Troubles with my iBook

I bought a iBook laptop over Christmas 2002, and I have mixed feelings about it. I bought it since Mac OSX is Unix based, and allows me to run GNU code on top of the OSX operating system. Starting up X-windows on top of the native MAC windows system takes some time and CPU.

My biggest problem is the battery. I had to buy a new one, as the old one died on me. It was already acted badly after a year: short span, and weird battery indicator values, even though I usually have my laptop plugged in. (Batteries should not recharge constantly in that case but mine did.) The battery contains six Li-Ion cells (SONY GR18650), with the claim of 50 Watt Hour: i.e. 2400 mAh per battery, which costs per six about 90 US dollars. Furthermore, the whole thing is glued together, which makes replacing it rather tricky. I am however thinking that the battery died, because it "self-decharged" below its minimum, because I did not use it for a month or two.

My other problem is the 10.2.x version does not support the openssh encryption of the wireless (airport, in mac-speak), which makes it more or less useless nowadays, unless I install 10.3 or 10.4, which cost me another 130 dollars. This almost sounds like Microsods.