The power supply in my Power Mac G5 fried itself. What G5 Power Macs can I use for a donor power supply?
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
Microsoft PowerPoint began its life as Presenter and was published for exclusively Macintosh by Forethought, Inc. Microsoft acquired Forethought in 1987 and renamed the app PowerPoint.
After years with DirecTV, we’ve decided to cut back as much as possible on the cost of watching TV. We’ve cut back to the lowest cost DirecTV package until we can put up a good antenna, and we’re using Netflix and Hulu Plus for the bulk of our viewing.
Have you ever picked up a very cheap PC and brought it home – only to find that it was far more than you had imagined?
We’re going to give you a different take on tech news. No rumors. No press releases. No news based on a third-hand report. We’re going to give you real tech news with a low-end twist.
We’re trying to do something different with tech news: no rumors, no reprinted press releases, no minor software update notices, and nothing based solely on a third-hand report. We take our tech news seriously.
We’ve published our first article on the Mid 2014 21.5″ iMac with its 1.4 GHz low-power dual-core i5 CPU, and Chris Carson was not impressed with its value. I want to treat is as fairly and unemotionally as possible, so let’s take a closer look.
LibreOffice is a free alternative to the not-inexpensive Microsoft Office suite. I’m using it to replace AppleWorks, which I’ve been using since ClarisWorks 1.0 shipped back in the System 7.0 era. Unfortunately, AppleWorks is incompatible with OS X 10.7 Lion and later, so I’ve had to find an alternative since installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks […]
Low End Mac has had a presence on Facebook for quite a while, and we’ve been adding more Low End communities using Facebook groups for some time.
You may know that Apple’s original networking protocol was LocalTalk, which was replaced by Ethernet in the early 1990s. What you may not know about is Farallon’s clever EtherWave networking solution that bridged the two technologies.
Apple’s first generation of Intel-based Macs (not counting the pro-oriented 2006 Mac Pro and Xservv), is build around Intel’s first generation Core technology. Except for the seriously underpowered Core Solo Mac mini, they all use the Core Duo CPU and are thus unable to run the OS X 10.7 Lion installer – or anything newer. In fact, Apple won’t […]
It’s my birthday, and I realized I’ve been using Macs for half my life. I was 28 years old when I first used a Mac Plus way back in 1986, along with PageMaker 1.0 and the original LaserWriter printer. And 28 years later, I know a lot more about Macs – and myself.
Put simply, you can’t. With the introduction of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in August 2009, Apple removed all support for PowerPC Macs from its operating system. You cannot run OS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, or 10.10 on G5 Macs or anything earlier. They will only run on Intel x86 hardware.
There are frankly crazy rumors going about that Apple is ready to launch MacBooks, Mac minis, and perhaps even iMacs with up to four 4-core ARM-based CPUs. The next generation iPhone/iPad CPU will almost certainly be a 4-core 64-bit Apple chip named the A8. But in Macs?
Apple really overhauled iOS when it released version 7 last year with better multitasking, improved background processing, scheduled connectivity, optimized memory use, and a cleaner, lighter looking interface. What can we expect from iOS 8?
With another “well duh” headline, Cult of Mac told us yesterday, Survey Finds Battery Life Is Most Important for iPhone Owners. Didn’t the fact that we use 3.5″ and 4″ smartphones while the Android world has gone bigger kind of make that obvious?
Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about upcoming OS versions and hardware. We fully expect OS X 10.10 to ship sometime this year, probably after a preview at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) held June 2-6, 2014.
Last July I looked at the then-current Facebook app, compared it with using Safari to view Facebook, and found the app lacking. Today I’m looking at the latest version, 5.0, and comparing it with three different browsers using my iPhone 4S running iOS 7.1.1.
How do you prevent unwanted email from showing up in your in box? If you’re a Yahoo! Mail user, it’s really quite easy.
Over the weekend we updated to WordPress version 3.9, and there are some real changes writers should know about. Most of the changes show up in the Ultimate TinyMCE plugin we use for WYSIWYG editing.
Personal computer history doesn’t begin with IBM or Microsoft, although Microsoft was an early participant in the fledgling PC industry.
Way back in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was rare enough to have a personal computer in the home, classroom, or office. Today it’s common to have several computers, tablets, and/or smartphones in the workplace, school, or home.
On January 24, 1984, Apple announced the Macintosh to its Board of Directors and to the world – and the computer world has never been the same.
LEM Swap is Low End Mac’s Google Group for buying and selling Mac OS computers and related goods. We also have Facebook LEM Swap groups for Mac and iOS users in Canada and the UK.
If you’ve watched the news or been on the Internet this week, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the Heartbleed bug, which allows hackers to access data that is otherwise securely encoded. How? By hijacking the SSL encoding software itself!
LibreOffice is a competent, free alternative to Microsoft Office. Like Office, it’s kind of bloated and slow to load. I’m using it to replace AppleWorks, which is incompatible with OS X 10.7 Lion and later – and I’ve discovered that LibreOffice is no speed demon.
Hard drive capacity is limited not only by how densely bits can be packed on a magnetic platter, but also by the number of sectors and tracks and drive surfaces in the drive itself and the number the computer’s operating system is designed to handle.
First we had emoticons, those smiles, winks, and other usually sideways image created using standard keyboard keys. 
And then came emoji, those tiny colorful expressive faces, animals, modes of transportation, food, buildings, and so much more. And now they have come under attack.
WordPress is a great, powerful, extensible content management system (CMS), but it can take a while to really figure things out. Tags fall into that category.
MacPaint was one of two applications bundled with the original Macintosh; it and was the Mac’s default paint program. It was written by Bill Atkinson, and its user interface was designed by Susan Kare. It continued as freeware through version 2.0. MacPaint images could be copied to the clipboard and pasted into MacWrite documents.
MacDraw was the Mac’s first drawing program. The vector-based drawing program was based on LisaDraw, which had been created for Apple’s Lisa computer – both applications were produced by Mark Cutter. MacDraw was especially useful for technical drawing, such as floorplans and flowcharts.
Second Class Macs are Apple’s somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they’re not really bad – simply designs that didn’t meet their full potential. The Macintosh LC is the oldest Compromised Mac, one of four models sharing the same problems.
Second Class Macs are Apple’s somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they’re not really bad – simply designs that didn’t meet their full potential. The LC II (a.k.a. Performa 400-430) was a slightly less crippled version of the LC.
Second Class Macs are Apple’s somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they’re not really bad – simply designs that didn’t meet their full potential. Take the 16-bit motherboard of the LC, replace the 68020 CPU with a 68030, strip out the expansion slot, and put it into a Classic case – and you have […]
Second Class Macs are Apple’s somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they’re not really bad – simply designs that didn’t meet their full potential. The first color compact Mac, the Color Classic, was full of compromises.
