Macs since they were the Lisa, but they’ve never really gripped me. My new MacBook has. It’s a keeper, and I’m not sure I can tell you why any more than I could tell you why the previous didn’t take. I’m bonding with it even as we speak.

Now, having said that, let me tell you about the weird problems I’m having with it.

Thanks to your help, I got my terminal back running (it was a pfile problem). Now I have a new and more entertaining problem.

I noticed that some of the extra apps that had been on my disk were no longer there. E.g., GarageBand was gone, so was Process Manager, and maybe some more. So, I backed up to an external drive (SuperDuper, totally worth the $27) and reinstalled the apps (and only the apps) from my Apple CD’s. All seemed to go well, except when I rebooted, about two seconds after the desktop appeared, the desktop went up a couple of pixels in resolution. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was enough to throw off the sharpness of on-screen type. Weirder, the screen shifted left those few pixels if I moved my mouse to the left, up if I moved my mouse up, etc. This happened even if I made small motions with my mouse in the middle of the screen; I didn’t have to go skating to the edge. Weird.

Here’s what’s probably a crucial clue: My official Apple CD’s are version 10.4.09, whereas the version of the OS installed on my hard drive is 10.4.10. Just to be very clear: My MacBook came with 10.4.10 installed, but with 10.4.09 CDs.

So, I reinstalled the OS, and not just the extra apps, from the CD’s, thinking maybe it was an incompatibility between the apps and the OS. Everything was fine except I had the same resolution problem. So, I restored from the system backup I had done. And all is well. No resolution problem. No screen shifting with the mouse problem. Of course, I still don’t have those extra apps, but I can live without them until I can get my hands on a 10.4.10 CD set…or until one of you figures out what the heck is going on.

Interesting, eh? Or maybe it’s so obvious to you that it’s not interesting…

Categories: Uncategorized dw