How about the rest of the world.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Informative
Unfortunately the Australian PB prices still seem to be as high as they ever were. Not only has out dollar climbed in value against the US since the PB12 was released, and Apple have dropped the price of the PB12, we should be seeing some awesome savings, like with the eMac and iBook, both of which recently dropped quite a bit.
I'm looking buying a new mac soon. It would be tempting to go for a PB12 if they dropped as much as they should in price.,
Re:How about the rest of the world.
by
Weavus
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· Score: 3, Informative
Its the same for Europe...
Check out these prices:
15" Combo US: $1,999.00 UK: $3,101.26
15" Superdrive US: $2,599.00 UK: $3,588.84
12" Combo US: $1,599.00 UK: $2,285.31
12" US: $1,799.00 Superdrive UK: $2,530.07
Its even worse if you are paying in Euro's rather than GBP.
I could grab a plane ticket to NY, stay in a nice hotel for a couple of days, watch a show on broadway, buy a powerbook and still pay less than I would from Apple UK.
I really want to switch but not at these prices...
G5?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Are upgraded Powerbooks with the 970 already on the line of being announced, or is this just because they expected their sales to be larger?
If you are informed enough to ask a question like that, you shouldn't have to ask a question like that. Anyway, the rumor mill has been going full steam after months of, well, nothing. Here is the latest...
Yes, conflicting reports... But it's always safe to assume that when Apple lowers prices, their main goal is to clear out inventory for a new or updated model.
--
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Re:Education Prices
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you're eligible, the Education Store has them for only $1499!
And check your university for deals: mine threw in a 10 GB iPod for free. (Though they made you buy AppleCare, but I was going to buy it anyway.)
No L3... 256k L2 cache. Find me a Pentium/Centrino with L3 cache and you've got a valid point. Udderwize...
and on top of everything else lacks several legacy ports it abandons in favour of firewire and USB.
Uhh... That spells "modern laptop" moreso than a big bulky, ugly 9 Lb monster with parallel and PS2 ports... You're conveniently ignoring 802.11g as well...
In that perspective, it's struggling to stay a competitive deal even if it dropped another $100
From the Apple web site: Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW); reads DVDs at 8x speed; writes CD-R discs at 24x speed; writes CD-RW discs at 10x speed; reads CDs at 24x speed (12-inch model)
They may be lying, though. The legacy ports don't matter. How could they matter?
I agree with you on the cachelessness being bad, and the display resolution is just idiotic. MacOS X has pretty large window dressing and fonts.
-- Jag pratar lite svenska.
Re:Down From What?
by
questamor
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· Score: 4, Informative
While the article doesn't mention it, macnn's story on the price drop does.
If it's 2x DVD-R, then you are correct - Apple has DVD burners in their laptops - something that few (any?) PC laptops have.
If you're talking about CD writing speed, it's bollocks - my iBook is a year old and has an 8x combo CD burner. The newer iBooks have 16x burners - I see no reason that the powerbook would have a 2x burner.
If it was a typo and you meant to type "24x" and call it slow, then you're just impatient. I doubt there's much point putting a burner of that speed in a laptop - the faster you spin the disc, the more battery you use doing so.
You also note that it "lacks several legacy ports in favour of firewire and USB" as if this is a bad thing. I don't want a paralell port or an RS232 port on my laptop. I'm sure there are people who do need these ports, for them there are two options - buy a PC laptop or buy an adapter. There's no reason to include them on 98.7654% of modern laptops*.
* 88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Re:Obligatory
by
RedWingsSuck
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· Score: 5, Informative
I was told, by an Apple Store employee, that you could get the discounted price, if the unit was purchased within 30 days of the price cutting.
Re:Education Prices
by
illusion_2K
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· Score: 3, Informative
Another strategy, that I'll be using myself shortly, is to join the Apple Developer Connection (for about $100) as a student and then use their hardware seeding program, which gives you about 10-20% off your first hardware purchase with them.
Plus, the program has a bunch of developer tools and other discounts included. It's certainly wortha look.
Apple have used IBM chips for years
by
Xenex
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· Score: 2, Informative
Apple have bought CPUs from IBM for years. The modern example is the G3; most of the later G3 models are from IBM. The current iBook still uses an IBM G3.
You're obviously talking about the PowerPC 970, but if Apple use that it will not be the first time they've sourced chips from IBM.
Re:Education Prices
by
MoneyT
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· Score: 2, Informative
Another plus of that program is your bi-monthly copy of OS X shipped to your door. Waiting to see what happens when X.3 ships, but if it comes free, the developer membership is a keeper.
-- T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:Down From What?
by
doce
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· Score: 3, Informative
the $600 difference between the two 15" powerbooks is not just the drive.
for $1999, you get 867MHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, no airport, combo drive
for $2599, you get 1GHz, 512MB RAM, 60GB hard drive, airport, superdrive
so.. faster processor, more ram, bigger drive, wifi, and better optical drive.
-- woof!
For even better deals check out their refurbs
by
Mean_Nishka
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· Score: 2, Informative
Whenever I'm in need of a new Mac, I generally purchase them from the 'special deals' link which is generally towards the bottom of the store page. There you'll find a rotating stock of refurbished Apple machines, from desktops to powerbooks, available at a nice discount (with a full 1 year warranty).
If you don't need something absolutely brand new, check it out. I got my girlfriend a 700mhz ibook (with CDRW) last Christmas for about a grand.
Re:Obligatory
by
mgrochmal
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· Score: 2, Informative
Either the employee misunderstood, or the policy has changed. Here's what Apple has to say:
Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.
I'm not sure which one is right, though.
-- This.sig Intentionally Left Blank.
only 10 day price security.......
by
johnpaul191
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· Score: 2, Informative
that's true... i *thought* it was 30 days, but i just found this:
Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment
i found that right here under the "Prices" section. i am 99% sure i heard 30 days too, but i don't know where i saw that.
Re:not bad
by
NotoriousQ
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· Score: 2, Informative
They are not fast. Mine is also an older model, clocking at 866 Mhz.
I also run Gentoo Linux, so my opinion may not work for you....
In pure speed I do not notice much problems with performance. Windowmaker is perfectly responsive, so are all the other apps. The major slowdown it seems to me is not the processor, but the HDD. Mozilla runs quite fast, but the initial loading time is near 10 sec (unless cached).
Other benchmarks are my movie playing, which is perfectly fine with mplayer. Divx5 full screen decoding uses 20-30 % cpu. Compiling speed is approximately 50-70% of my desktop, A 1.2 Ghz tbird. I have heard that Windows movie playing is a bit slower, with some skip, but that was on the 833 Mhz reviews when I read them a year ago.
So in general, it is fast enough. Be ready for some noticable slowdowns, especially in drive sensitive operations. And the 8Mb Mach 64 video card is horrible....The have radeon mobility now, but I hope that they cranked up the ram....as 24 bit color will spill into your ram....
I do not recommend this for a Visual Studio machine, as it will die under the disc stress. I do not know if they improved 3d graphics by swithching to radeon mobility, as mine dies under simple GL apps, (but lack of linux drivers may be the cause).
In general I highly recommend this system. It is small, fanless, with nice battery life. Decent price. Oh, did I mention hardware stability. I have not managed to get a hardware freeze yet. I have not turned the laptop off for like 60-70 days once, and it worked just fine, (rebooted due to certain apps (AFS) stuck in kernel mode because they timed out during network outage).
The only repeated annoyance is that the rubber feet will unglue and fall off.
I have no regrets buying this system. I will recommend it to anyone not doing 3d stuff, or is extremely impatient.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately the Australian PB prices still seem to be as high as they ever were. Not only has out dollar climbed in value against the US since the PB12 was released, and Apple have dropped the price of the PB12, we should be seeing some awesome savings, like with the eMac and iBook, both of which recently dropped quite a bit.
I'm looking buying a new mac soon. It would be tempting to go for a PB12 if they dropped as much as they should in price.,
Are upgraded Powerbooks with the 970 already on the line of being announced, or is this just because they expected their sales to be larger?
And check your university for deals: mine threw in a 10 GB iPod for free. (Though they made you buy AppleCare, but I was going to buy it anyway.)
I hate Grammar Nazi's
From the Apple web site: Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW); reads DVDs at 8x speed; writes CD-R discs at 24x speed; writes CD-RW discs at 10x speed; reads CDs at 24x speed (12-inch model)
They may be lying, though. The legacy ports don't matter. How could they matter?
I agree with you on the cachelessness being bad, and the display resolution is just idiotic. MacOS X has pretty large window dressing and fonts.
Jag pratar lite svenska.
While the article doesn't mention it, macnn's story on the price drop does.
The prices are:
12" Combo drive PowerBook - $1,599 ($200 drop)
12" SuperDrive PowerBook - $1,799 ($200 drop)
15" Combo drive PowerBook - $1,999 ($300 drop)
15" SuperDrive PowerBook - $2,599 ($200 drop).
Nice drop on the 15" combo drive powerbook.
I have a Fujitsu P2000 series.....
10 inches screen, 1280x768 res. Low latency and high contrast ratio too. Looks great.
It could be too small....But then just crank up the DPI rating, and it will work perfectly.
Product site
The only laptop I was considering over this one was the powerbook. The fujitsu won based on the price.....
badness 10000
Dude, if you can't add $200 to $1,599, you really shouldn't be trying to operate a computer this early in the morning.
What media are you talking about there?
If it's 2x DVD-R, then you are correct - Apple has DVD burners in their laptops - something that few (any?) PC laptops have.
If you're talking about CD writing speed, it's bollocks - my iBook is a year old and has an 8x combo CD burner. The newer iBooks have 16x burners - I see no reason that the powerbook would have a 2x burner.
If it was a typo and you meant to type "24x" and call it slow, then you're just impatient. I doubt there's much point putting a burner of that speed in a laptop - the faster you spin the disc, the more battery you use doing so.
You also note that it "lacks several legacy ports in favour of firewire and USB" as if this is a bad thing. I don't want a paralell port or an RS232 port on my laptop. I'm sure there are people who do need these ports, for them there are two options - buy a PC laptop or buy an adapter. There's no reason to include them on 98.7654% of modern laptops*.
* 88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I was told, by an Apple Store employee, that you could get the discounted price, if the unit was purchased within 30 days of the price cutting.
Another strategy, that I'll be using myself shortly, is to join the Apple Developer Connection (for about $100) as a student and then use their hardware seeding program, which gives you about 10-20% off your first hardware purchase with them.
Plus, the program has a bunch of developer tools and other discounts included. It's certainly wortha look.
Apple have bought CPUs from IBM for years. The modern example is the G3; most of the later G3 models are from IBM. The current iBook still uses an IBM G3.
You're obviously talking about the PowerPC 970, but if Apple use that it will not be the first time they've sourced chips from IBM.
Another plus of that program is your bi-monthly copy of OS X shipped to your door. Waiting to see what happens when X.3 ships, but if it comes free, the developer membership is a keeper.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
the $600 difference between the two 15" powerbooks is not just the drive.
for $1999, you get
867MHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, no airport, combo drive
for $2599, you get
1GHz, 512MB RAM, 60GB hard drive, airport, superdrive
so.. faster processor, more ram, bigger drive, wifi, and better optical drive.
woof!
If you don't need something absolutely brand new, check it out. I got my girlfriend a 700mhz ibook (with CDRW) last Christmas for about a grand.
www.lonseidman.com
Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.
I'm not sure which one is right, though.
This
i found that right here under the "Prices" section. i am 99% sure i heard 30 days too, but i don't know where i saw that.
They are not fast. Mine is also an older model, clocking at 866 Mhz.
I also run Gentoo Linux, so my opinion may not work for you....
In pure speed I do not notice much problems with performance. Windowmaker is perfectly responsive, so are all the other apps. The major slowdown it seems to me is not the processor, but the HDD. Mozilla runs quite fast, but the initial loading time is near 10 sec (unless cached).
Other benchmarks are my movie playing, which is perfectly fine with mplayer. Divx5 full screen decoding uses 20-30 % cpu. Compiling speed is approximately 50-70% of my desktop, A 1.2 Ghz tbird. I have heard that Windows movie playing is a bit slower, with some skip, but that was on the 833 Mhz reviews when I read them a year ago.
So in general, it is fast enough. Be ready for some noticable slowdowns, especially in drive sensitive operations. And the 8Mb Mach 64 video card is horrible....The have radeon mobility now, but I hope that they cranked up the ram....as 24 bit color will spill into your ram....
I do not recommend this for a Visual Studio machine, as it will die under the disc stress. I do not know if they improved 3d graphics by swithching to radeon mobility, as mine dies under simple GL apps, (but lack of linux drivers may be the cause).
In general I highly recommend this system. It is small, fanless, with nice battery life. Decent price. Oh, did I mention hardware stability. I have not managed to get a hardware freeze yet. I have not turned the laptop off for like 60-70 days once, and it worked just fine, (rebooted due to certain apps (AFS) stuck in kernel mode because they timed out during network outage).
The only repeated annoyance is that the rubber feet will unglue and fall off.
I have no regrets buying this system. I will recommend it to anyone not doing 3d stuff, or is extremely impatient.
badness 10000