I am on a 5GB/month wireless broadband plan from Optus. For the purposes of selling the plan to you, Optus define 1GB as 1000MB (see screen shot below).

For the purposes of billing you, however, Optus define 1MB as 1024KB (also see the screen shot below). This means that they would define 1GB as 1024 MB for data used. Hence the 5GB plan is actually a (5000/(5 x 1024)) x 5 = 4.88 GB plan.

5GB should give you 5 x 1024MB = 5120MB.

Given that excess usage (not that we are at any risk of that) is charged per MB, not shaped, it would be good if they were consistent.

…whether I should upgrade my PowerBook G4 (12″, 1GHz) to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. I currently have the original 40GB HDD installed, so perhaps I should upgrade that first (given Leopard requires 9GB to install). The G3s I have will all stay at 10.4 for the time being. They are all sub-500MHz so I don’t think any amount of hacking will make 10.5 worthwhile on them.

For the record, I don’t think Apple making the minimum processor required for Leopard to be an 867MHz G4 is unfair. And I have lots of old Macs that can run 10.4 🙂

Edit: I will probably wait for 10.5.1 to come out.

Picked up a 3rd generation 20GB iPod for $140. It is in near-mint condition with good battery life. Will be useful for backing up photos as well (I am only using 2GB for songs at the moment).

Also have a 12″ 500MHz G3 iBook coming – it will need some repairs but will hopefully be functional soon.

Lastly, my B&W G3 PowerMac (350MHz) is finally setup with 512MB of RAM, 40GB internal HDD, 250GB USB2.0 external HDD and a FireWire external dual layer DVD burner. This is now the backup server for all of our photos and other documents.

…can be removed with Isopropyl alcohol and a little bit of effort. The sterilizing pads you can buy at the pharmacy do the job nicely. Thanks to Kylie for sourcing the pads and Cameron for providing the pen marks…