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12" Powerbook: Slick and Sexy, But Not Without Issues
Gentu writes "Two very good reviews on the 12" Powerbook have been published today. The first review can be found at the Washington Post and is very positive but not very thorough, while the second one found at OSNews is an in-depth review of the popular Mac laptop, tackling down many issues that future purchasers should be aware of. 'The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it' OSNews concludes, but the overall read is very interesting."
He complains about the heat? I bet he's never used a TiBook...
What's with the AMD logo. Did they get an Athlon in one of these things?
Pedro Côrte-Real.
> Slick and Sexy, But Not Without Issues That reminds me, I need to call my ex.
an Apple story showing an AMD icon. We're still a month and a half off 'till April 1st though.
~ Old Warriors Society
The 12" is really just a hopped up iBook. It doesn't have DVI, making it incompatible with all of Apple's displays .. including the Cinema display. I don't know why Apple did this.
Lots of people have bitched about the scaled back memory too. There probably isn't a technical reason why it was limited to 640Meg, and there's no L3 cache onboard. Those issues wouldn't have bothered me as much as the lack of DVI.. I mean, apple themselves have sold it pretty heavily.
Anyhow, my TiSD should be here soon.. I won't even get into the mystery shipping on the 17". 17" makes a great desktop replacement, but if you're going to multihead it with a very large display it's kinda moot.
..don't panic
Well done slashdot!! An extremely relevant news article (im not being sarcastic).
:)~
I'll go read the articles and see... I was planning on ordering the 12" Powerbook this evening
So does anyone here that owns a 12" PB have anything that should be brought to my attention before buying one? I've never owned a mac before but Im quite interested in this Powerbook because of how small it is and also it means I'll have a portable Unix based laptop. Im a student learning C++, Java and AWK right now.
Thanks for any info.
... I don't own one.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Call me naive or whatever, but this new powerbook comes with a 867MHz processor.
And while I realize that's not a direct measure of speed, I have to ask:
Is apple falling way behind? How do these systems compete with the 2 and 3 GHz intel systems coming out?
The reviewer stated that this model was much faster than their 450. Well, ya, its double, but its not a 2.4GHz chip or anything....??
Thanks for your comments,
mj
My 9 year old HP Omnibook 600CT is showing it's age and the 12" Powerbook is almost exactly the same size (and has a higher resolution screen, larger hard disk, optical drive, similar battery life, etc).
But has anyone got this thing dual booting Linux and OS X? If so I would be very interested in getting one.
#exclude <ms/windows.h>
I have one of the previous 12" iBooks, (dual USB w/combo drive), and it appears to be one of the best kept stealth business tools around.
I originally headed out to buy a Ti, but this one was put in front of me, and discounted heavily, as it was a floor demo. Big deal, if it didn't work out, I'd just pass it along to a family member. Now, I'm in no hurry to let it go.
The 12" iBook has a form factor that happens to fit my needs exactly. I've had original PB's and Duo's, and felt I knew what I wanted when it came time to go portable, again.
In my case, I wanted a real portable...not something that shouted 'identity crisis'...something that was 1/2 desktop machine and 1/2 laptop, not doing either well. I wanted something to use with my digital cameras (still and movie), while adding as little as possible to the amount of tech bulk in the process. My iBook weighs a bit more than a Ti, but it's smaller, and that was what I really wanted. Performance is great...the screen is bright and it works...and works...and works. Long battery life. Outputs to the TV in the hotel room. Wireless networking in the airport. Burns CD's on demand. Command line if I need it. Nothing like a Unix based notebook to make you feel like you're toteing a tool instead of a wanna-be workstation. I've never thought about using it as a primary machine, but with all it has going for it, I'm sure it would do just fine. As soon as my Mac guy has a demo G4 12" iBook, I'm going to trade up.
"The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it"
Anyone else find this quote amusing? "The new Porsche is nothing more than a VW Golf on steroids with a much better engine in it."
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
>Yippee, I can resize Safari and even IE now with >not much lag
Because it should obviously take an 867mhz processor that fries your lap while working to redraw a 1024x768 window 'almost fast enough'. What is it with GUI designers these days?
This is probably the biggest thing keeping me away from buying one of these in the future. I have been hearing that the L2 cache helps out in alot of situations. And some of you are complaining about heat? I can't put my iBook SE on my lap for more than 30 minutes :P
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
One of his complaints was the lack of cleartype under max ox x. If I recall correctly, cleatype is subpixel rendering, and that has been supported since Jaguar was released. In fact, it's the primary reason I upgraded from 10.1.5.
Well, most PowerBook owners really don't seem to be concerned that an AlienWare desk/laptop with a 3.06GP4 can run Photoshop so-and-so times faster; they seem to be more into the idea of a gorgeously-designed machine with an OS that allows them the ease of use to actually work efficiently, while still allowing them all the power they could ever want. Laptop people tend to realize much more than desktop people that a computer isn't always and end unto itself; most of the time it's just a tool for getting the job done, and they'll choose the best one available.
Plus they have that great ad with Yao Ming and Verne Troyer...still can't figure out why they didn't premiere it during the Superbowl, though.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
your biggest flaw ;-)
The iBooks are like models. They are nice to look at and nice to play with and fondle, but when it comes down to it, they have a lot of flaws and will most likely vomit after every meal and have a weird sexual past.
I think someone made a booboo...
My bad, its not L2 cache, but L3
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
The PowerPC CPU can't be compared to Intel/AMD's since they operate very differently.
Still, yes, Macintoshes are falling behind when it comes to raw speed. But cleverly designed software makes it a lot faster to work with a Mac.
Ciryon
"Yippee, I can resize Safari and even IE now with not much lag."
:-)
ROFLMAO, speaking of low expectations
(if this is "good", wait until you see "the bad")
OSNews reviews by Eugenia are notoriously biased and loaded with emotional rhetoric. Take what she writes with a grain of salt.
From the article:
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
Kind of reminds me of this.
Maybe Apple will ship it with a pair of insulated iPants for true laptop comfort?
You're forgetting that the Alienware machine is 10 freaking pounds. That's not portable IMO.
because after you use it on OSX you'll grow disillusioned with other implementations thanks to Apple's improvements in the JVM and Swing/AWT :)
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
...are the 17" Powerbooks?
I can't live this busted old 15" Ti much longer.
They've also came out with a sweet-ass XServe RAID
Amazing, isn't it, how people end up on the CPU treadmill? I just bought a digital camera. Already have a film SLR -- decent enough, and certainly a better picture than any digital camera under $1800 or so. What I needed was a complement to that. The kids are nine, they're old enough to enjoy taking pictures but not old enough not to waste hundreds of worthless frames learning how on film. The SLR's big to lug around, too, so a decent little digital made sense. For what we were doing, a 3 MP model seemed fine, and small-but-not-ultra-compact -- emphasis on durable, for the kids. I narrowed the models down, read some reviews, and chose something at that sweet spot. It happened to be one of the Sony models -- because it has a nice little design that's easy to tuck in a pocket and a decent little interface. Seemed better-engineered than the comparable Canons.
Apple gets that. They understand how to pitch to different market segments. Their machines have design sense, they're meant to work with you. They're durable. The OS is pleasant -- the kids haven't given me much chance to use the new camera, but they tell me iPhoto is easy as can be... :-) And they're using it on the 17" iMac that's displaced the PCs in the household because it'll fit in a weird spot and it's better at the stuff we actually do.
But why do people not "get" the whole tradeoff idea except for portables? The hutch/shrines people set up for their computers are surreal. (Hide it in the basement, please, honey.) Or look at that /. article last week about upgrading your machine to play games -- that's technology for its own sake, for people who can only be satisfied with a shooter if they know they're getting a respectable FPS rate. For some reason people "get" it for portables, but not for desktop systems. Weird.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
This guy doesn't know what he is talking about at OSnews. Come on, slashdot. Post a review that makes sense.
"With your choice of single or dual-processor 1.33GHz PowerPC G4s, up to 2GB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM, two 64-bit 66MHz PCI slots (plus a third combination PCI/AGP slot), dual Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, USB and four independent ATA/133 drive bays that hold up to 720GB of data, Apple's best-in-class 1U server outshines not just its 1U competitors, but even many 2U systems. And if you want to add even more storage capacity, Apple's new Xserve RAID solution holds up to 14 hot-swappable Apple Drive Modules -- a phenomenal 2.52 terabytes of data -- in a rack-optimized storage enclosure. "
the HORROR.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Let me say I am a happy owner of the 867 15'' PB. When these first showed up people were complaining that they were too loud. So Apple responded and removed the fans. Now it's too hot! Oh well, pick one, fans or heat. Seriously, according to Motorola the 1 GHz G4 (7455) outputs 30W max (unless Apple put in something else not listed on Moto's site). That's a lot for a laptop and definitely warrants a fan. My PB has two fans. One of them has two speeds and the low speed is almost constantly on but it doesn't bother me because it's almost completely inaudible (I can hear it only if there is absolutely no other sound in the room). However after 15 min of UT the other fan kicks in and that one *is* audible (not too bad though). When you stop UT the other fan dies...
Quoth the article:
Number 2 issue is the quality of the LCD screen... but the one used for this Powerbook is the same as the one found on the 15" iMac and the iBooks
Being a dual USB iBook owner here myself I am wondering where he's getting his information. The LCD on this laptop is exellent. Crisp, clear, AA works wonderfully and subpixel rendering is peachy as well.
As for whimpering about motion blur, even this iBook is a previous generation (G3 500) system, I get none of that here. Must be talking out his ass.
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
eBay protest cry:
IX-NAY ON THE EBAY!
Based on this article it looks like if I add a $400.OO Sonnet g4 upgrade to my powerbook prism (g3, 266mh, 40GB HD, 392mb ram, firewire card, 14.1" screen) I will have at least as good a machine. Has anyone done this? If so what is your experiance with third party upgrades? Would you do this or buy a new 15 or 17 inch?
Ahhh... ibook on steriods. Does it mean that this new powerbook has little balls and dies after 40 hours of use?
still can't figure out why they didn't premiere it during the Superbowl, though. They did, you missed it.
All-in-all, the laptop does get warm, and I think people feel it a little more than other laptops because of the casing, but, I can touch the back of the LCD display without getting the "water effect".
As the VP of R&D said in a presentation this week, "I said we would support apple over my dead thinkpad. We are about to support apple, and it is cool!".
I'm not usually a mac basher, but it's just silly to try and say that Apples are better than ANYTHING else because of the way it handles pictures or photoshop. I don't use any kind of digital photography software or any kind of graphics development. Maybe macs would be better for me if I did, but I don't so speed and price are way more important. Don't try to generalize the advantages of macs. They may be great for you, but there's a reason for it. And there's a reason why it ISN'T for others...
When will you goobs learn that computer hardware is not sexy!
90% of users would never know it was "slow". Is that because they are ignorant and have never been on a faster computer? I didn't think my 386 was slow at the time either. The OS might be worth it, but don't try to call a mac fast.
Mac OSX does sub-pixel font rendering (it even did this on an old clamshell iBook). This guy might need to change his font settings to actually do it though.
- AlanH
Then I guess you're not a man. I don't even notice the weight on mine, which coincidentally, is carried for like 20 minutes in a backpack and *parked on my desk* for over 10 hours each day. Not a big sacrifice for the insane power.
The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it.
I understand that this isn't necessarily intended as a positive comment, but isn't this exactly what a lot of potential Apple laptop customers have wanted? I purchased an iBook right after the revision in May 2001, and replaced it with a 15" PowerBook G4 last fall. I've enjoyed having the better performance, particularly when running Virtual PC, but I miss the smaller form factor and more convenient portability of the iBook. To me, an "iBook on steroids" would have been just what I was looking for, and my understanding was that a lot of folks who loved the iBook but needed better performance felt similarly. I think the bottom line is that, if you approach this from the high end of wanting a PowerBook, just a little smaller, you risk disappointment, but if you approach it from the lower end of wanting an iBook, just with a little more oomph, you'll be fairly satisfied.
Is this really a problem? I mean, this is exactly what I, personally, want from my next laptop. I know the bigger, faster PBooks are sexier, but I want a small notebook with decent battery time that I can haul to the coffee shop for some light hacking.
I use my girlfriend's iBook for this sometimes, and it is more than sufficient.
My only point (to stay on topic) is that Apple is offering a pretty wide range of products to choose from. A "G4 iBook" is really all that I would need.
-- clvrmnky
The 12" PowerBook sitting next to me cries "bullshit" at the story saying its LCD is sucky. It has a bright and clear screen. The factory default for characters antialiasing is set to CRT setting, just switch that to "optimum for LCD" and your eyes should be pleased, that's the only complaint I could think of.
And no "motion-blur" of any kind. You've been waaaayyy too long staring at your new laptop, Mister Reviewer.
{Only the Combo Drive comparison makes sense, and I'm only trying to list differences.}
12" Powerbook
867MHz G4
256K L2 cache
133MHz Bus
256MB
40GB Ultra ATA/100
NVIDIA GeForce4 420 (32MB DDR)
-- Dual Display & Video Mirroring Airport Extreme Ready
Bluetooth Built-in
$1799
12.1" iBook
800 MHz G3
512K L2 cache
100Mhz Bus
30GB Ultra ATA Drive
ATI Radeon 7500 (32MB)
-- Video Airport Ready
$1299
So the $500 extra upfront gets a faster processor, more RAM, larger & possibly faster HD, possibly faster video card with dual display ability, Airport Extreme ready, and built in Bluetooth.
Conclusion: there are differences. The question for prospective buyers is would they use the differences. For the record, upgrading the iBook memory to 256 is $50 and the hard drive to 40GB is $100, so the price difference for the other differences is $350.
On a side note, I personally want the SuperDrive, which isn't available on an iBook (most likely a G4 is required).
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
As for the heat, it's definitely not "among the hottest around" as the OSNews article claims - for one it's a lot less hot than the older TiBooks IMHO. He says he suspects his lower RAM configuration could be to blame. I suspect his suspicion is right - 256MB just isn't realistic for OS X. Furthermore, it's hard to hear (or even feel) the drive spin, so VM activity can easily go unnoticed.
I don't agree with his criticism of the display either. Admittedly I'm not too picky in this area, but I just don't see this supposedly outrageous difference in quality between my 17" Apple Studio Display and the PowerBook's display. Besides, it's hard to buy into the disappointment, since all it takes is a quick trip to the store to check it out (at least for people who don't buy computers just to review them ;-)
The rest of the criticism goes right at the price differentiation variables: "maxes out at 640MB", "no L3 cache", "not a 1GHz processor", "screen is only 12"" etc etc... Well guess what, that's why it's the $1799 model instead of the $3299 model... that's half as much plus $150. The better comparison is between the older $2299-$2799 TiBook inventory that Apple still officially carries and the 12". Would you rather have:
- A 15.2" screen, DVI connector, and Titanium enclosure, or
- A later gen with a faster bus, DDR RAM, Bluetooth, 802.11g compatibility, and $500 in your pocket
A while ago I bought two xserves to act as diskserves to a linux cluster and to backup my desktop macs. I bought these machines because I felt they were a good deal. I got bids on several pc based linux disk servers, as well as several NAS boxes. I was comparing 480GB machines. a high quality generic brand (supermicro) with scsi disks and dual Gigabit ran about 8000 (at the time). The mac xserves ran just under $7000 using IDE disks with 4 indepenedent masters (out performs the scsi). Additionally the mac had other nice features such as: 1U versus 3U. hot swap. I bought both systems in the end. after I unpacked the mac I was even more impressed with the high quality construction and ease of access to the interior.
What really made it for me on the macs was the fact that I had to hire a sysadmin to correctly set up my linux box with load balancing, Ldap, mail server, and moreover to keep it patched and to monitor it. On the macs I set them up myself. No detected problems with load balance. and the mac tools let you set up nearly all the services you might want with an intuitive gui.
Actually, I had a few snags but even here I have to give apple a good reprot card. they chancged how they did network admin right when I got my box. so all the documentation was for the obsolete tools and none for the new. So I got things really screwed up with services I could not turne off once turned on. The machines would gag when they could not find their ldap serviers or when they were cut off from the internet. But I called apple on the free service plan. after a ten minute wait on came a guy who really knew his stuff and spent about an hour with me getting all of my various problems sorted out and teaching me the new system. And in fact the next day he called me back! said he had another idea about a question i had asked him. I was really impressed on the customer service. its much better than for my other mac computers. Since then Ive had mac people call me back three times with ideas for me. Now that the new tools are better docuimented (still a few gaps), life is easy.
perhaps the best feature is the software update feature. I get patches and new tools delivered automatically and have the confiudence they wont screw up my all apple configuration. thus I still have not needed a sys admin. At the purchase time I had considered some NAS boxes (e.g. iomega,snap...) for the purpose of making sys admin simple. But these things have lousy throughput for the price and aren't versatile computing machines.
However I have had three problems with my xesrves that I dont have with my linux box.
first no raid 5. that's absouluetly maddening. I bought a raid 5 solution from a third party but I'm nervous it wont be effieicnt or it will die someday when I do a self-update that makes it incompatible.
second, and this compounds the above problem is the UFS/HFS+ dichotomy. while macs do run UFS, they dont do it effieicently or with any advanced features like journalling. Moreover the OS and some mac apps wont work unless they are on UFS. so you always have to have a HFS+ partition. but wait! you cant partition a raid disk with different file systems (on apple) so this means if you want to have any hfs raid the whole disk has to be HFS+. on our four disk Xserve this means I ended up with two disks RAID1 HFS+ and and two disks UFS raid 1- a whopping 120GB of UFS out of my 480GB (raw) can be UFS. yuck!. fortunately there is now a partionalble raid 5 soultion from a theird party which fixes this issue. (the reason I wanted UFS, was because even though I lost some effieiceny i wanted no surprises for my linux systems due to the filenaming case sensitivity)
The third problem I have had is that while the admin tools are wonderful and run on remote machines, there are a few tools and apps that will not run remotely. for example, if I want to use the GUI software update remotely, I cant. I have to use the terminal CLI tool. This is not too bad, but its just an example. if you use other gui tools, like brickhouse firewall or whatever, you have to go to the terminal attactched to the machine.
My work around for this is to use OSXVNC which does the job. However there is a catch I dont like. You cant use osxvnc on a headless mac. that is you have to have a display device connected to the mac to use osxvnc!! there's no way I want to have a display for each mac xserve. Of course I could use a KVM switch but my preference would be that it should be unneccessary for remote admin. my work around here is that I can fool the macs by briefly connecting a display to them after boot. I can then unplug the display and OSXVNC will still work on my headless mac.
My conclusion is that apple has a wonderfulhigh quality machine. And it will work perfectly for you if you dont require UFS or remote admin of GUI based apps. When I bought my system I had just had a bad experience with 20 athalon servers that had died from heat delamination of the fans and were unstable due to current glithces from the cd roms. I was thus very risk averse. when I bought the apples I knew I was buying peace of mind, and not paying extra for it. I had no idea what good customer service I was going to get. PLus I did not realize I could also buy a complete replacement part kit (down to the motherboard) to have locally. Since my experience with their customer service I bought the extened warantee. its lot cheaper than a sys admin.
when mac comes out with native raid5 and someone writes a VNC that can run headless all will be well
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I don't but I recently "switched" to a 12" ibook when my Vaio was stolen - it's the best upgrade ever (I am also a student and my course requires a decent implementation of Java, plus I like UNIX tools - the terminal is my most used app). I feel slightly annoyed that the 12" powerbook costs the same as my iBook and only 3 months later but hey - that's progress for ya.
I did however get to play with one of the 12" powerbooks in my local Apple reseller the other day and they are *much* faster - go for it. OS-X is a reasonably "nice" version of UNIX (I normally use NetBSD) and it has the infinite advantage over Linux in that things (hardware) just work rather than having to spend hours compiling kernel modules when you really need to be working.
To be honest, I'm a little confused by the article. The reviewer seemed to be criticsing the machine for being what it is - a smaller, lighter, cut-down version of the 15" powerbook or in his words an iBook with a G4. He seemed to somehow think Apple had a magic "make it smaller" device so that they could cram a 15" laptop into a 12" one. Also he seemd to think that Apple should use two different 12" displays on their different laptops. I certainly haven't had any of the display problems he claims with my iBook...
The whole point these machines is that they are ultra-portable (I carry mine everywhere) and in fact the only thing that worries me slightly is that the iBook is not a rugged as I would like, but the powerbook solves this by being made of Aluminium.
The die-hard mac users are right you know - it is a better world...
Is anyone out there using these (Xserve)?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
It's bundled with the iBook but not the TiBook; which makes the purchase of the $200 Microsoft Office.X pretty much mandatory. I know you can buy AppleWorks for $79, but once you've committed to spend that much, the extra $121 for the larger package seems a better investment.
Which seems a shame; from what I can tell, AppleWorks seems pretty full featured, a good way to avoid paying "the Microsoft tax." (They even offer a cross-platform version that runs under both Mac OS and Windows, but only for educational customers.)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Yeah, I was excited about the "smallest full-featured laptop", until I discovered that it's not in fact full featured. I'm sorry, but any laptop that doesn't include even a single type 1 PCMCIA slot just can't be called full-featured. Bah.
As for the 17" Powerbook.. is anyone buying these things? I can't imagine lugging a 17" iMac's display around all day.
As far as I can tell, the 17" is intended to be a mobile desktop not a portable. Combined with wireless networking, this is a computer which may be carried from room to room in one site (say your home or office). As such, this may be a great machine for many on Slashdot. The smaller units are more appropriate for travel (just try to open and use a 17" in airline coach seating).
The market for traditional desktop computers is shrinking quickly . The current segments are shifting to small handhelds (palm / cell phone sized), travel computers (sony Vaio), single site (powerbook 17"), and servers (often rackmounted). Presumably we'll see another shift in a few years as next generation display technologies become available.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
i have the same problem on my ibook, the heat in the front left corner is from hdd usage, (enable hd sleep and it wont get too hot), and the colorspace of the lcd should be changed to sRGB in the color tab of the display pref panel to make it look way better.
...And I love it.
Its lack of DVI is not really hard to figure. This is the travel-sized laptop. This thing goes anywhere. It's more rugged than most other laptops on the market. It's small. It's light. It's got a great keyboard and a great LCD (yes, that's right, I love the LCD. I think it's fine). But it's not going to replace your desktop.
That was never its intent. Desktop-replacing laptops start at 15". This is the laptop that you sync up with your dedicated desktop box and then take on the road. It does a great job of that, and honestly, at $1800.00, you can afford to have the 12" and a desktop machine.
Assuming that this is not going to be your desktop machine, then, what's the use of DVI? The only reason it has external video at all is so that you can give presentations with it (another good use of a truly portable machine), and towards that purpose, it has RCA- and S- video out. Even presentations made with the sexy new Keynote are not going to benefit from DVI.
This laptop fills a very specific niche (here's a hint: that niche is not "iBook replacement"). Even a cursory glance at the specs reveals that. If someone got sold on the thing to do something it wasn't meant to, well, sorry. They're going to be as unhappy with it as anyone is who tries to use the wrong tool for the job. For my part, I'm using it for what it was made for. And I'm quite happy with it!
--
any how I was mistaken--the apple web page did not mention the raid 5 so I assumed it was just the same as the old 1-U xserve. sorrty for the misinfomation
I looked at it at the Apple store in SoHo this weekend, and it's a sweet little machine. Light, bright, nimble. Pulled up a terminal and wrote little perl scripts for twenty minutes. Completely forgot there was a candy-apple GUI grafted onto the ass of the BSD kernel.
Makes me sad for the lives the reviewers must lead that they can't be happy with the 12" powerbook. You know, the kind of people who let their whole day be ruined because the color of one of their cocoa puffs was off by a shade. For Pete's sake, they could, **horror** of horrors, be saddled with an IBM thinkpad!
Think on that, and wonder.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Feed?
But it wasn't a good review.
Too much time on irrelevancy (it seems like he went on for page after page about the two lock-ups he experienced...well, it only seemed like page after page). He could have handled it like this:
"The powerbook locked up twice unexpectedly; I called Apple, and they said it was unusual..."
Note that he didn't call Apple about the problem; which might have been helpful.
And another dozen pages (exaggeration) about frames being dropped in full screen mode for DVD's. Its okay to mention, but it could have been summarized in 2 sentences.
After reading it, the only think I know for sure is that screen stinks. But he didn't compare it to anything, so I can't judge whether he's picky, if there's a problem with is computer, or if he's nuts.
The guy's heart is in the right place, but he needs to be more self-critical of his writing. The review isn't.
"Pink" was a joint operating system project between Apple and IBM. Here's an article about it from 1993: Surrender the Pink!
there is no pcmcia slot.
It is the little things that make the new PB G4 12" so nice. Sure, you can plug in a G4 card into a Pismo or even a Wall Street, but it doesn't get you the faster system bus, or the faster firewire bus (pre-iBook dualUSB firewire (Oxford 911) is slower) or the integrated Bluetooth or 802.11g, or the double data rate PC2100 RAM, or the vastly superior video system, or the sweet keyboard or a lot smaller and lighter form factor, or the slot loading DVD burner.
If you are thinking about putting more money into a Pismo, think about cutting your losses while Pismo's are still relatively well-valued on Ebay/elsewhere. If you don't need a PCI card for legacy hardware, and don't mind the higher pixel density (same number of pixels in a smaller package), then take a close look at the twelve.
I'm inputting this post from my twelve with 640 MB RAM, Superdrive, over Airport (to a version 1 basestation).
"...but the powerbook solves this by being made of Aluminium."
Huh uh, he said Alumi-nium!! Me says he's not American.
InK.
I had an iBook, so I know about the LCD and the heat (neither were big issues for me, hell I found the heat pleasant in winter ;-). The thing that has me leery is no L3 cache. Basically an iBook on steroids is exactly what I'm looking for, but I fear that no L3 cache will be bad on OSX. I have heard that the 12" PB takes a long time to boot from other people as well, and I know when I disable the L3 cache on my Cube the boot time gets quite long. Not that it matters, I only need to boot it once every few months. ;-) But I am leery of stunted performance in other areas. What are some opinions on normal usage? I think I may wait for rev2 on these babies and see if they decide to put the L3 back on (but they are almost exactly what I want).
Its just a poorly done review. See my critique further down. Too much space on stuff that he/she doesn't like. Not enough space on relevant stuff like battery, compatibility, speed, weight. Y'know. Stuff that people buy computers for.
Low-end laptop from company is lower-end than the high-end models!
READ ALL ABOUT IT!
People with over-priced processors running at insane speeds trying to justify purchases by mocking those will lower-clocked but still completely sufficient processors!
READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Big Bear: He's iron tough. Big Bear: He don't take no guff. He's BIG BEAR.
Justin Dubs
insane is right
In the FPS vein, a respectable framerate is the difference between winning and losing. Try playing UT2003 on a GeForce 2 at 800x600, and see how frame droppage kills your ability to play.
Still.. you ARE half right-- anything over about 100FPS is kinda overkill. 60 is decent, and I can see a visible difference all the way up to 120 or so, but past 60 it's not life or death anymore.
Besides, new games are always coming out, and each more hungry for processor and video than the last. My old GeForce 2 isn't cutting it anymore-- I'm already drooling over a 9700 Pro. Is that overkill or wasted? Not really.
(incidentally, framerate also has a huge effect on mouselag in FPS games. The higher the framerate, the more responsive the mouse since the lagtime between mouse movement and the next frame has shortened. This is almost always overlooked by people looking for reasons to upgrade, though.)
I'm also told by an informed friend that the 12" powerbook is on the fragile side, which certainly makes sense (and seems reasonable). Nice thick plastic has to offer more of a cushion than thin, flexible aluminum.
The 12" Powerbook has;
a G4 Processor (iBook has a G3)
133Mhz Bus (iBook is still 100Mhz)
Slot-loading drive (iBook has a tray)..
Audio line in (unlike the iBook)
etc..
The dimensions are actually smaller than the ibook, the hinge is different, keyboard and casing is different. I think the only thing similar is the 12.1" screen with the ibook.
The lack of l3 cache is sad, no idea why they chose to do it.. reduce costs? No DVI out, I heard was due to space constraints and the fact that the 12" isnt really meant to be a desktop replacement, but a mobile computing platform.
I recieved my powerbook last week, and it's definately the best machine Ive ever owned. Yes, I switched from Linux and WinXP. No intention of going back.
Yes, they ran it during the Bowl - but I *first* saw it about a week before the game.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
does the new 12" powerbook taste? if i bake it at 400degrees will it have that crispy crust like the ibook?
An iBook with DDR RAM and a G4 is my notebook computing dream come true.
Compare:
It's nothing more than an iBook on steroids.
to:
It's an iBook on steroids!!
Since that time a student of mine showed me his new 12" AlBook. I only held it for a minute - any longer and I fear that I would just run off with it. The form factor is perfect, the weight is perfect. It is a wonderful machine.
My conclusion? Who cares if it could be described as n iBook on steroids? It is a wonderful second computer to compliment (not replace) a full dektop machine.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Is necessary. On my old PB G3 Bronze (still going strong) I use the slot for three different features: firewire, 802.11, SmartMedia adapter for my digital camera. Yes, the first two are included in new notebooks from apple; but when I bought the PB in '99 they were not in common use. Similarly, other stuff will be invented in the next several years that will fit into a PC Card slot, and it would be a damn shame not to be able to use it.
sulli
RTFJ.
OK, so they use some lower quality, less powerful components (LCD, Video Card, Hard Drive, no L3 cache). But the author already comlained about the heat. Obviously Apple had to make some engineering tradeoffs there. Did you want it to be hotter than it already is? Also, you don't want too high of a speed (RPM) hard drive in a laptop, the vibration doesn't have a nice big chassis to distribute through like it does on a desktop system.
As far as I know, there are some integral differences between the iBook and PowerBook hardware. I haven't perused the document for the new 12-inch yet, and the document for the iBook doesn't appear to be available right now, but I do recall the document for the standard PowerBook mentioned quite a few hardware enhancements to things like the system bus.
All circuits busy.
Wow, that's a pretty thin laptop!
Random is the New Order.
I feel so out of touch with most modern performance people. I don't play any games at all and have just not seen any compelling difference between my 867MHz PowerBook and the big honkin' PCs that measure in GHz. Even the stuff I do do (Photoshop, etc.) isn't really impacted by anything other than tons of RAM. So, as someone who doesn't play video games all day, I just don't feel any need for "bigger faster more," and I think I'm happier because of it.
Page 3 of second article:
* Max of only 640 RAM
What's he complaining about? 640MB ought to be enough for anyone!
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I came across what looks like a great solution to the heat issue with the 12-inch PowerBooks. The Dimple Gel Notebook Wrist Pads can be 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).
And once again the villainous Slashdot editors pull a Lone Gunman on the unsuspecting Slashdot throng.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I want a G4 iBook. I want white plastic (preferably with backlit keyboard). Titanium is cool and all, but the iBooks are a lot less delicate. For a laptop that is important to me; I stick it in my backpack, take it to the coffeeshop, open it up and get to work immediately (thanks to OS X instant-on feature), and pick up chicks because everyone knows chicks dig white plastic laptops. Then throw it back in the backpack and go to the park with the girl, roll around in the grass without worrying about whether I am gonna smash the laptop in my backpack. Give me a white plastic G4 damnit!!! Otherwise I may never get laid.
AC grammer Nazi's are the worst...such cowards. I'll use them how I see fit. What is the rule for that?
Here's the thing - I still have to boot into OS 9 to do sound recording, because the software I'm comfortable with there (mostly Coaster) has not been ported to X yet, and it doesn't run under Classic. I'd like to install linux so I can run OS X and 9 side by side in separate mol windows. Does that make sense? Or is OS 9 under linux the same as classic -- i.e. you can't run anything you want to without booting into OS 9 directly. It would be nice to not have to reboot. Then again I don't want to lose speed on OS X but my understanding is that mol runs OS X natively so there isn't a change there. I don't know and I haven't had the time to install it and see; does anyone here know if I would be wasting my time?
From the OSNews review:
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))
Interesting, because on MacInTouch, there is a reader report in which many are noting that the 20" Cinema Display looks better than its older counterparts.
If the reviewer is correct in asserting that the 12" PB display and the 20" Cinema Display are the same, then the quality issue would appear to be more subjective than he thinks.
with Jaguar you're perceived speed of the O.S. is darn nice (if not academically interesting, 3d interface using the GPU and all that), not to mention, you CAN use the case sensitive UFS rather than either the Mac filesystem or Mac Extended FS, even on a different partition with the system partition being Mac {Extended} FS. Also, you should know that your claims of a bolt on unix are a bit untrue, as this is a quite capable unix actually, down to compiliing many many apps itself now. I would rather not follow this discussion anymore, but try to find some widely used open source apps that the *BSD's use that the Mac cannot. I'm sure you could, but for the most part it's not a valid argument anymore.
the rest must be new around here :)
It should have read "less than 1 1/4 inches thick." That was a stupid mistake that nobody noticed before it went to print, but which was then obvious to numerous readers afterwards [smacking self in forehead]
- R
is this. It is a report from someone who saw the 20" Cinema Display alongside the other displays in Apple's lineup.
I also abuse a'post'rophe's when I speak. Along with ellipses, semi-colons, tildes and hash marks...must drive some people crazy ~ heheheh
I got my 12" PowerBook last Monday. Having had it now for a week I have to say this is simply the finest piece of hardware I have ever owned.
Granted, it's probably not as cool as a 17", not as fast as the 15", etc.
But it fits in my backpack and doesn't weigh a brick. With the leather notebook (pen and paper) and a hardcover book in my backpack, the 12" makes no difference in weight.
Having upgraded from an old Dell Inspiron 5000, this is key. My fucking Dell is a brick.
The issues on the LCD I can't agree with. The first thing I noticed, and everyone in my office remarked on was the spectacular clarity of the display. If this is Apple's low-end, cheap display, I'd kill for a high-end one. The clarity and crispness of display is better than any other I've seen. It is at least as good as the two 19" Trinitron CRTs on my desk here.
The font issue? I don't see it. I'm new to OS-X but the first thing I did when playing in the settings was find, in System Preferences, General, an option for font smoothing. There was a setting marked 'Medium - best for Flat Panel' which really improved the clarity of text on the screen.
Heat is a bit of an issue but I've found it's mostly if the machine doesn't have sufficient airflow. Sitting on a thick wooden desk, my PB heats up rather fast. Sitting on my lap on the couch it seems to stay fairly cool. As for being 'fanless' as I believe was mentioned, I could swear a few times when the machine got real hot on my desk that I heard a fan kick in and start blowing air to cool it down. There was no CD in the drive so I can't think of what else would spin up like that.
Overall, this is a great machine. While it may not compare to other higher end APPLE boxes, it is simply light years beyond any PC laptop I've handled recently. And it is the most meticulously, beautifully engineered pieces of hardware I've ever had.
And being completely uncreative the last week or so, I have yet to come up with a better name than MiniMe. Check it out at:
http://www.jacked-in.org/mini-me
Small and light makes it easy to move with. A 12" screen is big enough to do my work on.
When i want a bigger screen, a regular keyboard, and a mouse, I dock it with my USB Mouse & USB Keyboard set up at a desk. Lo and behold, a desktop with a full sized monitor.
This is on my baby ibook, it works just fine, I do all my work on it. I love it.
---
I support spreading santorum
'The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it' is the dumbest thing I've heard all day. What the hell else would it be? I thing hardware reviewers can't resist the temptation to use the word 'steroids' every chance they get. Why didnt they just say it was a smaller G4? it's clearly not an iBook.
Resizing a browser window is non-trivial as it requires re-rendering the HTML page.
It isn't just resizing a 1024x768 window, it is rebuilding the layout of the page to compensate.
I'm not saying that it shouldn't be 'almost fast enough' but it is not as simple as you suggest.
Same here. I find the display to be quite crisp. Some things look better than on my desktop monitor (which is a Sony Multiscan CPD-G400 19" professional quality display.) Maybe we got the better quality display or something? The screen only becomes slightly unreadable when I am looking at it from perhaps a 45 degree angle (sideways.) Even if I am at 60 to 70 degrees, I can still read your post. Move above and below the screen, the range is a little lower, but I can still read the article at a 45 degree angle from the flat surface.
Just because it doesn't support some fringe transformer-style camera, does not mean it is not "full featured". Just about any digital camera made would hook into the USB, or you can use a USB reader for your CF or SD (or memory stick) cards.
Saying the laptop is not "full featured" is pretty much the same is saying that no laptop can be full featured without an 8" floppy or nine-pin serial port. For just about any use you'd care to name, USB and firewire (and the other built in things like networking and bluetooth) have pretty much eliminated the need for a PMCIA card.
I have a PMCIA card on my older Powerbook, but have never had any reason at all to use it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PMCIA is a legacy slot, at least in my view. Having ethernet and 802.11g and bluetooth all built in pretty much means connectivity is taken care of for a long time to come, which is about the only realm the compactness of a PMCIA card really comes in handy... for just about anything else a USB or Firewire connected device would suffice as an option. Considering that it makes the powerbook cheaper and smaller (where would you fit the slot?), I can live with that...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 12 years. I expect that trend to continue.
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
The first review article claims the superdrive is slow at burning Cd's and had problems with DVD-RW. Anybody else had that experience?
In my opinion, they should put it in. I have a 12", 3 pound HP machine that has PCMCIA... clearly it will fit.
Yes, I know some Mac smartass is going to reply, "I don't need PCMCIA, I have USB/FireWire/ethernet built in". To which I reply that PCMCIA is for FUTURE technology - for example, Powerbook Titanium owners are going to be able to add 802.11g via PCMCIA. iBook owners (no PCMCIA) are out of luck.
"640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody."
--Bill Gates, 1981
He/she. I don't look at gender when evaluating something; if its a woman then shame on her for not paying attention in English class.
But my review is dead-on accurate. A lot of nonsense about irrelevancy and missing the point about:
1) Weight
2) Convenience of Keyboard
3) Battery life under various circumstances
4) Speed of software (and bootup)
5) Quality of bundled software
Instead we get multiple paragraphs on how the DVD player skips frames. Weird yes, but worth 1 sentence.
She can't write. That doesn't make her dumb, or a bad person. But she can't write. She can't communicate a point effectively.
Hope that clears things up for you.
wanna see inside this thing? its very chic...
take a look at the pics in this article.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
But why do people not "get" the whole tradeoff idea except for portables?...For some reason people "get" it for portables, but not for desktop systems. Weird.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. There are people that "get it" on both sides of the laptop/desktop world. There are value desktops around, and many (if not most) people get them. It's just that the performance people go desktop because there is no laptop solution.
± 29 dB
Notice how the first guy is anonymous and he is scored a two. The second guy bravely puts his name on and is only a pathetic default 1.
/. are funny like that.
But the really anonymous guy doesn't get credit in his karma for the 2 mod points he got.
But I have the feel the 2nd guy hardly ever gets mod points.
Life and
the 802.11g aiport extreme card fits into the same slot the standard airport fits into, so there still no need for a pcmcia card.
granted as a recent purchaser of a 14" iBook, I wish it did have a pcmcia slot so I could add a certain audio device, BUT, firewire is FASTER!
the history of the world
for the same amount of $ as the internal superdrive, you can get an external LaCie 4x firewire dvd-rw.
you do the math...
the history of the world
Or were we talking about the 17" powerbook, not the 12"?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Hah! I'd like to see that "thick plastic" survive the mad "Apple" pie baking woman!
Ah well, 640MB ought to be enough for anybody.
sulli
RTFJ.
I ordered my Powerbook 12" on 1/20/03. I just received notice via email yesterday that it has finally shipped. However, the tracking number (623557444700) shows some other thing that had already been delivered on 1/31/03 in Indiana! I live in Cali, so imagine my surprise!!
I called 1-800-MY-APPLE and plead my case. They said that ALL powerbooks that were shipped on 2/11/03 were notified with the wrong fedex numbers. Anyone else getting this? Is it just me? Gulp...
Hope it shows up Thursday!! I paid the $20 bucks for the 2-day shipping...
Piko
...once the chips are available.
r dware/Devel oper_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerBook_G4_12inch/P owerBookG412inch.pdf
There is no limitation of 640MB in the system.
This is the developer document:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/ha
-spheric*
Photograph of the internals:
http://61.194.6.235/gif/pbg412/pbg41211.jpg
-spheric*