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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!
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 -
Plus Apple laptops currently make up 30% of new laptops, the closest competitor is dell at 24%.
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.
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).
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
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
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.
The keyboards for 15" TiBooks are replaceable. There was a rather odd shaped one out only a few months ago - in a shalsdot story even. I don't know of any others, but they're there.
The nonremovable keyboard in the new 15" is only nonremovable from the outside. Once you're in it's screwed down into the chassis and can be removed as easily as a screwdriver can be wielded. It's this screwing down that gives it its intense stiffness, which makes it a DREAM to type on compared to any other laptop I've used.
Not quite a nonremovable keyboard - just a harder-to-remove keyboards, and probably not a consumer-swappable part like it used to be.
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.
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
Remember that the hottest part of the 12" is not where the processor is (top center, near the screen), but where the left palm rests and the underside of it. This is exactly where the HD is, and is usually the source of the heat. If they've started using cooler HD's, then I'd be asking if the thing ran cooler, not the proc.
BTW, I did price another i8500 bundle, and the best I could do was 2085 with the 2.6GHz and WUXGA option (I didn't see any WUXGA+ option either). Of course that was with 256MB of RAM, 30GB hard drive, DVD drive (no CD-RW, no DVD-R), no bluetooth, and a 32MB ATI Radeon 9000.
So have you really done the comparisons? Damn it, I think I've been trolled.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye