[iBook] Brrrrrr

[Angus Wallace]

Howdy Rebecca,

I _only_ use my iBook with the hard disk about 90% full, and I've had it over
99% full a few times (but it's not a Good Thing). The main reason one runs into
problems here, is that when you run out of memory (RAM) the computer stores some
of it on the hard disk. If you run out of disk space here, things can get messy.
Try to keep about 5GB of hard disk free, always.. especially if you use lots of
applications at once.

Having said this, I don't think it's your problem (from what you've said). It
sounds like you have some faulty hardware. It might be that when you leave your
computer for a few minutes, the hard disk goes into power saving mode, and that
there's a problem here (for instance, it might be sending a heap of spurious
signals back to the computer that cause it to crash). 

To get a better idea of what the problem is, you should look at the crash dump.
this is a file that is stored by the computer when it crashes, and has details
of why. Apple provide a nice program for looking at this. it's in
/Applications/Utilities and is called 'Console'. If you're not very computer
savvy, there's probably not much point in looking though, and you may as well
take your iBook into an Apple store and get them to have a look.. Hopefully if
they look at it for 5 minutes, and know what they're doing, they'll be able to
give you a diagnosis and expected cost of repair, and then you can make a
decision about buying something new..

VERY IMPORTANT: it's always vital to have regular, incremental, redundant
backups. This is particularly the case if you think you might have a hardware
fault, and even more so if you plan to take the computer to a store (because
you might get a different computer back - or at lease a different hard disk).
BACKUP YOUR STUFF IMMEDIATELY!!! :-)

Good luck with it, and let us know how it goes,
Cheers,
-Angus