iBook in the fridge

How do you breathe new life into an old Apple iBook? Put it in the fridge! Seriously, I was about to remove the memory from a 3 year-old and bashed-to-death iBook that had packed up a few months ago and thought ‘Ah, well, let’s see if it turns on’ and the machine started, only for the screen to blank out after a minute or so. The solution: put the iBook in the fridge for 20 minutes, cool it down to about 10?∫C, and then it ran for 10 minutes – enough to back up my data.

I of course don’t really advocate this as a solution to your iBook problems, and it was only a temporary fix to get my data off the machine. I assume that some soldering or wiring expands when the iBook is hot and stops the screen or video card from working, hence the fridge method seemed to work OK.

These iBooks have been beset by some unreliability problems though – have a look at this page from Apple’s website.

Anyway, the data is safe, and there’s more space for yoghurt and tomatoes in the fridge now.