Battery Life, Mac Help and Router

[bardolater]

Hey all,
I'm new to the boards and a brand new mac user. I just got a PB G4. There are a few things I don't understand.

- I got the powerbook yesterday. Charged until the light turned green as it said in the book. But this morning I only got 21/2 hours out of it. Does the type of activity you do matter with the battery? It's supposed to last five hours right? I wonder if I have a defective battery.

- I have a windows based Pc at home, and I am connected to the net through my cable company Comcast. I read on the board that I should get a router, and went to bestbuy yesterday. They had no idea what kind I should get, or any help in setting it up. Any suggestions?

- I also got the office addition for mac. It works fine but it only opens half the screen. How do i get it to open full screen?


- When I do a search on Mac Help, no results come up. The initial screen remains. Did I do something wrong?

- I am a member of a mp3 downloading group. I downloaded the software for sharing and it created several files on the desk top that says dmg. what does that mean?

I really appreciate any help. I hope i'll adjust soon!!

Thanks,
bardolater

[mmkerc]

Battery life is effected by what you do with the computer. I will defer to more laptop savvy users however 2 1/2 hours of heavy hard drive use I think is good.

Assuming your cable modem outputs are ethernet I believe you only need an ethernet hub. WAIT UNTIL SOMEONE ELSE VALIDATES THIS before buying

I am assuming you are running OS X, which means in the upper left corner of the office window that opens is three colored dots - red (close), yellow (minimize), green (expand to full screen, or reduce). You can also click and drag the lower right corner to size the window yourself.

Don't understand the problem with Mac Help. When you select Mac Help a dialog box should open. In the upper right hand side is a text entry box (mag glass symbol on lefthand side of text box). Type what you are searching for help for and in the bottom half of the dialog box a selection of choices should appear.

The .dmg are Macintosh versions of self extracting zipped files similar to .sea in windows. This is not entirely correct, but it is functionally correct.

[bardolater]

Mmkerc,

Thank you so vey much for your help. I was organizing music files and transferring to my Ipod. I assume that sucks up a lot of energy.

About the mac help. The dialog box pops up. i type in what i'm looking for, then hit search but nothing happens.

Thank you for being so patient.

Bardolater

[bardolater]

http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2....rod_id=1440230


Would this work?

[Alex]

Yes, you will need a router because Comcast will only give you one IP address, which needs to be shared with multiple computers using NAT.

That Linksys model should work with both your PC and your Mac.

[mmkerc]

With respect to the Mac Help try typing in something simple like "printers" that should turn up about 25 topics. It maybe you are being too specific. what are you searching for?

[bardolater]

Thanks Alex, I ordered the lynks router.

mmkerc,

I tried "printers" still nothing came up... The initial box remains. Also you know how there are links in the dialogbox for frequently asked questions. I tried those links and they don't work either. Any ideas?

[mmkerc]

Read this article from Apple's support page on how to fix your help viewer.

[bardolater]

Thank you, thank you!!!
It worked...