Well after being nearly driven mad by this infuriating squeaking noise for a couple of weeks, I finally fixed it. 🙂

Did I fix it by reinstalling the OS? No…

Did I fix it by upgrading the OS? No…

Did I find out it was some obscure software problem? No…

Did I send it back to Apple? Did I hell – no way I’m losing my primary workstation for 2 weeks just so they can replace a CPU fan.

Here’s how to fix it in 1 easy step (warning/disclaimer – this is not recommended, it may break your mac, invalidate your warranty or cause the sky to cave in, etc etc):

Rap the back of the Mac with your knuckles, about 3 or 4 inches above the USB ports.

That’s it! No cunning solution or workaround, just good old-fashioned physical violence. I got so annoyed by the squeak that I just gave it a whack one day as a last-ditch attempt, and the squeak stopped instantly. Came back a couple of hours later (but much quieter) – hit it again, stopped instantly. Came back once more a day later (very quiet) – hit it again, stopped instantly. It’s gone from squeaking every hour or so to not a single tiny squeak for two whole weeks (and counting).

Bliss 🙂

I guess that whack must have reseated the fan onto its spindle or something.

Now I like my Mac again…

Coming from the Linux world, I’m a big fan of OpenOffice.org, the free office suite. I’d like to stick with it when I make my Mac switch. I don’t fancy shelling out an extra AUD $500 for MS Office when I get my Mac, and besides I have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format already!

Now you can get OO.org for the Mac, but it’s supposed to be a bit “rough round the edges” (which seems to mean not as pretty as a native Mac app, and with menus and stuff in the wrong place). Still, if it works then that’ll do me. It currently doesn’t run on Intel Macs officially, though there are some “Community Builds” of it that run on Intel.

Seb Payne has written a couple of handy-looking tutorials on getting OO.org up and running on a Mac – one on installing X11 (a prerequisite for OO.org) and another on installing OO.org itself. I’ll give them a go once I’ve got the Mac in my grubby hands.

Have you used OpenOffice.org on a Mac? What do you think of it?