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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."
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
Whilst you're right that the Motorola RISC architecture that Apple utilise cannot be compared MHz for MHz with an Intel CISC device, they have been lagging for a little while in trms of raw power (MIPS). However, their speed/performance ratio is quite high.
I think that the general feeling of the Mac-hardcore is that Motorola just do not invest enough time or money in development of their chips.
Someone more knowledgable than me can correct this fact though. Were Apple also not once considering swicthing to Intel (?!).
Probably all lies.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
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.
don't buy the Powerbook. The 800Mhz 12 inch iBook is a MUCH better deal - and is actually FASTER in normal use ( the PPC 750fx has 512KB L2 cache vs the G4's 256KB). The price difference is so large that you could put a top spec IBM Travelstar AND max the RAM and it still wouldn't cost as much as the pb.
If you don't believe me, check out www.barefeats.com where they have a comparative speed review. If you want a Powerbook, go for the 15inch model, if you want an OSX portable - 800Mhz iBook is the king.
That was classic intercourse!