PowerBook G4 + OS X report

[Is_907]

well, my PowerBook got here yesterday and i've been glued to the screen since... well, i'm usually glued to the screen but not a laptop one

so, here are a few pictures, desktop screenshots and some info i thought you all might find useful. and please, if you have any tips, advice, suggestions, or even flames for buying a mac, let me have them! (=

http://members.cox.net/is_907/pbook-everything.jpg

desktop

excuse my foot in the one pic ;D

so here are the essential numbers (i'll be adding this system to my sig soon):
PowerPC G4 CPU, 1ghz w/ 512K L2 cache, 133mhz FSB (hehe, almost the same CPU as my Athlon was, heh)
256mb DDR266 (PC2100)
40gb HDD (4,200rpm... you have to pay well over $2k to get a system with 5,400rpm because it only comes with the bigger screen models and such)
12" screen
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM and 24x CD-RW)
BlueTooth built-in
2 USB 2.0 ports
1 FireWire400 port
ADC (Apple Display... C-something. with a ADC to VGA and ADC to DVI adaptor)
10/100 Ethernet card
56k V.92 modem, hehehe like i'll ever use that
and of course the Apple Logo on the back that lights up thanks to the LCD ;D

as for software it comes with OS X (10.3, Panther) on the wonderful Darwin (BSD!!! w00r!) core

i have been able to EASILY do file sharing between this system and my XP box because Samba is built in to OS X. (you should be seeing my XP box's C drive in the desktop shot above)

all the LCD and audio controls are easily accessed through the F keys.
surprisingly the speakers have quite a bit of power and then of course my Sennheiser headphones go along with it nicely

by default the click-function of the trackpad mouse is disabled, yay for me! but you can turn it on if you like it.

the aluminium enclosure keeps it very cool in places with good air circulation and nice ambient temps. so far i've only felt mild heat from this system and of course you have to expect that in a notebook

the standard applications that come with OS X are great. even Safari, the browser, is very good... though not as good as FireBird.

iChatAV takes AIM to a nicer level with much more easy to use IM windows and easy to set away mode options and you can at a glance QUICKLY see what mode your buddies are in (red and green icons instead of "note paper" for away mode)

i downloaded X-Chat Aqua, a wonderful IRC client based on XChat, my favourite client to use in *nix environments. it's quite nice and works just as well, if not better, than standard Xchat (and of course X-Chat > mIRC )

the whole OS is nicely customisable. i've set the date up to ALWAYS be displayed in Day-Month-Year rather than Month-Day-Year and any measurements the system gives are in Metric
the keyboard has all sorts of nifty functions like alt+3 is £ and alt+Y is ¥ so it's already an international system.

one thing i did very soon after booting up is re-size the dock
you can also place it on the left or right of the screen and turn on the magnification feature that everyone hated when OS X first came out, hehe.

the 12" model is only capable of 1024x768 and lower resolutions but that's more than enough. i was worried about all my windows overlapping each other but that's not really a problem with all the ways you can pull up another app.

ok, questions? comment? flames? (=

EDIT: I will try and get some folding done on this machine as a benchmark and is there a 3dmark or something like it for OS X ?

 

[nil_esh]

Cool.. I want one of those. I would probably get the 12" inch as well, and just connect it up to my 22" CRT via KVM. It's so small, its probably easy to carry around. I want one with a SuperDrive, but that is an extra $200.

You can run dual headed with that, right? That is, use the laptop screen and have a monitor connected for the extra desktop space.

If you decide you don't like it and are desperate to sell it, let me know!

 

[Is_907]

i believe you can do dual head... but i haven't tried it yet.

and no, i doubt i'll be selling ;D

 

[specific]

sweet lappy

it's such a jip though
you can't config one with a 5400rpm drive, or 333 ddr
unless you do it yourself, and void the warranty (like that even matters )

 

[Is_907]

you can do pc2700 (not sure if that's ddr333...) if you go up to the 15" screen.
and yeah, you can always change the hard drive yourself.
but i don't think that voids the warranty because adding RAM and AirPortExtreme (wireless) cards doesn't.

heh, it's worth looking into

 

[specific]

It's true, the 15" & 17" pb's have pc2700 & 5400rpm hard dries, but i'm really just talking about the 'dirty dozen'

I would probably buy one, and switch the hard drive myself, but i think that voids Apple Care. I'll have to check with our Apple rep at work about that. We add ram and airport cards to machines all the time, so i know that's ok. Adding a 5400rpm drive to the 12 might increase temps too much for Apple's tastes. Same thing with 7200rpm drives and the 15" & 17" pb's.

I'll investigate.

 

[Is_907]

they make 7200rpm laptop hard drives? wow
and yeah, when i have it plugged in to the AC adaptor the back left gets a bit hot so i wouldn't want to use a 5400.
however the 4200 is more than fast enough for me

 

[Ebola]

That looks tiny. Probably a good travel computer. Are you going to use it for school?

 

[Is_907]

so far i've been using it 24/7, Ebola (=
actually it's not that much smaller than a normal lappy. and of course the display is FAR better (=

it's very thin but the lcd takes up most of the screen section of the system and runs at 1024x768 (at the highest... so of course i have it there )
i thought the resolution would be a problem at first but actually it works very well because of the way OS X is set up.

and yeah, i'm planning on taking this or a newer one in the fall of '05 to uni (=

 

[KraziKid]

I got myself a 17 inch powerbook about a month and a half ago in preparation for college (what can I say, I need the extra screen real estate and 1024x768 is too little for me, even with expose). If I may make a software suggestion. Download adium as your AIM client. iChat is very nice, don't get me wrong, but I personally think adium 2.0, even in alpha, is the best AIM client I have ever used.

 

[kiljaden5]

I'm in the market for a laptop right about now... so I'm considering the 15" powerbook and i think i'm gonna need some more convincing in order to get one....

what makes it worth the extra money? a Dell I8600 with the Pentium M 1.6ghz processor and Radeon 9600 Pro 128mb and other basic stuff costs about $200-300 less....

what are the advantages of a mac that i'm not seeing here?

 

[Is_907]

kiljaden: OS X
if you care at all about having a stable system you'll go for OS X over XP.

i would say this system is AT LEAST equal to that Dell you mentioned.

a friend of mine has a brand new Dell lappy and there's no way it's got as sharp a picture as this PBook.

anyway, i'm in too much pain to keep typing... had 8 teeth pulled monday @_@

 

[specific]

I know this is no big deal, really, but i thought i would say something here.

Windows XP is very stable. I like macs and all. They are very stable too. The "stability" claim persists in the mac speeches like it's failproof, and that's simply not true. OSX still has its bugs, just like WXP has its own. Neither are perfect, and arguing about which is most stable is an exercise in futility. Macs are still the defacto standard in professional multimedia, but that stronghold is losing ground, and that is inevitable with the sheer amount of windows users out there.

[/rant]

sager has a great notebook (why would you want a dell)
i still want a powerbook, too

 

[kiljaden5]

well dell seems to offer the most for the $$

 

[Gnufsh]

kiljaden: OS X
if you care at all about having a stable system you'll go for OS X over XP.

i would say this system is AT LEAST equal to that Dell you mentioned.

a friend of mine has a brand new Dell lappy and there's no way it's got as sharp a picture as this PBook.

anyway, i'm in too much pain to keep typing... had 8 teeth pulled monday @_@

If you really want a stable system install a BSD or linux variant.

 

[Is_907]

heh, very true... if i had bought a PC lappy i would definetely have put Gentoo on it

i really think, though, that if you're considering buying a PowerBook (or iBook) then you need to try it out first.

 

[Roof Jumper]

If you really want a stable system install a BSD or linux variant.

OS X is a *nix/bsd(cant remember which) based system...

 

[eli]

OS X is a *nix/bsd(cant remember which) based system...

Based on Darwin, which is Unix based. I want an apple so bad. And after I eat my apple, i want an Apple computer!

 

[eromitlab]

Apple=seamless integration, stabilty, performance, lower cost of ownership, high quality hardware, loads of software, secure, less succeptable to virii (although there are a few out there), well designed, worth every penny.

that's just the tip of the iceburg in owning a Mac over a PC... I've been using them exclusively since 1998, and the worst two problems I ever had were hardware-related... and they were fixed with little trouble. I've never had any major problems with OS X (although OS 9 had some quirks ), and the fact that it's based on BSD gives it an incredible flexibilty, stability and security. Imagine a computer that has an application crash (as IE and Office do on a regular basis, go fig... *ahemM$ahem*), everything else running on the system doesn't come tumbling down like a house of cards... you just force quit the app, and re launch it... no worries. Couple that with the fact that the only upgrading you ever really need to do with them is either adding more RAM or an AirPort card (HD upgrades are possible... but DIY upgrades like that void the warranty, and that's not cool, that's why you take it to a certified tech), and the computers last for ages. My 5 year old iMac can run the latest OS with little difficulty, and the only upgrade it has is an additional 256MB memory chip.

you might pay more for them... but you get back the value and then some.

 

[specific]

well dell seems to offer the most for the $$

th most what?

as long as a free jar of vaseline is included

you'll need it