My CTX AMD K6-300/128 MB RAM/3 GB drive laptop is obviously at the end of its life. I was in the “shopping” process for a laptop for 2 months now, and I considered a number of PC laptops, including the Compaq Presario 1525US. At the end, I decided to get the new 12″ Powerbook, came in last week, and I am since then using it as my primary machine. Here is what I think about it.
The 12″ Powerbook is a slick machine. It is really a beautifully constructed computer. It gives the feeling that is more natural and more solid than the iBook or the plastic PC laptops. The Apple logo on the back of the LCD screen is lit by the LCD’s backlight and it looks at least cool, especially at night.
The machine features Bluetooth support (connect to other Bluetooth Macs or Bluetooth wireless devices like mobile phones, PDAs, keyboards etc), however, I have no such devices over here, so I couldn’t test it. The 12″ Powerbook comes with 802.11g support, but the place where I bought the laptop didn’t have an Airport Extreme card on stock, so I will have to wait for it as well. The extra 512 MB DDR RAM I ordered didn’t make it either, so I used the laptop with 256 MB RAM, but I did not experience any slowdowns because of it. For normal/web usage, the 256 MB seem acceptable with the pre-installed Mac OS X 10.2.3.
The laptop also comes with a normal ethernet port (no gigabit), modem, one firewire port, 2 USB 1.1 ports, a VGA out for mirroring or dual display, line in for audio, headphone jack, a built-in microphone, stereo speakers, 40 GB 4200 RPM ATA-100 drive (60 GB 4200 RPM drive is optional), a CD-RW/DVD combo drive (Superdrive is optional) and a 12.1″ 1024×768 TFT LCD screen. The CPU speed is 867 MHz and there is 256 KB L2 cache.
Click for a larger image view
The good
I am in love with its keyboard. I believe that Powerbook’s best and finest feature in this model is the keyboard. It just feels great and it “blends” well with the rest of the design. I am generally “difficult” with laptop keyboards, but this one is the first laptop keyboard I worked with that is really easy to get along. My only gripe would be that the arrow keys are half size, so playing pac-man or a fast Tetris game is almost impossible…
Speed is good. It feels much-much faster than my G4 Cube 450 MHz, 1 MB L2 cache and 448 MB SDRAM (which equals or is even better than the fastest G3 iBook selling today at 800 MHz). Running the XBench benchmark, it reaches overall rating from 72 to 75 points, while my Cube ranges from 52 to 56. Yippee, I can resize Safari and even IE now with not much lag. OmniWeb and other Cocoa apps are still slow to resize or scroll though. However, the overall speed is definitely a big improvement over the Cube and surely it will be over the people who currently have iBooks or classic iMacs.
The sound coming out of the speakers is pretty good quality. Not as good as in the 17″ model, neither as good as the one found in most Compaq laptops, but still, not bad at all. Fully acceptable playing my favorite Eurodance radio station… 
The laptop is pretty light, not the lightest you can find in its category, but fully portable and easy to carry around. The battery can keep your laptop alive for 3,5
+ hours. Recharging it takes about an hour or so. All the ports are located on the left side of the laptop, and not on the back. The reason for this is because the LCD screen lays behind and down, similarly to how iBook does it. The only part that is located at the back are the speakers. On the right hand side you will find a slot loading CD-RW/DVD combo drive, and I tried burning CDs and playing DVDs. The drive works well.
One thing I like about the Apple laptops is the fact that when you close down the LCD screen and the machine goes to sleep, and then you open it back up, you are up and running on your machine in less than 2 seconds. On PCs, depending on the laptop and the OS installed, it can take up to 8-10 seconds.
As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t received yet the Airport Extreme card, but this laptop can be twice as sexy after fully using it at home with our wireless network.
The installation of OSX 10.2.3 comes with a few extra software, like a fax app, QuickBooks, OmniOutliner and OnniGraffle, GraphicConverter, Art Director’s Toolkit and the demos of MS Office X and FileMaker 6. To be honest, except the graphic converter app, I don’t see me using any of the rest extra software offered there… And I had to install the developer tools manually (the package was in the app dir, but it is not pre-installed).
Classic support is also there, so you can run most OS 9 applications via your OSX, but you can’t install and boot to pure OS 9 with this laptop. I find this acceptable, it is a strategic move to try to push your customers to OSX.
I also installed the Remote Desktop Connection and it works beautifully. I can log in to my WinXP PRO machine and check out my email there and that works great. I tried VNC, but it was unacceptably slow, so using this Microsoft app really works great for me and makes the “transition” to my Powerbook era, easier. 
The Baaad….
Hmm… well, this is a lovely little laptop, but there are certainly a few points which I dislike and they are beyond the “get used to it” or “deal with it” realm.
Number 1 issue is heat. The thing burns. After 2-3 hours of continuing usage, the laptop just burns like a hot cake on the lower left side. As other reviewers have already said and people on the forums, the Powerbook 12″ just gets too hot. It is cool to be fanless, but if I had to choose between fan noise and my lap or my hands becoming roasted, I prefer the fan noise. Yes, other laptops also get hot, but this laptop is among the hottest around. This issue should be resolved in newer models, or I don’t see me buying a new Apple laptop in a few years from now.
Number 2 issue is the quality of the LCD screen. With great sadness I will have to say that the LCD screen used in *this* Powerbook model, is crap. I know that the older models and the current 15″ Powerbook’s LCD model has _great_ quality, same as the LCDs found on the Sharp/Sony/IBM laptops, but the one used for this Powerbook is the same as the one found on the 15″ iMac and the iBooks. I tried adjusting gamma and color, to no avail. After 1-2 hours using this machine, my eyes hurt, the horizontal lines of the Aqua windows are way too visible, fonts look worse and more blurry as they do on most Linuxes *because* of this LCD and the lack of Clear Type, LCD is not viewable from up or down but only when you are directly looking at it in perfect line, and worst of all, when scrolling on a web page that has many colors and the LCD has to adjust quickly from black to white colorspaces, the LCD is just “slow”. Motion blur in all its glory.
For those who didn’t know, Apple is using two different models on their LCD products, one great quality (older powerbooks, Cinema Displays) and one crappy/cheap one (imac, ibooks, 12″ powerbook and the new 20″ Cinema Display (that’s why it is so cheap and it even competes price-wise with the PC LCD monitors in the range)). The new 12″ Powerbook comes with the cheap one. However, I can live with it I guess, as I find the heat issue even more annoying than the LCD quality. However, I did mention my old AMD K6 laptop in the beginning of the article, and the irony is that this 1998 laptop has a fantastic 13.3″ LCD screen (also at the same resolution), and it’s waaay better quality-wise from the Powerbooks’ in year 2003. I guess, they don’t make LCDs as they used to (yes, that was sarcasm).
Many will be unhappy with the fact that the resolution is at 1024×768, but for a truly mobile solution, that resolution is acceptable. There is some space around the LCD, so they could use something like 12.8″ and use 1152×864 resolution, without making the Powerbook bigger. Good quality LCDs used on today’s SONY or Sharp or Fujitsu PC laptops are able to do 1280×768 at 10.4″, so having 1152×864 on the 12.1″ or 12.8″ screen would be a no-issue. But instead of asking for more resolution, I would first ask for a better quality screen, as I explained above.
The hard drive the 12″ laptop uses is not among the ones someone would consider fast hard disk for laptops. Depending on your luck, you will end up with either a Fujitsu or a Toshiba 4200 RPM drive (Apple uses both). Mine is a Fujitsu one, but other than the slow RPM and seek time, it works well. However, I find the booting of the OS on the Powerbook to be a bit slow. My Cube has a slower hard drive overall (but faster seek) and slower CPU, but it comes up faster than the Powerbook.
There is no DVI port, nor PCMCIA or PC card/bus port on the Powerbook, and in order to install the new Airport Extreme card, you will need to remove the battery and make a “real” hardware installation. The memory placeholder is more reachable and easier to deal with. However, in order to open the placeholder to put the ram in it, it requires a Philips 00 screwdriver, instead of the “clip-in” thingie you usually find on PC laptops.
Another thing I find quite annoying is the the touch pad. It is not fast enough. I have the acceleration to maximum and still, in order to go from 0,768 to the 1024,0 screen co-ordinates, by using normal speed on my finger, it requires two “trips”. If I do the trip fast with my finger, it can go to these co-ordinates in one trip, but in that case it is quite useless, because you lose in precision. Mind you, this is not a hardware problem, it is more of a mouse driver problem on OSX, but the fact that the problem exists, it makes it a laptop issue too. I find the mouse speed on my Cube slow as well.
The other day I was boasting in the forums that I have never crashed OSX on my Cube (I had crashed it because of hardware issue, but never because OSX has failed). Well, in two days since I got the Powerbook via FedEx, I managed to crash the powerbook, twice. Here is how:
The first time you turn on your Powerbook, you are asked to input information about yourself, register the machine, put in the IP addresses and send the info over at Apple.com. I did so, the machine connected to their servers, did the registration fine, and then when it was saying “Disconnecting…” the machine just wouldn’t respond. I left it there for a while, but it wouldn’t come out of that screen. Please note that this screen comes up _before_ Finder and the OSX desktop has loaded. So, no matter what you try to kill the crashed app, it wouldn’t work. OSX was not responding so I had to hard reset it.
The second time was on Saturday night. A few friends were over here for dinner (and a lot of you ‘know’ them, but I won’t tell who they are and we wanted to do an FTP transfer from my Cube, to the Powerbook. We FTP’ed in successfully, we copied over files that were in the realm of 200 MB each, and then we started chatting between us. The FTP was still going on, and after a few minutes, suddenly the machine gone to sleep (I use the default time settings for power energy). When we tried to bring the machine up, it wouldn’t come up. Black screen, and nothing else. The caps lock was still working, so the machine was not completely crashed, but it wouldn’t awake no matter what. So, we had to hard reset it again and then we got over the painful fsck time to clean up the filesystem (no, don’t ask me to put the journaling on, it is still experiemental).
And I found a bug too. I would call it a “stupid” bug, because it mostly looks and feels like a by-product of Quartz Extreme more than a “real” bug. So, when entering full screen to play the “Office Space” movie with the DVD Player, the movie would lose frames. On windowing mode, it plays perfectly. But on fullscreen mode it would lose its smoothness. It would require you to look hard to see the problem, but the problem is there. And then, I thought: “that can’t be right. Even my slower Cube can play DVDs in fullscreen with absolutely no problem, so this has to be a bug”. I opened the CPU utilization application which is just a small window “always on top”, and I put it on top of the fullscreen DVD playback in order to observe the CPU utilization. CPU was only at 1/3, so the CPU was not the problem. BUT, for the time the little CPU window was on top of the DVD fullscreen playback, the movie would NOT lose frames! Take that little window away, and the movie would start become smoothless again! *Normally* you would expect the exact opposite to happen, because the CPU would need to calculate and render the parts of the window that are covered or not covered. In the case I experienced, it was the opposite. That really looks like a bug, and I hope that the DVD programmers over at Apple are reading this. Update: Others seem to have the same problem.
A gripe I have with the memory is that it comes with 128 MB built-in and 128 MB on the memory placeholder, by default. I don’t get that. Why didn’t they include that 256 MB as built-in so it could free up the memory placeholder for the user to add a 512 module and go up to 768 MB of max RAM? The way it is now, the max is at 640 MB and after you upgrade, you end up with an unused 128 MB DIMM that you can’t use anywhere else! The price difference for Apple doing that would be really minimal, and the customers would be happier and this Powerbook would sound more powerful. If 640 MB is ok for you though, well, fair enough. But Mac OS X is a Unix, which means that it can utilize well any extra RAM, so as much RAM one can put in, the better. Personally, I want this machine maxed-out in RAM and I can’t wait for my 512 MB DIMM to arrive.
Last point is the graphics performance. The machine includes a 32 MB GeForce4 MX 420. The 420 is the slow GeForce 4 model. And you can read here and here about what Carmack suggests about the GeForce 4 MX. Yes, for a laptop, this card is a _great_ solution, but this is a Powerbook we are talking about. And the 420 model is significantly slower than the 440 model found on the higher end laptops. That’s bad of course if you want to play games, but if you are not interested in games, the included 420 model is good enough. Speaking for myself, I don’t mind it having the 420 instead of the 440, but having the Radeon 9000 or the 440 could also be good.
Conclusion
The new 12″ Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it. This is exactly how I feel about it. It is crippled when compared to its big brother Powerbooks:
* Max of only 640 RAM while the limit could easily be 768 MB (the other Powerbooks max out at 1 GB). Plus, it could use PC2700 RAM instead of PC2100, but on the other hand it wouldn’t make much of a difference cause of other front side bus issues (and it would be more expensive).
* Terrible LCD screen quality
* No L3 cache, while traditionally Powerbooks have 1 MB (which greatly improves overall speed)
* No gigabit ethernet (not that I care about this one much really)
* Slow-ish graphics card
If Apple was to take down their G3-based products and rename the 12″ Powerbook as an iBook, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
So, this was a review negative you say? I say not necessarily. I am obliged to write about my experiences and any problems that I came across. It is an $1800+ purchase at the end of the day, it is not like buying chocolate from the store in the corner (except if you are Steve Jobs ;-).
If you want a cheaper Powerbook to boast to your friends, or you want a fast-ish Powerbook that is able to do its job fine and be small and really be portable, this is the Mac laptop you were looking for. And no matter what, don’t buy an iBook, shave off the extra $500-600 and get this laptop instead. But don’t except it to be as “wonderful” or as “glamorous” or as “full-featured” as the other Powerbooks. But it would be glamorous, and fast, and wonderful and full-featured compared to the iBooks. Yes, this is the cheapest Powerbook ever, but have you considered what was crippled in order to pay this “better” price? And speaking for myself, I don’t like crippling my own eyes just to pay $300 less. I expect a certain (LCD) quality from a piece of hardware that bares the name “Powerbook”.
This might even be a new strategy at Apple, to use cheaper parts or less features in order to compete with their PC competitors. I don’t know. All I know is that I want a better LCD screen for the $2000 I paid Apple for, especially when older laptops were better in this regard. I see it as a backwards step, *or* as a way to blend between the two product ranges of the Powerbook and the iBook.
For many people this machine should be able to completely replace their desktops, however, if Apple was more careful and they included/fixed the issues we are mentioning in the “baaad” section, this could be THE laptop you were always dreaming of.
Don’t misunderstand me though, I like the Powerbook. It is already a best-seller for Apple and I haven’t make up my mind for purchasing it. I use it all the time and it is solid and it does what you expect and its keyboard is great. But it could [easily] be better for the $2,000 it cost us.
It seems to me that the pluses outweigh the flaws for this machine. I’d get the 17 inch, but I need something compact because I do a LOT of traveling all over (though I’m still considering the 17 inch because it’s just a beauty!). If I get the 12 inch, I’d want the new 20 inch monitor for my desktop, to hook up to the 12 inch PB. The 12 inch say it supports 1200×1600, and I think the 20 inch is 1200×1680. Does this mean the 12 inch won’t show up or show up fully on an external 20 inch monitor? Also, will it show up on this monitor with the PB closed?
Thanks for an objective review!
It’s a decent review, but as a number of others have stated in previous comments, you may have problems with your LCD. I got a 400 MHz Pismo with a decent LCD screen, but I’ve always found the iMacs/iBooks much better.
I don’t understand the people complaining about the lack of Gigabit enet on this model. How many users actually USE it? Besides most PCs including notebooks don’t even ship Gigabit enet. But the real bonus is the $1999 AlBook with SuperDrive. I doubt there’s any PC notebook that sells for $1999 with SuperDrive and the iApps software to do it the easy way.
I just finished reading this article and I cannot believe what I am hearing. For the same price you could get a hella PC laptop. Even if you are one of the Anit-Microsoft people out there, use Linux. I have a very hard time with many MAC enthusiasts because they do these kinds of things. They “put up” with things that a normal user shouldn’t. For the same price you could have gotten a beautiful 15″ screen, faster cpu, more memory, you name it.
“For those who didn’t know, Apple is using two different models on their LCD products, one great quality (older powerbooks, Cinema Displays) and one crappy/cheap one (imac, ibooks, 12″ powerbook and the new 20″ Cinema Display (that’s why it is so cheap and it even competes price-wise with the PC LCD monitors in the range))”
This is complete presumption and contradicts almost everyone’s experiences on the Apple Cinema Display reader feedback forum on Macintouch.com: the 20″ Cinema Display is the best display that Apple has ever released. Its specs even point to a better pixel pitch & brightness.
After using a Powerbook 15″ and iBook alternately, along with seeing the 15″ and 17″ iMac, I really have to disagree with Eugenia’s assessment. I’ve found these LCD’s to be generally superior to most PC laptops, with some exceptions.
I got one to replace a blueberry iBook…
heat issue… can’t argue about that, but it doesn’t bother me that much.
screen? Screen is gorgeous, don’t know what you’re talking about.
Never crashes
Airport Extreme is awesome
No remorse here!
This review is a bit weird… Let’s see:
LCD – I have never seen anyone complaining about the screen quality of Apple’s computers. I can’t speak of the 12″ PowerBook but the iBook and the iMac seem very decent screens, but that’s my view.
If you look at the Apple forums for the new PowerBooks there isn’t one single complain about the quality of the screen and there are lots of people that come from the 15″.
Only thing I’ve seen being pointed out in Apple’s screens reviews was slow response time.
Speakers – “The sound coming out of the speakers is pretty good quality. Not as good as in the 17″ model, …” and then
on one comment you say “BSDRocks, no idea about the 17″ LCD, because I have not seen it.” (referring to the 17″ PowerBook). What’s up with that? You assume the sound is inferior or someone told you? Big no-no reviewing something based on expectations or something other people said.
G4 iBook – “The new 12″ Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it.”
And then “But it would be glamorous, and fast, and wonderful and full-featured compared to the iBooks.”.
Make up your mind, or maybe steroids means “glamorous, fast and wonderful and full-featured”?!
Hard Drive – “The hard drive the 12″ laptop uses is not among the ones someone would consider fast hard disk for laptops.”. I certainly haven’t seen many laptops with 5400RPM drives. If you’re talking about access time or transfer speed at least give us some data and make a fair comparision with some PC laptop in it’s price range.
Video card – “Last point is the graphics performance. The machine includes a 32 MB GeForce4 MX 420. The 420 is the slow GeForce 4 model. And you can read here and here about what Carmack suggests about the GeForce 4 MX. Yes, for a laptop, this card is a _great_ solution, but this is a Powerbook we are talking about.”.
Let me point out that there’s no such thing as a GeForce4 MX
420. The card in the laptop is a GeForce4 420 Go, the GeForce4 MX is not a mobile card.
Look up the specs and products before writing or you’re misinforming people. I wouldn’t be surprised if happened at cnet, but would expect people here to get their facts straight.
And no, this is not the laptop to buy to play Doom 3 if that’s what you mean. And that’s what Carmack was talking about.
And yes it’s a PowerBook, but it’s a 1800$ one, go see what other laptops in the same price range have for a video card and you’ll be very surprised.
If you really think it hasn’t got what’s fair for 1800$ why keep it? Is this some sort of buyer’s remorse?
It seems like you’re reviewing the machine in a void and point out flaws in an absolute manner without taking into account the price and it’s competitors.
Your 450 cube is *NOT* faster then a 800MHz iBook. The 800MHz iBook is actually almost faster then the 12″ Aluminum Power Book. (they are not titanium for all those calling them a TiBook, read the specs)
The G3 in the iBook is a far more advanced chip then the G4 used in the 12″ power book. Not only does it have twice the cache, but it also uses a .13m process instead of a .18m.
As for the screen, the iBook and 12″ power book dont use the same screen. My iBooks screen is plenty good quality, I have no quarrels with it at all. (its now 2 weeks old).
I, like many other posters, do not understand your issue with the LCD screen. If it has the problems you describe I would take it to an Apple tech. My 12″ 600Mhz iBook LCD looks beautiful, bright and crisp. SuperCal is a great app to tweak the display.
Someone mentioned a problem of gaining network access once resuming from sleep. This was a common issue for many people using OS 10.2, I had the problem on all three of my Macs but the issue resolved itself when I updated to 10.2.3. If you haven’t already, update to 10.2.3 and see if that solves your problem.
um, my new 14″ iBook that I purchased 2 days has Clear-Type.
in fact my LCD is as sharp if not more so than my friends 15″ Powerbook, and like another poster commented, I now hate having to look at CRTs after such a nice LCD.
when i went to purchase mine I couldnt choose between the 12″ Powerbook or the 14″ iBook. the 12″ screen is what convinced me to go with the 14″ iBook…12″ is just WAY TOO SMALL.
why no love for the iBook? because its a G3 w/ 100MHz bus?
pfffft….
I keep hearing people say that Apples’ oferings are slow compared to theeir PC counter parts. Would someone please help me put that in perspective? In other words, the new iBook is about as fast as a <insert pc specs here>. I dont have any stores near me to play with one, so I can’t relate the two machines to each other.
Thanks!
I have recently bought (about two weeks ago) my first apple. It is a 15″ Powerbook G4. I absolutely love it! The only thing I can say I was disappointed about was that the 15″ comes with SDRAM, not DDR like the 17″ and 12″ models. To me it really doesn’t matter. I have been running with the standard 256mb and I haven’t had an issues with the speed.
I am suprised to hear that the LCD on the 12″ model is not up to par with the larger 15″. I almost pooed in my pants when I was checking out the 15″ at the local Apple store. A 170 degree viewing angle is simply amazing.
Anyway, I was kind of disapointed to hear that the 12″ had so many “issues”, but you must consider your alternative: A 12″ sony vaio. Those things are pretty, but they are certainly not as powerful as your tiBook, regardless how bad you may feel about it now.
“don’t forget that usb is not a point to point connection as firewire – it is a bus.”
Despite its name, USB is NOT a bus.
Just forgot to point out that complaining about ClearType is also not a valid point.
ClearType is a Microsoft trademark for their subpixel rendering technology so of course OS X doesn’t have ClearType!
OS X has support for sub pixel rendering since Jaguar.
Apparently people aren’t only brainwashed by Apple marketing, seems like MS is doing a pretty good job too.
Another thing is where this information about having crappy displays and good ones comes from? I follow Apple pretty closely and have never seen that referred anywhere…
My Powerbook also has problems coming back from power saving, crashing all the time. The bottom is so hot I almost want to cut a hole in the case to let the heat out. I thought the G4 was a cool running processor.
…’cause it must have been the smoke making you think it wasn’t one of the sharpest laptop screens around, and the THT making your neurons think *everything* is slow. The 12″ iBook screen (which is presumably the same LCD as on the 12″ PB) is gorgeous. Bright, crisp, and as easy on the eyes as a beautiful woman. It’s one of the iBook’s greatest strengths, IMO. I can stare at it for hours and hours on end, and eye strain is never an issue. My eyes actually get hooked on it, and go through bit of withdrawal when I shut the lid. It’s that good. Maybe you just need a new pair of contacts?
I am actually saving up for a powerbook G4 right now.. I’m actually going between an older 15in. Tibook for a good deal or a 12in. Albook.
I’ve used both screens and they seem quite alright to me. But I’ve seen problems like yours on one of my friends ibook. I simply cannot use her ibook for some reason, the screen just seems so subpar, as to the previous ibook models. BTW, she just got it 2 days before MacWorldSF. So, maybe they did change the LCD in the ibook and the 12in. AlBook recently.
there is a setting for changing the anti-aliasing under the “general” preference pane.
there you can chang the setting for a best read using LCD’s.
Sarc
I have 4 LCDs here at home (IBM thinkpad, SONY VAio, CTX eZBook 800). I used 3 more in the past (toshiba laptop, Viewsonic lcd screen, sharp screen). And the LCD that comes with the 12″ Powerbook is the worst of all these.
Read my comments earlier: view of angle is extremely limited, it makes the fonts look fuzzy and not well rendered, the “refresh” is slow (when scrolling a page it becomes like motion blurred) etc.
No, there is nothing wrong with _my_ LCD in particular, it is just the LCD used.
You just saved me the trouble of configuring an Ibook. I think I’ll go for the Powerbook instead. Thanks!
Although I agree with most of the authors assertions in the article, he should really consider taking some remedial classes in sentence structure and basic grammar.
The author doesn’t need any of that. All she needs, is to pass the message throguh.
She currently learns French, because it is more important for her at this time.
Capito?
Eugenia,
Good article. I’m a mac fan but when it comes to buying a new mac, I want to hear ALL the good and bad points before spending any money.
(Think I’ll stick to buying a 15inch TiBook)
– Mark
I understand. One of the most important things a person can learn how to do is to represent themselves intelligently and succinctly. It seem appropriate that you learn French..they don’t seem to place value in either.
Eugenia, don’t mind the personal attacks. Remember, Apple isn’t just a cool computer, it’s a religion. By giving an opinion that isn’t 100% positive, they think you’re attacking their god. Really, that’s how I see it. There’s no other excuse except brainwashing. You don’t see people attacking you personally like this when you give a review on WindowsXP or something. Even the Linux guys aren’t this bad, and they’ve got a point. What anger these Mac guys have bottled up inside.
English is not Eugenia’s native language (it’s Greek). I think she’s doing pretty damn well. Warren, perhaps you could enlighten us on Greek sentence structure???
It’s tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), not THT. So before you go off trying to be witty, makes sure you don’t come off as a dumb a$$.
what’s to be angry about. Eugenia is helping people out by providing information. But some people disagree on her point that the screen is “terrible.” It may be terrible for her needs, but for others no. they have no problem with the ibook screen and eugenia says it’s the same one in the 12 PB.
when you say youll passup the 12″ powerbook, that Eugenia is seeing things on her lcd very few others have. My ibook lcd is fine to me, I cant even stand looking at crts anymore thanks to it.
I am near sighted and got the 14″ ibook instead of a refurbed tibook, or 12″ ibook because I wanted larger pixels to reduce strain. I looked at all three availible laptops at the apple store and got the best one for ME. So dont go saying you wont give it a chance based on one review, you still have to find out for yourself.
Also, Eugenia, you pay for what you get, and that powerbook came with alot for a very good price. I think you should emphasize that a bit more. I spent about as much as you will have on your powerbook on my iBook, and am very satisfied.
And I throw about as much as anyone not running stuff like final cut pro, or whatnot as possible at it. So its not like I do nothing on it all day. BTW, just took a trip and watched 7 or 8 monty python episodes off DVD on my ibook in the car ride and it’s battery lasted for the whole 4~ trip playinf off the dvd drive, so until g4s dont suck battery so much I would reccomend ibooks instead, if portability is your main concern.
I’m setting up a new 12″ PowerBook now and haven’t noticed anything like the slow refresh or low quality you mentioned. You might want to get the thing checked out – it really sounds like a bad display.
My gripes about the display involve the red tinge (which goes away once you calibrate it) and the fact that they could be using a higher resolution. Church-of-Apple types aside, Apple’s displays with the exception of the Cinema HD compare well on quality but never resolution with the equivalent PC displays.
No, it is NOT a bad unit.
I have 3 more LCD screens over here to compare. The Powerbook’s LCD is the worst of the 4, and not because I have a “bad unit”. It is what that LCD Apple used, can do. End of story.
I have occassionally had the same issue losing network connections as Anton has on both my old iBook SE and my new 17″ iMac, both running 10.2.3.
Killing configd in the Terminal and restarting the process by using sudo configd has fixed the issue every time for me. I restart both Macs every month or so, and I may have to use this trick on one of them during that time.
Mac OS X (like NeXTSTEP before it) uses a speed sensitive (accelerated) mouse/trackpad driver. If you move your finger across the trackpad quickly, you can move corner to corner in one stroke. This alows you to move the pointer vast distances without dragging your arm across the whole desk. If you move your finger slowly, you get slow but precise pointer movements. I hear the “Slow mouse” complaint frequently from PC users that don’t understand the “accelerated mouse” feature.
Thanks for the great review and congratulations on being multilingual. There is a subtlety of thought that comes from exercising the old grey cells in that particular manner that most Americans will never understand. “Insular” is usually mentioned in reference to England and Japan, but it’s very applicable to the US where it manifests as the “ugly American,” as you can see in a few posts even in this thread. Meantime, just savor the old saying, “when Americans die, they go to Paris.” Plus, Thomas Jefferson once said, “Everyone has two countries, his own and France.” Or maybe an Athens with gender-equality?
When the Mini-Book (much better than AL-Book, no? And, should it be Maxi-Book or Yao-book?) gets hot, would you mind putting a thermometer on it and reporting the results here? One person came up with 102.8 and actual numbers do bring clarity to a discussion. There’s also a recent suggestion that this is a software problem.
Next, you might try Tinkertool, which seemingly handles font smoothing better than the general prefs. You can’t change the screen quality, but it does help with type-rendering. IE benefits from Tinkertool, but not Safari. If the screen is fuzzy, then how fuzzy is Safari? When I open the same page simultaneously in IE and Safari (with Tinkertool installed) the anti-aliasing problem is very visible. I can’t use Safari because of eye-fatigue setting in very quickly.
Meantime, thanks for being a pioneer on the new Mini-Book. I’ve got the Ti-400 and I suffered thru the terrible, no-good, very bad airport range and the battery problem, which no one really wanted to report on for fear of being anti-Mac. An Apple genius replaced the battery, and the Cisco Aeronet 350 took care of the dismal airport range. There’s always that fine line of deciding whether you should wait for the second revision.
have you compared yours to others at a store? I think it’s at least worth checking out. you’re probably right, but I would check
> No, it is NOT a bad unit.
Eugenia… you almost sound like you don’t want
to have it checked… warranty = free repair
> I have 3 more LCD screens over here to compare.
I have 4 identical LCD screens over here.
3 of them look terrific. The other one is
(guess it) going for repair.
Sorry, but the fact that 3 screens look good
doesn’t imply a fourth is working perfectly.
Greeks should know, logic does not work that way
I came across what looks like a great solution to the heat issue with the 12-inch PowerBooks: the Dimple Gel Notebook Wrist Pads.
http://shinza.com/product_info.php?products_id=41
These pads are placed on the PowerBook’s palm rest during use to insulate your hands from the heat below. It doesn’t look like there is any adhesive involved, so the pads can be easily removed and tossed in a notebook bag when packing up the PowerBook for travel (or when just putting it to sleep).
YA mac-bahing review on OSnews.com (and it’s not the first time you do that).
1. Screen quality: Me (and others) find this screen great. I know, because I have an iBook with the same screen. Once you use SuperCal to calibrate it and set anti-aliasing to LCD, it looks great. Remember, it has a pixel density of 106 dpi!
2. Crashing of FTP. How is this a hardware or OS X problem? Use a better FTP client.
3. All your other BADs are minor quibbles. Keep the price point in mind. Would you pay $500 more for a machine with DVI connector, more RAM, more processor cache, faster(?) hard drive, better graphics card? I wouldn’t. It is doubtful these improvements will make it that much faster (except for the graphics card). Maybe that could be an option.
4. Heat issue. There are many contradictoty reports. I will have to wait for mine to tell. Yesterday I was at the apple store, and the display model (which has been on for many hours) was very cool.
Look at your review and see how much more space the BAD takes over the GOOD.
>YA mac-bahing review on OSnews.com (and it’s not the first time you do that).
Why would I want to bash for something *I BOUGHT* and PAID $2000? If I “hated” Apple, I wouldn’t buy it. Get out of your zealotry and ->Think<-
>Remember, it has a pixel density of 106 dpi!
And a zillion other faults and low specs as I explained earlier in this forum.
>Use a better FTP client.
We used the best there is: command line FTP, as comes with OSX. It wasn’t FTP’s fault, it was Powerbook’s not awaking.
>3. All your other BADs are minor quibbles.
Not when compared to PC laptops.
>4. Heat issue. There are many contradictoty reports
No, 90% of the repots in this forum and elsewhere they agree on the heat issue.
>Look at your review and see how much more space the BAD takes over the GOOD.
Yes, because there were a lot of bad things to report. That’s why.
Look at your review and see how much more space the BAD takes over the GOOD.
If you want the good points, read apple.com. I read Eugenia’s reviews because I want to know what’s not in Apple’s ads.
In regard to screen quality – screen quality is good compared to what? When compared to any CRT, even the shittiest LCD will appear super-crisp and sharp.
It’s almost like you’re being dragged reluctantly into owning a mac. Don’t get me wrong, your review provides useful information. And you have a right to your opinion. But the real reason to buy the 12 inch PB is the software. Sure, airport is great, superdrive is great, bluetooth, etc. The hardware is fine even nice in many respects – But take away the OS, apple apps and .mac (and the integration with the hardware) and you may as well buy that PC laptop you compare to the PB. well, I won’t be too hard on you, after all you did write apple the check!
… to go with the 12″ PB. Thats right, I will buy one of those small thingies because of this review. All the other reviews I’ve read is made by Mac-zealots that would never ever complain about a Apple-product. When Eugenia writes a review, you can be certain she will find all there is to complain about. This is what potential switchers want to read! (I’m one of them) But at the same time I’m almost certian that I’ll wont find anything wrong with the screen on my PB12. =)
Is it just me, or has this article magically floated up?
I put it back up, because it is the main article of the day and should stay on top more, as Monday is the highest traffic day.
The reviewer obviously never used a new 800 mhz ibook. He tells everyone NOT to buy one haha. The ibook has a better video card, and the g3 is just as fast on applications that are not altivec enhanced (almost all). You could pick up a 12″ ibook for 1150$ refurbished and have almost the same experience as the 12″ powerbook.
You think…
<quote>
You misunderstood. YES, OSX’s font rendering is better, BUT with this LCD screen that the Powerbook includes, makes everything ugly and blurry. Plus the fact that OSX does not have something like Clear Type, degrades it even more.
</quote>
FWIW, I’m sitting in front of FreeBSD/XFree86 with an ft-slight patched, no-bytecode-interpreter FreeType on a Dell M780 CRT monitor. Sitting next to it is a G4, latest Jaguar, with the same model monitor.
I can’t see any difference in type rendering quality between them – they’re both stellar. XFree, however, has the ability to do subpixel antialiasing aka. ClearType.
that anonymous guy gives mac users a bad name…
I have ordered one of these machines as well, and am currently awaiting for it to be delivered. (Looks like tomorrow *yay*.)
There is a thread over on apple at the discussion forums that talk about the jerkiness of the DVD playback in full screen mode, http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?128@154.xcPLaXy1h63.157303@…. from what i read over there it seems to be an issue with 10.2.3, so complain to apple i will be and they better bloody fix it up
I don’t think you’ve done your research when it comes to the LCD. The LCD in the iBook is actually of higher quality than what’s in the high end powerbooks. It’s viewable from about 20-160 degrees, something you just can’t say about other LCDs. You talk about the iBook as if it were a piece of crap, when in actuality, it’s a great deal. The G3 is an older processor, and I wouldn’t want to use an iBook as a heavy duty workhorse, but for daily computing, for your average user, it’s a great machine at a great price.
Here is something I noticed a while back that may be related to this. Open the Apple X11 application, and in an xterm window type “glxgears”. A separate window will open with the animated display. You will probably be seeing something like 60 or 70 fps reported in the xterm window. Now, arrange the windows on your display so that the xterm window is active and is close to (or even overlapping slightly) the edge of the animated display window. What you should see is that the animation speeds up tremendously and the reported frame rate increases by a factor of 10 or more. On a 1GHz PowerBook, for example, you can get about 800 fps. It is possible that whatever speeds up the X11 glxgears display is also speeding up the DVD playback when the DVD display window is partly obscured. I don’t know what causes this, but I’m guessing it is handshaking between the graphics hardware and the window server; there is probably a different mode for partly obscured windows that bypasses the handshaking.
To the people saying the iBook is almost as good except for the G3, don’t forget that:
– It is AGP 2x instead of the 4x of the PB
– It has an ATA/66 drive instead of ATA/100
– It has a 100MHZ FSB instead of the 133 of the PB
– It doesn’t have DDR RAM
– It can’t (officially) do monitor spanning
1. Now that you have found some things you don’t like,
do you regret that you have bought a PowerBook?
Do you think about giving it back?
2. Regarding the quality of the display – do you had a chance to thest the PowerBook in a store? If yes, did you notice the display-quality issue?
Thx, Ralf.
btw – nice review.
>1. Now that you have found some things you don’t like,
do you regret that you have bought a PowerBook?
No. It does its job and except the heat and LCD quality, I knew all the rest, so it was my decision to get it.
>2. Regarding the quality of the display – do you had a chance to thest the PowerBook in a store? If yes, did you notice the display-quality issue?
I saw it in the Apple store a few weeks back, but only for a few minutes. The store was very bright with sunshine so I couldn’t see well in the LCD anyway, and there were other people waiting in line to see this laptop, so I did not give much thought about its LCD quality.
I think I have an idea of why your LCD is behaving as it is. Sub-pixel antialiasing is heavily dependant on the order of the subpixels. In almost all LCD displays, the arrangement is (from left to right) Red, Green, Blue (RGB order). Now in some previous iBooks, the pixel order was reversed (BGR). I know that Microsoft’s ClearType doesn’t support this pixel ordering, and I wouldn’t be surprised if OS X didn’t either. If anybody really cares all that much about it, you could load Linux on one of these TiBooks, and in XftConfig, change “rgba = rgb” to “rgba = bgr” This will change the pixel order that Xft optimizes for, and if the TiBook does indeed have a reversed pixel order, should get rid of the color fringes.
I wouldn’t worry about not having DDR. DDR on the Mac platform at this point is just a scam. According to the benchmarks, DDR makes little difference, and PC133 SDRAM, at 1.0GB/sec, is almost enough to saturate the G4’s 1.3GB/sec bus.
Linux does not load on the new 12″ Powerbook. Apple has changed the BIOS in order OS9 to not boot, and that seem to affect Linux as well. I am sure someone will hack-in to it soon though and fix the problem in the kernel.
BTW Rayiner, the biggest problem with the LCD is its _extreme_ slowness. Its refresh is just terrible. You move a window and it leaves a zillion artifacts, it is like bein in a shower of motion blur… The rest of the LCD screens I have here don’t do that, it is just this 12″ LCD that’s is “slow” (and cheap).
Eugenia did not say the iBook was a piece of crap. In fact, in one of her posts, she called it a “fine machine”.
Eugenia, get that 512 MB module in there!!!
The 512 module came in today with the post!!!
I am waiting to just go and buy a Philips 00 screwdriver though, so I can open the memory door.
It is amazing how defensive people get about their own choices. I never said that iBook is useless. In fact, it was one of my considerations before I buy this laptop, but both my husband and David (owner of osnews) talked me out of it, mostly because it is a G3 with all the limitations this fact brings.
Today, I would recommend people to wait a few months and buy the new 15.4″ Powerbook, but if they don’t have as much money or they want something really portable, to get this 12″ Powerbook. And if they really don’t have as much money again, to buy the 12″ iBook, the one that sells for $1300+memory.
I love the size, screen, and all the ports that are standard on the PB. What do you expect in an all in one. Unlike many other light laptops, there are no external drives to plug in, etc. It should have L3 cache, lighted keyboard, but that’s why it is realitively cheap. Do other comparable laptops have these features? No! This thing is the bomb. The feel and quality is unmatched and I dare anyone to disagree although they surely will.
appleforever: But take away the OS, apple apps and .mac (and the integration with the hardware) and you may as well buy that PC laptop you compare to the PB.
Actually no. Maybe for consumer laptops, but for a lot of laptop users, a PowerBook may be better than the equilevent PC. Reason? PC laptops haven’t been fully commodotized so it is only a handful of makers making expensive quality laptops.
Funny isn’t it? Laptops is the only area where Apple is truly competitive.
>Why would I want to bash for something *I BOUGHT* and PAID >$2000? If I “hated” Apple, I wouldn’t buy it. Get out of >your zealotry and ->Think<-
I did not claim that you “hate” Apple. I think your review is just “a bit unfair”, and a little bit misinformed as well, I now add. I said so and I posted the reasons why I believe so. There is no zealotry here.
You reacted badly, as I sort of expected. That happens when you are a bit short of arguments.
>>Remember, it has a pixel density of 106 dpi!
>And a zillion other faults and low specs as I explained >earlier in this forum.
I went back and re-read the section of your review about the screen. There are absolutely no objective “specs” in there relating to the quality of the LCD (such as brightness, contrast ratio, angle of visibility, pixel speed, etc.). If fact, you are incorrect when you say that it’s the same screen used in the 15″ iMac (certainly NOT!). Again, you are making a subjective judgement, IMHO prematurely. Try what I suggested in my post and see if the screen looks better (it should). I would like to hear from you if it does…
Other reviewers also found the screen very good. As for squeezing even more pixels into a 12″ monitor, yes it’s doable, but the characters at the present resolution look quite small already. Also, keep in mind the price.
>>Use a better FTP client.
>We used the best there is: command line FTP, as comes with >OSX.
Just because it “comes with OS X” does not mean it’s the best there is, but yes, that shouldn’t have happended. Nothing is perfect….the integration between GUI and UNIX layer still isn’t. Would probably not have happend had you used Fetch or similar.
>>3. All your other BADs are minor quibbles.
>Not when compared to PC laptops.
I contend they are. Keep price in mind again and show me a comparable PC notebook.
>>4. Heat issue. There are many contradictoty reports
>No, 90% of the repots in this forum and elsewhere they >agree on the heat
Not the reports I read. I have been following the 12″ PB reviews VERY CAREFULLY, since I intend to buy one, and they ARE contradictory. Again, heat perception is subjective. I have personally come in contact with this machine twice, at Macworld and at the Apple store. Both times, it was not substantially warmer than my iBook. That doesn’t mean that certain machines aren’t hotter, and I’m sorry to hear yours is.
>>Look at your review and see how much more space the BAD takes over the GOOD.
>Yes, because there were a lot of bad things to report. That’s why.
Looking back again, I don’t think so.
Excuse me sir, but you have no clue what you are talking about. The LCD used in the 12″ PowerBook, is the same as the one used in the iBooks, and it *IS* lower quality. It is a SLOW LCD, no matter what you say. And its contrast ratio/viewing angle sucks goats. I have 3 more LCDs here today to test against.
I explained on the FTP problem that it was not FTP’s bug, it was Powerbook’s inability to wake up from sleep.
>That happens when you are a bit short of arguments.
No, that happens when you are dealing with trolls and people who don’t get it everyday of your life.
I think everyone thinks this is why your bashing the ibook. “And no matter what, don’t buy an iBook” taken from the end of your review.
Just to clarify some things for others an ibook uses the IBM 750FX G3 which is fabricated on a 0.13 micron process so it will run cooler than the G4’s in powerbooks which use 0.18.
AGP 2x vs. 4x vs. 8x. I haven’t seen any benchmarks that really show a fast performance gain using a 4x to a 2x agp slot.
Everyone knows the G4 doesn’t really utilize DDR yet.
The powerbooks cost $500 more than the ibook. Whether or not that 500 dollars is worth the 10% performance gain is up to the buyer.
Personally Im gonna sell my ibook this summer and buy whatever revision of that new 12″ powerbook comes out because I think they will probably give it an L3 cache and maybe boost it up to 1 ghz. If I didnt buy my ibook a couple months ago I would get the 12″ powerbook.
>”And no matter what, don’t buy an iBook”
Yes, I am against the purchase of a G3 machine. The rest parts of the iBook that sells for $1300 are great, but the G3 is a problem. MacOSX is optimized for G4 mainly today, so I find the purchase of a G3 machine a bad choice. Purchasing a G4 today, will allow you to keep and utilize MacOSX for the years to come, while G3s won’t be supported from a point on, neither optimized for.
My G4 Cube 450 Mhz with 1 MB L3 cache can compete head to head with the iBook 800 Mhz on OSX. My honest suggestion is to purchase a G4 machine. If the $1300 iBook machine had a G4 in it, I would have bought that instead of the 12″ powerbook. My only problem in that machine was that it is a G3.
I agree totally.
> My only problem in that machine was that it is a G3.
I don´t think it´s a problem, because G3 still has the power to run all the i-apps, even iMovie, and others like AppleWorks, Mail et al , and the main market for those is K-12 where Quake fps’ aren´t important (that´s why ATI Rage 128 is plenty enough).
Well, iBook is able to run apps, but it is not exactly a modern CPU, neither it runs them as well as a G4 which is even 200 or 300 less Mhz than the said G3.
Point is, OSNews readers are mostly developers, so I would never suggest to them buying an underpowered machine. It might be a good and cheap solution for your little sister, but it is not exactly a good deal overall if you are a power user.
The Japanese own the cutting edge of cool tech in notebooks — small, fast, light, tough, good screens. It would be cool if Apple had the Japanese build a new alBook. Seems like they could shave a pound or two off the weight, put in a better screen, and a much improved keyboard.
[i]Panasonic always keeps us in suspense by releasing fewer notebook platforms than any other major maker. But usually, when they do it’s a great one; the new Panasonic T1 is a typical example. The achievements of the T1 leave little doubt that a lot the engineering talent was concentrated on one “small” project.[i]
http://www.dynamism.com/t1/main.shtml
–ms
“now why you ask apple has such high prices for such a bad system? A thinkpad with Win2k beats this thing with a cool cpu and a beautiful LCD, and no stupid scratchpad either”
Right. However bad the powerbook 12″ is, a thinkpad still has the win2k. And no matter if it had three x:s in it’s name, it still remains to be Windows.
I’m planning on saving in the money I spend for my mental health and get me a powerbook, hot or not. Because it’s OsX. (Sorry for the commercial nature of this text. I’m a wreck with my hp…)
btw, what is scratchpad?
“Right. However bad the powerbook 12″ is, a thinkpad still has the win2k. And no matter if it had three x:s in it’s name, it still remains to be Windows. ”
Sorry for the incomprehensible whining here. My situation is worse than I thought…
I used the 12″ PowerBook a couple of days, and it didn´t heat up nearly as much as a 867 MHz Titanium, only about the same as an 500 & 600 MHz iBook – not hot like TiBook, only warm. And the 12″ is still quieter.
The TiBook LCD has a better viewing angle, but I still think the 12″ TFT is good enough (I used iceBooks for a year before the Titanium).
As for the G3, my point is that even 999$ iBook can run even Final Cut decently, so it’s a very capable machine for most uses, not only for word processing. Naturally a gigahertz G4 is way faster, but it depends the user if the speed is needed. But gamers should definetly buy a PowerBook.
Why do you use ftp for file transfers? I prefer using the Public Folder (File Sharing).
Have you tried iChat (with the help of Rendezvous) for extremely easy file transfers?
And FireWire target mode is handy if one of the computers can be turned off.
Point is, OSNews readers are mostly developers, so I would never suggest to them buying an underpowered machine. It might be a good and cheap solution for your little sister, but it is not exactly a good deal overall if you are a power user.
Exactly developers. Meaning mostly I/O, not CPU needs. It would be stupid to recommend a system with less cache or memory. CPU is barely important anymore, busspeeds, memory and hd-speed is way more important for speed.
As I own a 12pb and a 12/800ibook (well my wife now owns the ibook) plus several x86 laptops over the years, here’s what I observed.
Heat, the pb definately runs much hotter then the ibook. When doing really procesor intensive stuff (like large compiles) the thing gets down right hot. The ibook never approaches this level of heat, but at the same time takes almost twice as long to compile. Now, compiling the same code on my 1gig athlon hp (running linux), I actually worry about a fire occuring. For the heat issue, the pb is much hotter then the ibook but not as bad as an athlon based laptop.
Screen, not perfect, better then the ibook, not as good as my sm 760vtft. The key to is getting the angle/tilt right. If you don’t align yourself well, it don’t look so good. If you do align yourself well, its quite enjoyable.
I highly recommend it….
I agree that the 15″ LCD is nicer, than that of the 12, but only cause i have one. wow, all i can say is i would never trust another review from this site. good work bringing out the smallest of flaws (although the dvd thing would piss me off, but it’s not like there’s no such thing as patches… i’m SURE you’ve heard of them in the windows world)
your eyes hurt? after using the laptop for an hour? are you for real? were you jabbing yourself in the eye at the time? that might explain it.
what about mac os x? that is the MAIN reason to buy a mac. rendevouz could change networking and it departments, but it’s not even worth going into. according to os news.
About the new 12″ PB screen quality: What I noticed was that it wasn’t quite as bright/contrasty/sharp as the original PB’s. I told an Apple rep and he said it was the lighting in the store. Well, why did the PB in the same store look better then?
HOWEVER, the new 12″ is a great compromise. Yes, you CAN get small or smaller PCs BUT they don’t offer nearly the plethora of features the PB does. Yes, notebooks from dynamism.com are smaller, nicer made and more expensive but they don’t offer the 3D capabilities or DVD burning and other things the PB does.
For the money, it is NOT a bad machine. Look at ANY name brand PC vendor and check what kind of 12″ machine you get with that kind of money and you will reevaluate your opinions.
The little Vaios are nice but not as full featured.
The little Toshibas are VERY nice but not nearly as full featured.
IBM has the great X series but that is an even bigger compromise.
The list goes on.
I’d personally get the new PB if I had the money and then I’d put an IBM 40GNX drive inside (40GB, 5400 RPM, 8MB buffer, fastest notebook drive in the world at the moment) and a 512MB RAM stick and voila, you have a truly decent machine (the main problem with laptops is their hard drives IMO).
For the record, I don’t even own a PB but I like to state the facts.
Got meetings to go to…
D
We’ve had two iBooks, a Graphite 366 mHz clamshell and dual USB white. They were both great consumer laptops (although the 366 and OS X were mighty slow). I think what Eugenia is suggesting here is that the G3 may be at the end of its life. I have no idea, but I would wager the new iBooks will have G4’s. I say that especially because I don’t know of any G3 that runs higher than 800MHz. And I’ve heard nothing…no rumors or anything… about G3’s with faster processors. I think one thing Eugenia is trying to tell people is to not to get caught with an end-of-life machine.
I don’t think the G3 and G4 are going anywhere yet. Apple need to migrate everyone to OSX before they even think of migrating to a new chip…
Dave, I don’t think the G4 is going away either…but the G3…I don’t know… nobody seems to have heard anything about, for example, a 1 GHz G3. I think you’re right though – Apple will not be making any huge chip transitions until OS X is the main OS.
This is OT, but Stephen Smith had posted wondering about who actually uses Macs, i.e. “normal” users. I think when people like us are very close to something, as we are regarding computing, we often don’t have a perspective on what society at large thinks or at least certain dempgraphics. Despite Apple’s lowly market shere, this story today shows how widespread the Apple brand is in many people’s minds”
http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=31467002
I don’t think there are any new g3’s because apple is the only one that uses them. If they wanted I think they could pump the mhz of a g3 passed a g4 easily. IBM has better facilities than MOTO.
Eugenia, I read the whole post and every powerbook/ibook owner agrees that the LCD on their machines are good. Mine (PB TI) is excellent and a little less bright than my daughter’s exact same model. You keep referring about the other LCD you have but I suggest you bring your PB to an Apple Store and compare it with all the LCD’s they have there and maybe their “genious” guy can fix it or simply get another replacement. If you have factual information about Apple using cheap display, as a reviewer you have to release the facts, if it is an opinion, say so. I am sure that your display is bad so, please go to the Apple store, have it check it out and then write something to confirm the all the PB 12′ screen are crap and cheap or only yours, I think that’s fair.
>Excuse me sir, but you have no clue what you are talking about. >The LCD used in the 12″ PowerBook, is the same as the one used >in the iBooks, and it *IS* lower quality. It is a SLOW LCD, no >matter what you say. And its contrast ratio/viewing angle sucks >goats. I have 3 more LCDs here today to test against.
Sorry to disappoint you, but it seems that YOU are the one who doesn’t have much of a clue here. You state in the your initial review that the LCD is the same as used in the 15″ iMac and iBook. Well, that’s just wrong. The iMac’s one is different, and I agree that I don’t like that one, either. But the PB and iBook screen IS GOOD, according to the feedback of MANY people.
Can you substantiate your claims regarding pixel speed, contrast ratio, viewing angle, etc.?
HOW could I “substantiate” it when Apple doesn’t release technical specs?
All I can do is open the door of my house and let you see it with your own eyes.
I DON’T like that screen. You can say whatever you want, I don’t freaking like it. It is a SLOW LCD with TERRIBLE viewing angle. END OF STORY.
I am going to have to go ahead and…disagree…with the writer of this article’s comments. I have a 15 inch LCD iMac G4 and it has an awesome screen. Its very clear and bright with none of the problems he mentioned having on the Powerbook. I am not sure where he got that information. I have seen many iMac and iBook screens and they all look very nice. I can’t comment on the 12 inch Powerbook G4, since I have not seen one. I think the author might have gotten a dud screen. He certainly shouldn’t be making comments like that without making sure his information is correct.
That being said, I though the article was very informative. The heat issue is something people need to know when buying this laptop. One comment about Apple laptops: I have an iBook 466 Mhz with OS X 10.2.3 and it runs it just fine. Its a tad sluggish when resizing windows but other than that, its golden. A Geforce 4 MX 420 won’t place Quake 3 with high frame rates, but it will do fine in almost all games for the Mac.
One of the posts earlier asked who is buying tbis new entry into the PowerBook line.
For me it was the form factor, the iApps, DVD burner, and convenience. Admittedly, it is on the sexier side of computing. I am a pharmacist who has tinkered with gnu/linux for three years and who doesn’t have the time to tweak systems continually to do photo editing, home video editing. Additionally, I like the speed of the G4. It also got some keen looks in MBA class last night.
So, people who will need to look the lcd for hours — this probably isn’t the machine for you. But if you’re looking for a “G4ish iBook”, the 12in is for you!
But it isn’t any more.
There is no longer substance to the sleak designed machines. The prices are getting higher, but the actual product is getting cheaper.
The new OS is just overpriced Linux.
I think Steve Jobs really needs to re-evaluate what he is doing (as does Bill Gates, but that goes without saying).
I never thought I would say this, but the “free” open-source market is really beginning to make inroads in what was just fictious speculation a few years ago. Microsoft has an advantage based on their sales, but Apple I think is in trouble (and has been since the iMac came out).
Style over substance in the long run will not save a company. Do you remember the “DeLorian.”
I have GOT to react on the last post:
There is no longer substance to the sleak designed machines. >The prices are getting higher, but the actual product is getting cheaper.
How can you say that? The prices are getting HIGHER? Hello? What was the price of the previous PowerBook????
Product getting cheaper? Take a close look at the beautiful fit and finish of these machines.
>The new OS is just overpriced Linux.
Haha.
>[…] Microsoft has an advantage based on their sales, but Apple I think is in trouble (and has been since the iMac came out).
Apple is NOT in trouble, especially since the iMac came out.
>Style over substance in the long run will not save a company. Do you remember the “DeLorian.”
You are totally clueless. But why am I spending time on this forum anyway?
What is the big discovery here? Apple, since the days of the Apple ][, has always sold crappy hardware at top dollar. On the Apple ][+, Apple could have included a 2Mhz 6502C instead of a 1Mhz 6502C for next to nothing in cost. Did they do it? Nope. How about lower case text? Or 80 column text? The list goes on.
Apple’s margins have been sky high for a long long time. There is a reason they have no market share vs. Dell or any of the other PC companies. Apple is about a cult, a niche, and really good software. Apple’s hardware is the classic case of taking crap, polishing it, and then relying on the fact that birds, being dumb, are attracted to bright shiny objects.
Even today, every single Apple computer ships with a bottom of barrel complete crap sound chip (if you can even call it a sound chip). They could spend next to nothing and get full digital killer sound, but do they? Nope. If one goes down and looks at the parts on every Apple computer sold today, it is easy to see that Apple is a cheap company that cuts corners everywhere when it comes to hardware. Their brand new “supercomputer” still ships with an ATA/66 controller, for instance. So you won’t be getting the full performance that your 180GB drive can deliver. As for those drives, does Apple offer any of them with 8MB cache? Nope.
One has to be very careful with Apple’s LCD monitors. The 15″ was okay at first and then Apple replaced it with some cheapo screen. The 17″ remains pretty good. The new 20″ is low quality. The price drop 23″ is medium quality, not bad but certainly not crisp like the Sony 23″ 1920×1200 monitor.
The most glaring problem with Apple LCD is of course the lack of ClearType. Apple has nothing that compares with Microsoft’s far superior system. I’m surprised Apple has not licensed this technology as Apple’s fonts look like crap on their LCD monitors.
I also wonder if the brain dead decision to go with ADC is at fault. There is bound to be additional electrical interference running power along with the DVI. Perhaps the signal will never be very good. Apple has to put a signal booster on their DVI to ADC connector, probably because the ADC cable has a lot of noise compared to a pure video signal. Only Apple would be so retarded as to wreck a perfectly good industry standard connection (DVI) in order to save one cable. ADC takes the cake as one of Apple’s most stupid hardware decisions they have made in a while.
Overall, it makes no sense to gripe about Apple’s low quality hardware. Apple is really a software company that sells their software pre-installed on hardware. A strange model, but it’s kept them alive for a long time.
–ms
I am a web programmer and a gamer. While I can say no, I haven’t installed any games on it yet (why take up harddrive space when I have the same games installed on my tower – must use my older mac for something!) I have installed the airport extreme and find it, the size of the machine, and the DVD burner well worth the money I paid for it. I set my fonts on my desktop the smallest possible (10pt) and the show up just fine for me. I am used to a 1600 x 1200 resolution on my 17″ monitor so the perspective between the two seems about equal now with everything set to tiny
.
I do agree that the machine gets hot. But, so did my G3 333 laptop. I would never buy an iBook because it was only a G3 (and plastic!). I already had a G3 laptop no need to replace it with one that was only marginally better. Looking at the 15″ powerbook before MacWorld I just didn’t want to spend that much money. The 12″ was the answer I was looking for. I haven’t crashed or been dissapointed yet. I’d say if your looking for more than an iBook, want airport extreme, a DVD burner and don’t want to pay more than $2000 for an APPLE then this is the machine for you.
Good post.
Eugenia repeatedly says nobody should buy a machine with a G3 in it. After reading the review and all the comments, I’m wondering why. It would be really interesting to see a comparsion between the 800Mhz ibook and 12′ powerbook on real applications.
All I’ve seen so far are some vague comments about the OS being optimized for a G4 which is a rather useless statement as since nobody outside Apple knows what percentage of OS 10.2 is AliVec enabled. Eugenia also says that the G3 is not a modern processor yet it has a larger L2 cache and is fabbed .13 micron process.
G3 are not so close to EOL. read the G3 new iterations at the ibm site. I think they can go above 1 gigahertz
The ibook 800Mhz is scoring 53 on XBench, even less than my 450 M hz G4 Cube. This Powerbook, scores 75.
In other words, even with the help of the 512 KB L3 cache on the ibooks, they don’t perform as well on OSX as the G4 machines do.
Yesterday, I was in the apple store and played a bit with the ibook 800 Mhz. It is indeed much slower than this Powerbook 867 Mhz.
And if you don’t believe the XBench benchmarks, check the benchmarks showing here too:
http://www.macworld.com/2003/04/reviews/12inchpowerbook/
iBooks are a NO GO purchase today. They are slow, and they don’t worth the price. Better get the 12″ Powerbook if you must purchase a Mac laptop and you want to be on the cheap.