Older Macs, Dimming Screens, File Extensions :: My First Mac - Help Buying and Getting Started with Your New Mac

Older Macs, Dimming Screens, File Extensions

Quick Scan

System Preferences>Energy Saver>Options to stop your screen from dimming.

Use Get Info to see your file's extension.

Get a G3 or better to use Tiger. Best to get a G4 or better to use Leopard when it comes out.

“Programs” File, Download Clutter, and Slow Macs

Force Quitting, Removing USB devices, iChat.

Home pages, laptop lids and Windows Media

Buying Older Macs, Dimming Screens and File Extensions

By: Chris Kerins
Published: Monday, June 25, 2007
Categories: My First Mac Q&A

Welcome to My First Mac's Q&A column. It is said that Macs are easier to use, but they are still complex in their own right. Here are a few questions we have received lately from readers like you. Sometimes we reformat the questions for clarity and presentation.

This week we have questions about buying an older Mac, why the laptop screens go dim and where files extensions have gone and how to get them back.

		I just bought a new Macbook and the screen seems to go dim after looking at a page for just a minute or so. Is there some way to stop this from happening?

		Your Macbook is trying to conserve it's battery life for you. There are settings for when your Macbook is plugged in and when it's running on battery. To change this setting, go to System Preferences>Energy Saver>Options. Look under Other Options and un-check the box next to "Automatically reduce the brightness of the display before display sleep." Take a look around while you are there. There are lots of way to customize your Energy Saver settings.

		I'm used to seeing file extensions in the names of my files on my PC. Do macs have this?

		Yes, Macs use files extensions like .doc or .pdf too, but it hides the extension in the name by default so as to make everything cleaner. If you want to know about a particular file, select it and hit cmd-I or Get Info from the File menu. In the 4th block down, it gives you the name with extension and a check box for whether you want to hide the extension or not. In many programs, when you save a file, there is an option to include the extension in its name. So you can use that if you want all your Photoshop files to have a .psd but the rest stay hidden. And finally, if you want to go back to the old way of dealing with files across the board, you can go to Finder>Preferences>Advanced and then select the check box that says "Show all file extensions."

		I'm shopping for a used Mac. How old is too old when I'm looking at these on eBay?

		Any Mac will work with the software of it's era. The answer comes down to: how up to date on software to you want to be? You can load Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on a Mac with a G3 or better processor. Here's a great page with pictures on Apple's site that illustrates all the Macs that work with Tiger. I would recommend you shoot for the minimum of the soon to be released Leopard upgrade (10.5). Apple hasn't published the minimum specs for that, but I'd expect to see G4 Macs as the minimum. I'd also look for a Mac with USB 2, not just USB 1.1 because so many devices connect via USB and there's a huge difference in speed between 1.1 and 2. A DVD drive also can be important because most new software ships on DVDs. Check out Everymac.com for specs on all the Macs throughout the years.


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