Slashdot Mirror
PowerBook 15" and 12" Disassembly
questamor writes "The ever gadget-driven among us are at it again, with a Japanese site disassembling a brand new 15" PowerBook. Of interest is dual blowers. Quite a good deal packed into that sleek Al case. An older photo article on the same site details a 12" takeapart. That's stunning for barely an inch thick. Kudos to Apple's designers for a machine that looks as well designed in as out, and to the guys willing to unscrew the screws on a machine barely 5 days into warranty."
the down is that the keyboard isn't removable (for those that liked swapping it out for a touch sensitive board), it's to allow for the backlit keys which are fed light from the built in display.
You insensitive clod!
Uh-oh .. there here goes his warranty .. I wonder how much extra parts did he have after putting it back together ;-)
some karmawhore really should do a mirror.
that said, there's not much in them to see, i guess if you can't figure out how to get it open otherwise the pics would help.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They only took the cover off. If they had compeltely disassembled the main board, reassembled it (without having parts left over) and then booted it first time I would be impressed. Does anyone knnow if its even possible to do this? I get the impression that with surfacemount technology it would be like threading elephants thru the eys of needles putting it back together again.
I have had somewhere between 10 and 15 laptops. This is laptops I have had fore more then 2 weeks to try out and test. - And my 15" powerbook is by far the best laptop I have ever had and used. It is solid quality straight thru.
If you can afford it and all your apps are availible to you, get a powerbook. It is almost the perfect laptop for everyday use. Currently I have a powerbook G4 1GHz, Compaq 12,1" and a Dell 8100. And the apple is the best of thoose three I currently use.
I would only use a powerbook with linux - if it wasn't that I have to use 3dsmax in my day-to-day work.
-L
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
Yeah!
with Moz, I get "The document contains no data"!
Plus Apple laptops currently make up 30% of new laptops, the closest competitor is dell at 24%.
Yes, just interview CmdrTaco or some other of the Slashdot dudes...
Actually, I own a PowerBook G3 500 and ordered a PB 15" 1.25 GHz the morning they came out (should be here this week) and I have never regreted having a PowerBook. I had a Compaq Notebook from my school district this year, for a competition I was in, and there was no comparison. My PowerBook was faster (yet it was older by a year), much lighter, much more durable, and worked more consistently. Even the most diehard PC users I know, would ask to borrow my PowerBook for a presentation, etc. So to answer your question, yes I am very happy I own a PowerBook.
Yes, I would buy it again.
This is a joke right?
People buy Macs because they like macs better. Personally I own a PC and an iBook and used to have a PC-laptop. My PC run both Linux and Windows, so did my PC-laptop.
The iBook beats the crap out of most PC-laptops at this price. The battery life and the silence of the thing is incredible compared to similiarly priced PCs.
Sure the PC laptops have a higher clock speed, but that is not always what you want.
Ultimately you normally buy a Mac because you want it to run MacOS (though some people actually buys Macs to run Linux on it because the hardware is just so much nicer than the comparable PC-hardware).
So do we get to call them freedombooks now ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Really, on the error page they need to add an extra dot point in troubleshooting---
"check site is not linked to from slashdot.org"
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
Good to see the very same dissassembled laptop being used as a web server as well...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
I'm happy I own a 12" powerbook.
I bought it for when I'm working by the racks, I've also got a dell inspiron great machine/beautiful screen but is rather big and unwieldy in the tiny spaces I have to work.
The PB does a fine job all the basics ssh/telnet/VNC plus while I'm spending hours sitting on site waiting for the ok to pull the plug on some machine to upgrade it I'm happily watching a DVD or listening to some music.
Before I bought it I wasn't sure if it was a good idea but got all my various *nix programs runnning, good battery life and haven't had a single problem it's a great machine.
Nathen
try the old 12" vs new 15" comparison it's what happens when you can't figureout where the spare parts go.. http://www.danamania.com/temp/1512.jpg
For a clickable comparison of the two machines in the above post, see http://www.danamania.com/temp/1512.jpg
Yeah, I've known people who bought Apple laptops only to put Linux on. However, I still don't understand them. Really, for the price a PC is so much better value that the decision is effectly already made for you.
Also, bear in mind that the aesthetics of PC laptops are getting better each day and nothing can beat them for raw power and (slightly more marginally) upgradeability.
Turkeyphant
Has anyone tried the new 12" powerbooks yet? I have the old one and it's a bit annoying that it gets quite hot after a while. I don't think the 15" and 17" models were nearly that hot. How about the new 12" one? Should I bother buying it or maybe switch to 15"?
Who modded this as offtopic?
I call BS on this; post a link to back yourself up.
robert
C3P0: "What do you mean I'm not wearing any clothes?"
I'd consider it once they come with more than one button.
Faster?
I own a G3/500 iBook and it's driving me crazy. It's absolutely horribly slow (mac osx 10.2, normal applications). No idea what the exact problem is - maybe ram (384mb). Anyway, it's really not much fun if you want to do more than web browsing, email, and maybe some basic text editing (forget word or any other full fledged app, though).
Um, why is it a big deal that Apple laptops make up 30% of new laptops? Doesn't that just mean that Intel makes up close to 70%? There's also a heck of a lot less competition in the Mac-based notebook market which allows them to get all of the Mac crowd, whereas there are a lot of PC manufacturers who have to battle for dominance.
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/03/08/2333238.s html?tid=180
next time do your own research
I think a big part of it is you have to hold the thing in your hands. Otherwise you can't really understand how deliciously Apple's computers - especially their laptops - are engineered. Other laptops in comparison feel like plastic pizza boxes with the heft of a concrete mason block and sport all the fit-and-finish of a 3rd-grade science project completed the night before.
Then there's OS X. Having a Unix OS specifically engineered to integrate perfeclty with your hardware is a huge thing. Once you get used to that it's very hard to go back. Hell, I still get giddy over the idea that I can run Office and Photoshop and other commercial apps on Unix at all.
Also on the software front there's Apple's end-to-end multimedia solutions: iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, etc. They make similar applications look like cheap knock-offs. And in some cases they are.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,57961,00.html
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
>Sometimes, software is worth it. OSX is that software.
How much time do you directly use the OS?
Wouldn't the main software you would be running be the applications on top of the OS?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
What's going on with the big one? It looks like the bottom part is made out of one block...
Actually it reminds me of old Star Trek props.
URL points to a non-existant server, and clicking the link gives you gay porn results on Google Images. I don't know who the hell modded it up, but they need to be shot.
I think this belongs with the story from a few days ago about typing with one hand.
Personally, I use the operating system every moment I'm using the computer. Saving a file to disk? going through the OS. Watching graphics? going through the OS. Using a GUI? going through the OS. Loading apps? organising files? listening to audio or using USB, Firewire, Paralell, Serial, PS2, PCI, AGP anything? All going through the OS. When trying to do something simple like using a firewire device, and it needs more work than just plugging a device into a port, or the OS falls over when I'm trying to do something with those apps, then the OS is an encumberment.
I guess not, now.
I'll second this. Right now I am typing on my HP notebook, which has 3 fans running to keep its Pentium 4 cool AS I TYPE, which is not precisely a processor-intensive task. My old iBook is silent, much lighter than this beast, and a joy to use, even though its waaaay slower than this HP. I also had to disassemble the iBook recently to perform a hard disk upgrade and I found the build quality to be amazing compared to Wintel notebooks. This HP feels solid enough, and looks decent, but the care and design that went into the Mac are incredible.
I had to buy a PC notebook because my school required it, but given a choice I'd have bought a Powerbook in a heartbeat (and I'd always been a PC fanboy that scorned at the Macheads before that little white iBook).
No
>the war on iraq a 15" powerbook was shipped in as the intel based note books couldn't handle opening the massive satellite recon images.
... er ...toughness in mind. Apple isn't. Two totally different purpose laptops, you can't say that its just because its Intel based.
You are compairing two wholely different laptops. An Apple vs. Toughbook.
The Toughbook is designed with
Now if it was an Apple and a normal Intel based with similar hw specs, then you would have a point.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
That's the new 15" powerbook. (the other is the older TiBook which was nice, but not quite as nice). That's part of the minimalist design people are really falling for.
What the original picture isn't showing is how damned fine they are to use as well as looking neat. You're certainly getting a well-refined all over package when you get a powerbook. I love mine.
At the entry price of the iBook the comparable PC-laptops struggle to provide anything close to the unified feeling of the thing, it's durability, it's looks, battery life and noise.
The entry PC-laptops advertise around 2 hours battery life. The entry iBook has almost 4 hours.
The decision is definitely not "already made for you".
Bear in mind that not all people care most for raw power in their laptop. I for instance love having a 12" notebook with almost 4 hours battery. The fact that it doesn't run the latest games or compile things as fast as a P4 is irrelevant for me.
And, when I talk about noise, I can tell you that the iBook when on battery literally makes no noise at all. You have to put your ear to it to be able to hear something at all.
All in all it is a great little notebook. It might not be for everyone, but it does cater for a quite large niche.
I think you pretty much nailed it with that description.
:)
I just got a Powermac G4 1.25GHz at work.. its almost confusing to have all the Linux/UNI utilities you are used to, combined with excellent hardware support, and the best GUI I have ever seen.
And as you say, the actual hardware itself its very well designed and looks superb.
I think those who own them, like them - those who stand outside and poke fun don't really know what they are missing. Put it this way.. as someone who has used Linux for about 6 years, I could quite easily see myself ditching in favour of an Apple.. just pricing up whether I can afford one
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Taking Apart the 12" and the 15 isnt as much of a bear as one might thing. Granted, its always exciting when someone does it at home and posts a site about it in japanese. However, the machines have been available in the U.S. for a while, and people have been breaking them for a while. What does this mean? All of us Portable Certified Techs that work for Apple Specialists have been taking the damned things apart for months. They're gorgeous on the outside, but a pain to crack open.
Figure this.
There's tons of screws, none of them magnetized, all of them small. Its like keeping track of ants.
The top case is flexible so there's the possibility of bending it or damaging it when removing or reinstalling it.
The innards arent really designed from a repair perspective. On the 12" powerbook, the retainer tabs for the optical drive are UNDER the logic board. So, to remove the cd-r, you much gut the machine.
There are about a dozen tiny phillips head screws that hold the keyboard in place on the 17" they are stamped metal, not polished and finished like all the other screws on the box. the bottom of the top case is unfinished as well. SO, the screws get turned into place by a machine, and then are almost unremovable after the fact. You go after them with a small phillips and they strip like butter. then you have to bust out the screw extractor and waste 20 minutes, only to have the one next to it do the same thing.
when the systems first shipped, the rubber feet were not classified as a seperate part. They were part of the bottom case. SO, if you lost your rubber feet, you would have had to order a new bottom case. Luckily, they fixed that
So, now that I'm done ranting, you all know what I found wrong with the new powerbooks. if anyone wants photos, I might be enticed to post them on www.modyourmac.com, but someone is still gonna have to ask.
Kudos [...] to the guys willing to unscrew the screws on a machine barely 5 days into warranty.
Can Apple (or any other manufacturer, for that matter) tell if the laptop has been opened before; possibly by someone who wasn't supposed to do that? Unless there are any labels over the screws, that you would need to break, how could they?
It looks a lot like the manual on how to hook up my VCR!
William
---- perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(
the topic is why buy macs. You're on another planet. Plus intel hardware is so generic, do you think there is much speed difference between 3.2ghz p4 models. guess what, there isn't, it's a fight just for a frame in quake 3.
I have to say it, but I owned one of those older powerbooks and find it a much more appealing machine than the newer ones. They actually have some design to them, and a silver keyboard just doesn't do it for me. The new one looks like a block of solid aloominum with a keyboard drawn on top.
I'll be keeping my TiBook thanks!
If I recall correctly that was about one intelligence officer who brought his own powerbook, and showed it off.
If the standard equipment were toughbooks, as noted here by someone, I know who is smiling after even a small sandstorm.
And why would one want to process 'massive satellite images' on a laptop? Even a mobile hq has shelters with workstations. It's not like these images make it to the front-line.
Undoubtly there were countless other 'normal' notebooks, which outperform these powerbooks without trouble if the benchmarks are correct.
Anyway, useless comment and completely off-topic...thank you
So "used" cases that used "unused" could break, though older compilers in essence used "unused" to mean both "used" and
Actually, that's an old 15" and a new 17". There's no 12" in that picture.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
Here's a quick translation of the Japanese captions on the four pages of pictures:
PAGE 1
* The smallest and easiest to obtain model, the PowerBook G4.
* Required tools: cross-slotted #00 screwdriver and 1/16" (1.5mm) hex wrench. An anti-static guard and a corner-beam (the small angled tool in the picture) are also good to have.
* First, remove the battery. It's the same as the iBook's battery.
* Unscrew the memory model's panel.
* Remove the memory card. Be careful of static electricity.
* Unscrew 8 screws from the side of the PowerBook.
* In order to remove the screws beneath the keyboard, remove the F1, F2, F11 and F12 keys. It's best to use tweezers to pry the keys out from the bottom.
* Peel off the seal concealing the screw.
* Unscrew the two screws holding the keyboard in place.
* The keyboard can now be removed, but be careful of the ribbon cable. The iBook and PowerBook G4/15 are the same in this regard.
PAGE 2
* Underneath the keyboard, top of case. The internals of the computer are still completely obscured, but there's an interesting magnet secured with electrical tape.
* Peel off the aluminum tape and remove the keyboard connector. As in previous models, the keyboard is not meant to be removed easily by the user.
* Remove the keyboard connector and the attached ribbon cable. Don't worry, the ribbon cable won't separate from the connector even if you do it wrong.
* Peel off aluminum tape from two places and remove three connectors. If you neglect to do this it's possible you might break some wires when removing the top of the case later.
* Remove screws in order: first, the 12 +-slotted hex screws. The screws are of different sizes, so be careful.
* The top and bottom sections of the case are fastened with claw latches on the front left and right corners. Slide a credit card through the gap between the top and bottom sections and carefully unfasten the latches.
* The latches securing the top and bottom sections. The picture shows the two places near the battery slot. The latches are made of resin and attached to the aluminum so they break easily.
* A picture with the top case removed. You can see something resembling the iBook DualUSB port apparatus. The tape securing the cables casts a bit of doubt on the product quality...
* Once disassembled to this point, it's possible to exchange the hard drive. It takes a while to get to this point, though.
* The hard disk is secured with two screws so exchanging it is easy. All you need to do is remove the left and right hard disk fasteners and you're done.
PAGE 3
* Made by Toshiba.
* The modem can be removed, but the cabling is a bit convoluted so just leave it as is.
* Remove the huge heatsink. The spring-loaded fastener screw makes it a bit of a struggle! Must have been a missed deadline in manufacturing...
* Heatsink and cooling fan. The cooling pipe is well-connected to the fan so the cooling efficiency should be really good.
* Now we've gotten to the motherboard. The wiring here is especially tricky and convoluted.
* Removing the frame from above the motherboard. Be careful of the differences in screw sizes.
* The frame is removed.
* The motherboard is attached to the bottom of the case by 3 screws.
* Remove the motherboard by pulling diagonally.
* Remove the cable coming from the back of the LCD from its connector.
PAGE 4
* The front of the motherboard.
* The back of the motherboard.
* The bottom of the case and the combo-drive. The construction here makes it very difficult to completely disassemble everything. Too bad...
* The power supply is on a separate circuit board. It fits the design of the motherboard well. One difference from the iBook is the four screws securing this board.
* The heatsink and fan are attached to the motherboard by five screws. The middle two are special spring-loaded screws.
* The power-saving mode circuit.
* The back of the top of the case. It's eas
404 eh? That's some nice proof there...
Why not buy a better pc notebook then? HP doesn't exactly make the best laptops. My thinkpad t40 is fairly fast (albeit not as fast as my older t30 because ibm decided not to go with the faster processors as they ramp up production), gets 8-10 hours per battery charge, is whisper quiet, and I can't even feel any heat off the thing.
I'm not crazy about the fact that the hard drive is directly under the trackpad - some people like to tap the pad instead of using the button. I can imagine that taping while the drive heads are reading/writing could turn out disastrous!
Then again, I'm sure they put some sort of safeguard in place to prevent that from happening (I hope).
Sound waves should be free!
delete the space between the "s" and the "html", dummy :P
8 .s html?tid=180
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/03/08/233323
There's no 17" powerbook in that picture. a 17" powerbook looks like this. Note the position of the power button and the proportions of the trackpad.
The aluminum powerbook in the comparison picture is definitely a new 15"
384Mb is a bit low for OSX, but can be pretty useful for many things. The problem with the iBook 500 is the abysmal bus speed. A G3 stuck on a 66MHz bus with limited cache. All iBooks afterwards had faster buses and better cache, as did the Gothic Black powerbook G3s.
Just one of those dud orphan models unfortunately. Nice if you're OK with using OS9 on it, but not a good OSX machine.
On the right is a Photoshopped old 15 (note the two-tone case edge and black keyboard) to make it the size of a 12.
The owner of the site specializes in making "vhacks": photoshopped dream Macs.
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
Well, spending time in the Finder is a lot more productive than in explorer.exe - a heinous program by any standard. "directly using the OS' also include the GUI and the widget set in Cocoa - which are excellent. And that passes through into the software available since the Insanely Great APIs and InterfaceBuilder make for a higher average quality of software available than for Windows. Remember, Apple's dev tools are better and faster for rapid prototyping than VisualBasic and use a C dialect. Any in-house development team working in OS X rather than using VisualWhatever2004 should be just as productive and put out software that's easier to use. All part of the OS - better software through OS design.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I don't know what that is on the right side, but it's definitely not a powerbook of any kind.
Some of us are getting tired of all the Apple astroturfing .
Mac zealots' satisfaction and happiness is directly proportional to the amount of money lining Steve Jobs' pockets
Then they're probably pretty happy!
As I look through the pictures of them taking those machines apart I can't help but think
"Stop! I'll give you my first born for that laptop! Why are you so cruel!"
Then I realize I have to get laid first...
He said dual blowers. Huh huh, that's pretty cool.
Whoa! Heh heh. Yeah.
Heck, I can get seven hours out of my ibook with the standard battery, at minimum screen brightness. (The joys of underclocking... I get to run a 2:1 bus ratio on my G3! What's such a big deal about doing it on a G5?)
I've had this sig for three days.
You got the perfect strip dance for geeks! Would you like a lap dance from an IBM Z990?
That's for sure. After having my iBook for year, I finally discovered it does have a fan. It kicked in during the heatwave (36degC outside) while compiling fink.
Never heard it before or since.
And some of us are getting tired of all the Apple bashing.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Go to Dell Support and you can get detailed instructions on how to take apart and service your laptop from the manufacturer. Apple, wheres' your service manual?
... for $2k. The comparable Apple is nearly $3k... and only has a 1ghz processor. While I realize the mhz rating isn't a direct comparison, a 2.6ghz intel is surely faster than a 1ghz ppc. I've seen that HP and Toshiba now have 3ghz 15 wide screen laptops for $2k.
As for everyone espousing the Apples price / performance... maybe for the low-end units, but not for the high-end "desktop replacement" models. Compare a 15" wide screen power book with others like the Dell i8500, or models from HP or Toshiba.
I got an Dell i8500 2.6ghz 15" wuxga+ (1920x1200)
Battery life is very good in the Dell, I can get about 3.5 to 4 hours, and thats with using wifi, which tends to use more power.
Plus Apple laptops currently make up 30% of new laptops, the closest competitor is dell at 24%
where are you getting this figure? the best i can find is 7%.
open up a g5 case... it's amazingly clean! it looks like a lab or a ferrari engine compartment. i love the lian-li cases, but these put everything else to shame. as with all things mac, ymmv.
Actually, that *might* be an intentional part of its design. Using the metal shell as a heat conductor probably helps save the innards from as much heat stress as you'd have otherwise. It may be unsettling as a user to get constant "feedback" on how hot the system is running - but I'd rather have that than a system burning up inside that feels fine on the outside.
Mirror #1: HTML PDF
Mirror #2: HTML PDF
Mirror #3: HTML PDF
384mb ram .. .bingo!
Go to crucial.com, and see what you can do about that.
"Battery life is where the ThinkPad T40 scores well. Even with the standard 10.8V, 4,400mAh Li-ion battery, it delivered just under four hours' life in desktop mode. Tweaking the power management settings with this battery should push battery life well over four hours; with the optional high-capacity 6,600mAh battery fitted, you can expect to get nearly seven hours."
0 14-3122 _7-20947059.html?tag=box
Or:
"a huge 10.8V, 6,600mAh battery that's so big it sticks out about an inch from the back of the notebook. "
"While our evaluation system included this big battery, most ThinkPad T40 configurations include a smaller, less expensive 10.8V, 4,400mAh battery."
The processor on this is very comparable to the powerbooks (1.6GHz Pentium-M and the price is above $2500. See here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/IBM_ThinkPad_T40/4
At that price you get a 15" Powerbook stuffed with all the goodies at a comparable speed. It also comes with 4,5 hours estimated battery life out of the box without having to resort to a huge battery sticking out.
The problem is that most people compare the powerbooks with the "el cheapo" PC-laptops. When you look at the laptops that actually can be compared (like the IBM you mentioned), the prices are very competitive.
...it was spelled Japanese. Note the capital, too.
MacRumors notes that Kodawrisan was able to identify the G4 as a 7447 (despite Apple hinting at it being a 7457). It seems the only difference between the two is that the 7457 supports an L3 cache (which was noticeably absent from the new PowerBooks and attributed to a new architecture)
OT but serious question here, is there any particular reason why you're using 3ds max?
If you're a freelancer then there are many different 3D packages that will run on Linux and OS X. As a professional, I'm sure you already know this but Maya being the closest off the top of my head with anything near 3ds max's capabilities, it will run on OS X and Linux(PPC-based linux not supported I don't believe though). Cinema 4D has great renders although colleagues that use it don't have near the animation capabilities of Maya or 3ds max. If you work for a company then there's probably not a whole lot you can do about the software package they've standardized on I'm assuming.
On a side note everything I've read about 3ds max pertaining to porting to another OS/arch is that it is closely tied to Windows and even if discreet wanted to port it to another platform it would take a complete overhaul. In other words, not anytime soon. That's all hearsay of course but I believe it. That's too bad, its a great piece of software on a crummy OS.
I guess I'm just curious as to why you're running max over the other packages. I don't do 3D now (tough industry to break into, you must be pretty damned good.) but I still play around with it occasionally.
I studied 3D animation and digital media in college and we were taught on x86 boxes running 3ds max on NT4 and SGI boxes running Maya. The school then switched to Win2k boxes for both. (They had standardized on Dell across campus, imagine that.) Irix was nice, I still daydream about it sometimes[:)] The school I attended treated 3ds max more as a beginner's 3D package and Maya as the be all end all of 3D packages. Turns out that is certainly not the case. Highend3d's Artists Gallery is certainly proof of that.
I found Maya's learning curve to be much smaller than 3ds max's but in retrospect I chalk that up to a much more capable professor. I've seen outstanding projects from both packages, that's for sure.
--
I'm a japanese living in europe. i get praised of my dick all the time for some reason. as a matter of fact, i just came home after being praised of my cock. oh, it's not my mom by the way. oh, boy does it feel good!
From what I can tell, doing routine repair on the 12" powerbook (such as replacing the hard drive) looks about a million times easier than working on the current iBook. What a nightmare that is. Believe me, I know.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Apple bashing? The story goes into panegyrics over how Apple squeezed so much into the 12" case, despite the fact that the 12" Powerbook is much thicker than many equivalent Windows notebooks. If anything Apple is getting a free ride around here.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Your iBook must not be very old. My iBook's battery died the other day, about a month out of warranty. When I say it died, I mean it died, if I unplug the power cable it conks out. Even if you get Applecare the battery isn't covered beyond a year. Think Apple knows something about the iBook's battery they aren't telling? Check out Apple's site for posts on that subject. My battery dying at ~one year is not an outlier...it's happening to a lot of people.
My iBook is about 16 months old (600MHz, purchased when the 700MHz came out). Yes, lithium ion batteries only last about 100-300 cycles, and apple's seem to be closer to 100. A new battery costs, what, $70? Buy one. I'm on my third. Even on a new battery, though, I never got more than 4:30 of battery life... maybe 5 hours, if I wasn't doing much and wireless was off. The problem is that the "reduced speed" option on the 600Mhz iBook lowers the clockspeed to 400Mhz, which is just silly; it doesn't make enough of a difference. 700/350 and 800/400 both make more sense, but I find (for my purposes) 600/200 is good enough. (BTW, overclocking is software-trivial also... but my iBook becomes unstable at 900MHz after about half an hour. It is stable at 800MHz for a make world, though; not bad for a 600MHz chip and a 40mm fan.)
I've had this sig for three days.
I think that no company will put a Li-ion battery under warrenty for more than a year, it's just the way the batteries work. I've read some stuff about how to properly take care of them (storing at 40% change not full charge, don't drain completely) and some of the descriptions sounded like it's magic that they could get the technology as stable as it is.
hello.. are you new to slashdot? because here fact has no place.. just makeup whatever the fuck you want and state it that way
And why would one want to process 'massive satellite images' on a laptop? Even a mobile hq has shelters with workstations. It's not like these images make it to the front-line.
I'm sure the PowerBook survived just fine for the very reason that you said... shelters with workstations. The guy is an intelligence officer. He's mostly likely behind the lines in some air conditioned/filtered shelter (gotta protect all that communications equipment, you know) where the PowerBook will be just fine in any sandstorm.
Bah! Packing square parts into square cases isn't all that interesting.
Putting square parts into dome shaped cases is more exciting.
Why is all the good step-by-step disassembly stuff in Japanese?
buy a mouse or grow the fuck up
1.18 inches thick is much thicker than equivilent Winbooks? Or maybe you meant the 1.1 inch thick models? Or maybe the 1 inch think ones?
Which apple powerbook is much thicker than many PC laptops?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I was wondering what was up with that Titanium. I knew the left one was a new 15, and I knew the right one was an old 15, but the sizes just didn't match (the heights are the same though). He took the speakers off of the sides of the Titanium to make it smaller.
Someone took apart a laptop. This is news? Shit, Extra Extra Read all about it: I took apart a stapler today. Does anyone want the digital pictures? And to make it worse, I uploaded them from a Windows box...ooooooo
Hello,
It is a good question.
1. I have been using 3dstudio and 3dstudio max professionaly (mainly as a teacher at various levels, currently university) for more then seven years.
2. I have Maya at my disposal, but I dont like the UI of it. And I dont have the time to spend 1-2 years to learn a whole new 3d-package from the ground up.
3. I am constantly nagging my connections at discreet that they have to port their software to other OS:s, but they are very slow on responding.
4. I am running maya on both OSX and Linux - but since I dont know much about it - it is mainly fiddling around with it.
5. I am not doing much 3d-work from a production basis, I mostly tell other people how they will solve their problems. As an educator.
I hope this answers your questions.
-L
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
If this was an Intel-based machine, no-one would give a toss...
Yeah, an external mouse is really convenient for a laptop.
I clearly stated that I was talking about the 12" Powerbook, I don't see how you could have missed it. Go over to cnet.com and check out the thin-and-light or ultraportable notebook pages and you will find that many if not most of those machines are thinner than 1.18".
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
You will also find a good portion of them lack CD ROM drives. Just about anything thinner than 1 inch does not have a CD ROM drive, and most of the ones I saw were about 1.0 - 1.3 inches thick. So no, the Powerbook is not "much thicker than many equivilents"
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You do have a point, if you want an integrated CD-ROM then you're pretty much at 1" and up. That's your only option from Apple, though. You can get a Wintel laptop with a CD-ROM at 1", or without one even thinner, it's your choice.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
They issue the T40 standard at my university this year and while the battery does indeed stick out the back, it is far from huge. Compared with my T20, the T40 is much thinner and maybe 1/3" longer because of the battery.
" I have Maya at my disposal, but I dont like the UI of it. And I dont have the time to spend 1-2 years to learn a whole new 3d-package from the ground up."
Actually, if you understand the fundamentals of what's going on in Max, learning Maya wouldn't take that long. I'd personally choose Maya over the two. It's a much stronger app in the ways that are important.
Well,
It is not that I don't understand how it works. The problem is howto get to the function I am looking for. The UI of Maya and I, dont play well with each other.
-L
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
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 13 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
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 problem is howto get to the function I am looking for. The UI of Maya and I, dont play well with each other."
Yes, you are right, but you'll have to deal with that problem sooner or later. If the 3D industry doesn't become dominated by Linux, then sooner or later MAX will change it's UI dramatically.
I'm a Lightwave zealot, but I'm finding myself wondering if I should start getting to know Maya soon. I don't expect it to take a year or two to learn, though. I think I'd be productive in a month or so.
Well, it is not like if you use maya you will automaticlly get perfect 3d content. Still MAX is by far the most widely used software for 3danimation and modelling. Especially for industrial visualization and games. Maya has a big name due to clever marketing. It is not like ILM, Weta, Rythm & Hues, Digital Domain etc. etc. - Use of the shelf Maya only. They use a WIDE selection of software, and alot of that is in house made software.
And if you are good and talented, any software package of. LW, 3dsmax, maya, softimage, will produce the result you are after. Especially since alot of different renderers are now availible for many or all of them packages. So basicly it doesn't matter what program you use to push around the polygons. IT is still your talent that put up the barrier.
-L
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
Thank god we now have iChat AV...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
That's about the lamest thing you can post on /.
...
Sorry, that sounds trollish, but it's true. You're talking to a crowd that loves their OS (whichever, take your pick).
And anywho, you use your OS all the time. A lot of your application's stability comes from the OS, especially when you use disk/ram/whatever hardware intensive soft. And a lot of functionality comes built in thanks to the OS - at least it does with OS X
I can dig Linux or even Win2000 adepts. When you get what you want from your OS, and especially in this crowd, that's worth a lot.
What I can't understand is the amount of ass-pounding OS X users get from that same crowd. OK, if it doesn't run your favorite distro, or if you think the whole world should run their apps through X (nevermind fonts, printing, blahblahblah), but it's a great OS with some excellent software thrown "for free" in the package - and that package happens to be some pretty cool hardware.
Yeah yeah cool aid, Steve Jobs boy whatever, but I'm sure I have saved huge amounts of money over all the years I've used macs. And I'm totally cool with my OS, it keeps getting better.
I think, therefore I am...I think.