I think my video card might be dying, I'm not exactly positive, or don't know how to check. What's happening is that there seems to be some blurring of letters in several different programs. This still occurs after I did a clean install. Is there any definate way to check to see if my video card might be fialing me, and is that covered under the warranty?
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Ibook video card problems??
- Thread starter brsboarder
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If you have a valid warranty then, yes, failure of the video chip (it's not a card in an iBook) would be covered. It does not sound like a failure though. Have you tried playing with the font smoothing settings? You could try running the hardware test on the restore CD/DVD.
Failure normally shows up as graphics corruption, not blurred text.
Failure normally shows up as graphics corruption, not blurred text.
my concern is that this problem is just suddenly occuring and i've had the computer for two years now
If your screen calibration settings got changed or messed up -- it will instantly throw your screen out of whack.brsboarder said:
Even an LCD display will change as it ages -- calibrate the display.
The standard calibration settings the machine ship with suck, calibrating the display even helps new machines.
BTW -- calibrate the display.
calibrating now, doesn't seem to fix it, but I have another question. If I want an external display, can I get any that I want, or am I limited to like a 17in or something. I tried searching apple's website, but couldn't find info. I'm running an:
Ibook g4 800mhz w/ 640mb ram, I was looking to buy:
BenQ 20" Wide DVI LCD
8ms 600:1 300 cd/m2
1680 x 1050 WSXGA+
Ibook g4 800mhz w/ 640mb ram, I was looking to buy:
BenQ 20" Wide DVI LCD
8ms 600:1 300 cd/m2
1680 x 1050 WSXGA+
Usually slightly blurry text is a SW problem, but if it's horrid and you think it's HW.
You can always claim distorted video.
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/
You can always claim distorted video.
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/
my ibook isn't one of those mentioned w/ the problem, so I doubt its that, I just don't have a clue what could be wrong
brsboarder said:
You can buy whatever screen you want but unless you have installed the spanning hack you are limited to mirroring your internal display at the same resolution. With the hack you can have spanning as well as mirroring and run at higher resolutions...
will that hack allow me to run my computer off the external display mirrored, but with upgraded resolution. I would think it would be very weird to have spanning between a 12in notebook and a nice 19in monitor.
brsboarder said:
Mirrored is mirrored. same contents on both screens and clearly to do that, the same resolution.
I used to use G3 iBook with the hack and spanning and it worked fine. It's just like using a PowerBook or MacBook with an external display.
usually I keep my laptop inside my desk where a keyboard would go, therefore feel like spanning might be awkward.
Just because you are using spanning doesn't mean that you have to keep any windows on the iBook screen! Simply move the menu bar over to the external display and don't move any windows onto the iBook screen!
The spanning hack also enables clamshell mode so you can run the iBook closed using only the external screen (with a USB keyboard and mouse). This is not recommended though as the iBook vents heat through the keyboard (unlike PowerBooks and MacBooks). Running an iBook in clamshell mode may cause it to overheat and even damage the hardware.
The spanning hack also enables clamshell mode so you can run the iBook closed using only the external screen (with a USB keyboard and mouse). This is not recommended though as the iBook vents heat through the keyboard (unlike PowerBooks and MacBooks). Running an iBook in clamshell mode may cause it to overheat and even damage the hardware.
i bought a widescreen display, but when i plug it in and hook it up non-mirrored, the display says input not supported, if I do mirrored its fine, but extremely distorted, whats wrong?
use a different font and size and see how that looks. I also have a bit of a blurry fonts (even with the MR website!!) on my PB G4 and my iBook G3. My G5 with an old Apple CRT from 1992 is crystal clear. Even though there is a better graphics card in my PB (9700) then in my G5 (9600). To make a long story short, it's probably the combination of resolution, fonttype, size and Apple's Anti Aliasing on a LCD such as in your laptop! If you open a Word document, the text is probably crystal clear, isn't it??