My CTX AMD K6-300/128 MB RAM/3 GB drive laptop is obviously at the end of its life. I was in the “shopping” process for a laptop for 2 months now, and I considered a number of PC laptops, including the Compaq Presario 1525US. At the end, I decided to get the new 12″ Powerbook, came in last week, and I am since then using it as my primary machine. Here is what I think about it.
The 12″ Powerbook is a slick machine. It is really a beautifully constructed computer. It gives the feeling that is more natural and more solid than the iBook or the plastic PC laptops. The Apple logo on the back of the LCD screen is lit by the LCD’s backlight and it looks at least cool, especially at night.
The machine features Bluetooth support (connect to other Bluetooth Macs or Bluetooth wireless devices like mobile phones, PDAs, keyboards etc), however, I have no such devices over here, so I couldn’t test it. The 12″ Powerbook comes with 802.11g support, but the place where I bought the laptop didn’t have an Airport Extreme card on stock, so I will have to wait for it as well. The extra 512 MB DDR RAM I ordered didn’t make it either, so I used the laptop with 256 MB RAM, but I did not experience any slowdowns because of it. For normal/web usage, the 256 MB seem acceptable with the pre-installed Mac OS X 10.2.3.
The laptop also comes with a normal ethernet port (no gigabit), modem, one firewire port, 2 USB 1.1 ports, a VGA out for mirroring or dual display, line in for audio, headphone jack, a built-in microphone, stereo speakers, 40 GB 4200 RPM ATA-100 drive (60 GB 4200 RPM drive is optional), a CD-RW/DVD combo drive (Superdrive is optional) and a 12.1″ 1024×768 TFT LCD screen. The CPU speed is 867 MHz and there is 256 KB L2 cache.
Click for a larger image view
The good
I am in love with its keyboard. I believe that Powerbook’s best and finest feature in this model is the keyboard. It just feels great and it “blends” well with the rest of the design. I am generally “difficult” with laptop keyboards, but this one is the first laptop keyboard I worked with that is really easy to get along. My only gripe would be that the arrow keys are half size, so playing pac-man or a fast Tetris game is almost impossible…
Speed is good. It feels much-much faster than my G4 Cube 450 MHz, 1 MB L2 cache and 448 MB SDRAM (which equals or is even better than the fastest G3 iBook selling today at 800 MHz). Running the XBench benchmark, it reaches overall rating from 72 to 75 points, while my Cube ranges from 52 to 56. Yippee, I can resize Safari and even IE now with not much lag. OmniWeb and other Cocoa apps are still slow to resize or scroll though. However, the overall speed is definitely a big improvement over the Cube and surely it will be over the people who currently have iBooks or classic iMacs.
The sound coming out of the speakers is pretty good quality. Not as good as in the 17″ model, neither as good as the one found in most Compaq laptops, but still, not bad at all. Fully acceptable playing my favorite Eurodance radio station… 😉
The laptop is pretty light, not the lightest you can find in its category, but fully portable and easy to carry around. The battery can keep your laptop alive for 3,5
+ hours. Recharging it takes about an hour or so. All the ports are located on the left side of the laptop, and not on the back. The reason for this is because the LCD screen lays behind and down, similarly to how iBook does it. The only part that is located at the back are the speakers. On the right hand side you will find a slot loading CD-RW/DVD combo drive, and I tried burning CDs and playing DVDs. The drive works well.
One thing I like about the Apple laptops is the fact that when you close down the LCD screen and the machine goes to sleep, and then you open it back up, you are up and running on your machine in less than 2 seconds. On PCs, depending on the laptop and the OS installed, it can take up to 8-10 seconds.
As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t received yet the Airport Extreme card, but this laptop can be twice as sexy after fully using it at home with our wireless network.
The installation of OSX 10.2.3 comes with a few extra software, like a fax app, QuickBooks, OmniOutliner and OnniGraffle, GraphicConverter, Art Director’s Toolkit and the demos of MS Office X and FileMaker 6. To be honest, except the graphic converter app, I don’t see me using any of the rest extra software offered there… And I had to install the developer tools manually (the package was in the app dir, but it is not pre-installed).
Classic support is also there, so you can run most OS 9 applications via your OSX, but you can’t install and boot to pure OS 9 with this laptop. I find this acceptable, it is a strategic move to try to push your customers to OSX.
I also installed the Remote Desktop Connection and it works beautifully. I can log in to my WinXP PRO machine and check out my email there and that works great. I tried VNC, but it was unacceptably slow, so using this Microsoft app really works great for me and makes the “transition” to my Powerbook era, easier. 🙂
The Baaad….
Hmm… well, this is a lovely little laptop, but there are certainly a few points which I dislike and they are beyond the “get used to it” or “deal with it” realm.
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. As other reviewers have already said and people on the forums, the Powerbook 12″ just gets too hot. It is cool to be fanless, but if I had to choose between fan noise and my lap or my hands becoming roasted, I prefer the fan noise. Yes, other laptops also get hot, but this laptop is among the hottest around. This issue should be resolved in newer models, or I don’t see me buying a new Apple laptop in a few years from now.
Number 2 issue is the quality of the LCD screen. With great sadness I will have to say that the LCD screen used in *this* Powerbook model, is crap. I know that the older models and the current 15″ Powerbook’s LCD model has _great_ quality, same as the LCDs found on the Sharp/Sony/IBM laptops, but the one used for this Powerbook is the same as the one found on the 15″ iMac and the iBooks. I tried adjusting gamma and color, to no avail. After 1-2 hours using this machine, my eyes hurt, the horizontal lines of the Aqua windows are way too visible, fonts look worse and more blurry as they do on most Linuxes *because* of this LCD and the lack of Clear Type, LCD is not viewable from up or down but only when you are directly looking at it in perfect line, and worst of all, when scrolling on a web page that has many colors and the LCD has to adjust quickly from black to white colorspaces, the LCD is just “slow”. Motion blur in all its glory.
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)). The new 12″ Powerbook comes with the cheap one. However, I can live with it I guess, as I find the heat issue even more annoying than the LCD quality. However, I did mention my old AMD K6 laptop in the beginning of the article, and the irony is that this 1998 laptop has a fantastic 13.3″ LCD screen (also at the same resolution), and it’s waaay better quality-wise from the Powerbooks’ in year 2003. I guess, they don’t make LCDs as they used to (yes, that was sarcasm).
Many will be unhappy with the fact that the resolution is at 1024×768, but for a truly mobile solution, that resolution is acceptable. There is some space around the LCD, so they could use something like 12.8″ and use 1152×864 resolution, without making the Powerbook bigger. Good quality LCDs used on today’s SONY or Sharp or Fujitsu PC laptops are able to do 1280×768 at 10.4″, so having 1152×864 on the 12.1″ or 12.8″ screen would be a no-issue. But instead of asking for more resolution, I would first ask for a better quality screen, as I explained above.
The hard drive the 12″ laptop uses is not among the ones someone would consider fast hard disk for laptops. Depending on your luck, you will end up with either a Fujitsu or a Toshiba 4200 RPM drive (Apple uses both). Mine is a Fujitsu one, but other than the slow RPM and seek time, it works well. However, I find the booting of the OS on the Powerbook to be a bit slow. My Cube has a slower hard drive overall (but faster seek) and slower CPU, but it comes up faster than the Powerbook.
There is no DVI port, nor PCMCIA or PC card/bus port on the Powerbook, and in order to install the new Airport Extreme card, you will need to remove the battery and make a “real” hardware installation. The memory placeholder is more reachable and easier to deal with. However, in order to open the placeholder to put the ram in it, it requires a Philips 00 screwdriver, instead of the “clip-in” thingie you usually find on PC laptops.
Another thing I find quite annoying is the the touch pad. It is not fast enough. I have the acceleration to maximum and still, in order to go from 0,768 to the 1024,0 screen co-ordinates, by using normal speed on my finger, it requires two “trips”. If I do the trip fast with my finger, it can go to these co-ordinates in one trip, but in that case it is quite useless, because you lose in precision. Mind you, this is not a hardware problem, it is more of a mouse driver problem on OSX, but the fact that the problem exists, it makes it a laptop issue too. I find the mouse speed on my Cube slow as well.
The other day I was boasting in the forums that I have never crashed OSX on my Cube (I had crashed it because of hardware issue, but never because OSX has failed). Well, in two days since I got the Powerbook via FedEx, I managed to crash the powerbook, twice. Here is how:
The first time you turn on your Powerbook, you are asked to input information about yourself, register the machine, put in the IP addresses and send the info over at Apple.com. I did so, the machine connected to their servers, did the registration fine, and then when it was saying “Disconnecting…” the machine just wouldn’t respond. I left it there for a while, but it wouldn’t come out of that screen. Please note that this screen comes up _before_ Finder and the OSX desktop has loaded. So, no matter what you try to kill the crashed app, it wouldn’t work. OSX was not responding so I had to hard reset it.
The second time was on Saturday night. A few friends were over here for dinner (and a lot of you ‘know’ them, but I won’t tell who they are 😉 and we wanted to do an FTP transfer from my Cube, to the Powerbook. We FTP’ed in successfully, we copied over files that were in the realm of 200 MB each, and then we started chatting between us. The FTP was still going on, and after a few minutes, suddenly the machine gone to sleep (I use the default time settings for power energy). When we tried to bring the machine up, it wouldn’t come up. Black screen, and nothing else. The caps lock was still working, so the machine was not completely crashed, but it wouldn’t awake no matter what. So, we had to hard reset it again and then we got over the painful fsck time to clean up the filesystem (no, don’t ask me to put the journaling on, it is still experiemental).
And I found a bug too. I would call it a “stupid” bug, because it mostly looks and feels like a by-product of Quartz Extreme more than a “real” bug. So, when entering full screen to play the “Office Space” movie with the DVD Player, the movie would lose frames. On windowing mode, it plays perfectly. But on fullscreen mode it would lose its smoothness. It would require you to look hard to see the problem, but the problem is there. And then, I thought: “that can’t be right. Even my slower Cube can play DVDs in fullscreen with absolutely no problem, so this has to be a bug”. I opened the CPU utilization application which is just a small window “always on top”, and I put it on top of the fullscreen DVD playback in order to observe the CPU utilization. CPU was only at 1/3, so the CPU was not the problem. BUT, for the time the little CPU window was on top of the DVD fullscreen playback, the movie would NOT lose frames! Take that little window away, and the movie would start become smoothless again! *Normally* you would expect the exact opposite to happen, because the CPU would need to calculate and render the parts of the window that are covered or not covered. In the case I experienced, it was the opposite. That really looks like a bug, and I hope that the DVD programmers over at Apple are reading this. Update: Others seem to have the same problem.
A gripe I have with the memory is that it comes with 128 MB built-in and 128 MB on the memory placeholder, by default. I don’t get that. Why didn’t they include that 256 MB as built-in so it could free up the memory placeholder for the user to add a 512 module and go up to 768 MB of max RAM? The way it is now, the max is at 640 MB and after you upgrade, you end up with an unused 128 MB DIMM that you can’t use anywhere else! The price difference for Apple doing that would be really minimal, and the customers would be happier and this Powerbook would sound more powerful. If 640 MB is ok for you though, well, fair enough. But Mac OS X is a Unix, which means that it can utilize well any extra RAM, so as much RAM one can put in, the better. Personally, I want this machine maxed-out in RAM and I can’t wait for my 512 MB DIMM to arrive.
Last point is the graphics performance. The machine includes a 32 MB GeForce4 MX 420. The 420 is the slow GeForce 4 model. And you can read here and here about what Carmack suggests about the GeForce 4 MX. Yes, for a laptop, this card is a _great_ solution, but this is a Powerbook we are talking about. And the 420 model is significantly slower than the 440 model found on the higher end laptops. That’s bad of course if you want to play games, but if you are not interested in games, the included 420 model is good enough. Speaking for myself, I don’t mind it having the 420 instead of the 440, but having the Radeon 9000 or the 440 could also be good.
Conclusion
The new 12″ Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it. This is exactly how I feel about it. It is crippled when compared to its big brother Powerbooks:
* Max of only 640 RAM while the limit could easily be 768 MB (the other Powerbooks max out at 1 GB). Plus, it could use PC2700 RAM instead of PC2100, but on the other hand it wouldn’t make much of a difference cause of other front side bus issues (and it would be more expensive).
* Terrible LCD screen quality
* No L3 cache, while traditionally Powerbooks have 1 MB (which greatly improves overall speed)
* No gigabit ethernet (not that I care about this one much really)
* Slow-ish graphics card
If Apple was to take down their G3-based products and rename the 12″ Powerbook as an iBook, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
So, this was a review negative you say? I say not necessarily. I am obliged to write about my experiences and any problems that I came across. It is an $1800+ purchase at the end of the day, it is not like buying chocolate from the store in the corner (except if you are Steve Jobs ;-).
If you want a cheaper Powerbook to boast to your friends, or you want a fast-ish Powerbook that is able to do its job fine and be small and really be portable, this is the Mac laptop you were looking for. And no matter what, don’t buy an iBook, shave off the extra $500-600 and get this laptop instead. But don’t except it to be as “wonderful” or as “glamorous” or as “full-featured” as the other Powerbooks. But it would be glamorous, and fast, and wonderful and full-featured compared to the iBooks. Yes, this is the cheapest Powerbook ever, but have you considered what was crippled in order to pay this “better” price? And speaking for myself, I don’t like crippling my own eyes just to pay $300 less. I expect a certain (LCD) quality from a piece of hardware that bares the name “Powerbook”.
This might even be a new strategy at Apple, to use cheaper parts or less features in order to compete with their PC competitors. I don’t know. All I know is that I want a better LCD screen for the $2000 I paid Apple for, especially when older laptops were better in this regard. I see it as a backwards step, *or* as a way to blend between the two product ranges of the Powerbook and the iBook.
For many people this machine should be able to completely replace their desktops, however, if Apple was more careful and they included/fixed the issues we are mentioning in the “baaad” section, this could be THE laptop you were always dreaming of.
Don’t misunderstand me though, I like the Powerbook. It is already a best-seller for Apple and I haven’t make up my mind for purchasing it. I use it all the time and it is solid and it does what you expect and its keyboard is great. But it could [easily] be better for the $2,000 it cost us.
now why you ask apple has such high prices for such a bad system? A thinkpad with Win2k beats this thing with a cool cpu and a beautiful LCD, and no stupid scratchpad either
I was seriously thinking about one of these . . . but not anymore. Thanks for a fair and thorough review! As much as I want OS X, I think Windows XP Pro will have to do.
The FTP was still going on, and after a few minutes, suddenly the machine gone to sleep (I use the default time settings for power energy). When we tried to bring the machine up, it wouldn’t come up. Black screen, and nothing else. The caps lock was still working, so the machine was not completely crashed, but it wouldn’t awake no matter what. So, we had to hard reset it again and then we got over the painful fsck time to clean up the filesystem (no, don’t ask me to put the journaling on, it is still experiemental).
I experienced problems like this, on repeated occasions. Most of them can be traced to the fix_prebinding bug which has been been plaguing my OS X experience ever since I installed Jaguar.
I have a habit of manually turning off my iBook’s LCD backlight when I’m not using it (by holding down F1 until the backlight turns off) Sometimes I’ll do this, leave for several hours, and come back and try to bring the backlight back up, only to find the system completely unresponsive. One night I came back, attempted to turn it back on, found it unresponsive, and so I went to sleep.
The next morning, I hit a random key on the iBook, and found the iBook’s backlight had come back on. However, the system was completely frozen. The spinning beach ball was no longer spinning, but locked in the middle of the screen. Up in the corner the clock had locked at the exact time I had tried to bring the backlight up the night before.
I looked in /Libary/Logs/CrashReporter, and sure enough there was a new crash listed in fix_prebinding.crash.log, at the exact time I had tried to bring the backlight up, and one which had occured earlier that night.
The worst I’ve seen from a fix_prebinding crash cascade was being completely unable to even power up my iBook again. I was forced to unplug my iBook, remove the battery, plug it in without a battery, power it back up, power it off, then replace the battery.
Apple still contends that fix_prebinding related bugs aren’t a bug in their software, but bugs in the software of 3rd party vendors whose software fix_prebinding is being ran on. This attitude is what frustrates me more than anything else, and I have been asking on the forums for a way to disable fix_prebinding if nothing else, and haven’t received a response.
Eugenia, I suggest you look in /Library/Logs/CrashReporter and see if you can find a fix_prebinding crash which occured when you were transferring that file. At least then you can verify if that was the cause of the problem.
on the Washington Post review.
I do have airport extreme in it, and I cover that in my review.
Eugenia,
You seem pretty let down with the tiBook. When is it going on eBay? I know there are few frequenters of OSNews that would happily take it off your disappointed hands (including me) :p
I do not believe in auctions.
I need a laptop, I got this one (and that was my decision in the first place), so I will go all the way with it, until a hardware failure do us apart.
Bashing my widdle iBook? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess, or something like that…
Anyway, I really must give a good lcd screen a try, my ibooks screen completely turned me off of CRTs, and I cannot imagine what a tibooks screen would be like. 14″ ibook screen here, and I love it.
I want them to update the 15″ tibook product line to have bluetooth, airport extreme, ddr, etc. But since Im not upgrading for at least a year I can wait. I just cannot come to drool over the 17″ or 12″ powerbooks, too small or too big for me =/
couple things about the article:
aren’t the 12″ and 17″ powerbooks made out of aluminum?
and costed isn’t a word, you meant just cost at the end there.
I have Red Hat running on two machines at home, and the fonts look a million times better on my 12″ powerbook than they ever have on any version of Linux I’ve tried.
I’ve also crashed my 12″ a couple of times when I was playing with beta IP over Firewire drivers. After I removed them….I haven’t rebooted in days.
If anyone was discouraged by this article, I’d strongly reccomend reading a few more reviews before giving up. This is my first mac and I can’t stand using my XP or Linux machines at all anymore.
p.s. Isn’t the 12″ powerbook made from aluminum, and not titanium?
Completely subjective review. Sounds like a big fat case of buyers remorse. Don’t buy something if you can quantify so many things you think are bad about it. Don’t buy and then bitch when it doesn’t work out. It’s like retail trolling.
Holly crap Bascule, you are (almost) right. That was the problem:
Date/Time: 2003-02-08 23:30:01 -0800
OS Version: 10.2.3 (Build 6H28)
Host: Eugenia-Loli-Querus-Computer.local.
Command: update_prebinding
PID: 499
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000e84
You misunderstood. YES, OSX’s font rendering is better, BUT with this LCD screen that the Powerbook includes, makes everything ugly and blurry. Plus the fact that OSX does not have something like Clear Type, degrades it even more.
>Completely subjective review.
I wrote my experiences with it as fairly and as sincere as I could. I wanted to have this machine, I have NOT felt remorse about it. But the screen could and SHOULD have been better. And the heat issue is something you can’t really know before you actually use it.
I have heard alot of bad things about the 12 inch from buyers, Apple should pay attention to such reviews and try to fix it.
There is a fan in the 12″ PB. It came on when it got really hot (and I mean really hot). It cooled it off pretty effectively.
I think you need to keep the price in mind. Before Macworld, I was on the verge of buying the tibook with the slot loading DVD burner (well, I was resisting and waiting). That was I think 2999 (maybe 2799). OK, so along comes this nice 12 incher for 1999 with the slot loading DVD burner. And I always wanted a G4 ibook anyways because of the smaller size. Also, Airport reception fixed. And bluetooth. SOLD
Like Eugenia said, it’s just a hopped up iBook with a G4 for just a little more dough — except she left out the DVD burner availability. That was key for me, because even though it’s not a super fast burner, I can now use iDVD and I couldn’t before.
Does anyone know if 17″ has the better LCD screen than 12″? I wouldn’t mind to buy 17″ sometime, when I have the enough money. But, since it doesn’t has the quaility enough to lay your eyes on the 12″ LCD longer enough.
Anyway, great review, Eugenia!
I’m looking at this page on my XP machine and my Powerbook right now, and I honestly can’t see anything ugly about the fonts on my tiny little 12″ screen.
I have noticed a few pages where the fonts were less than perfect, but I would never call these “ugly.” With your background in GUI design, Eugenia, maybe these imperfections were more significant to you than to most people?
Ryan, please _read_ the prevous comment of mine where I explain where the problem is coming from. It is mostly because of the LCD and the lack of Clear Type. My Cube and its CRT monitor show the OSX fonts *fine*.
BSDRocks, no idea about the 17″ LCD, because I have not seen it. _However_ Steve Jobs said in the keynote that the 17″ Powerbook is using the same LCD as the one used in the 17″ iMac, so if this the case, I would advocate to get the 15″ Powerbook instead…
im glad u love your new laptop
cause love is all u need.
Mandrake Linux, Linux for the people.
In the review, Eugenia stated that the 12″ had a poor quality LCD screen. Does anyone know if this affects the 17″ model as well? I really do have my heart set on getting the 17″ model sometime next year, but if it has a poor LCD quality then there is no way i am going to pay $3,299 (USD) for it… I guess if it does, I’ll go buy a Toshiba and put a *nix on it..
The fonts on my Redhat 8 Dell Inspiron look wonderful at 1600×1200. Maybe I’m missing out on the Powerbooks but it seems like I got a good deal at $1524 w/ the ATI Mobility 7500 64MB DDR video card, P-IIIM 1 ghz, 512mb memory, and a 40 gig hard drive. I wish my Dell was thinner and better constructed but the features and price won me over. I wonder if OSX will continue to be such a selling point as Linux gets better?
I didn’t catch your latest post, Eugenia. Sorry about that.
Made new agreement with LG-Philips. This may lead to same 20″ Widescreens for PC’s now.
http://www.envestco2.com/macwhispers/0000022.html
Yes, OS X will continue to be such a selling point, even as Linux gets better.
Linux is a geek OS. When they are preparing it for the desktop, it is for the ENTERPRISE DESKTOP, not the HOME DESKTOP.
People complain about the application support on the Mac, on Linux it is even worse. No, we are not talking about the thousands of unix applications (mostly open source), which the average user has *ZERO* need or use for. Not to mention that so many of these applications are ‘written for the authors’ as has been explained oh so clearly during the usability arguments on this board amoung others.
The primary relevence that Linux has is for replacing low end servers currently running on big iron or MSFT. The Linux Zealots keep trying to insist that it’s a much bigger deal than it really is. The trade mags do the same, just cause they are out of crap to write about.
Cheers!
– Kelson
I dunno, I bought an iBook a few months ago (700MHz, 12″ screen, CD-RW/DVD, 128MB built-in) and I’ve found the LCD to be great. Maybe I’m just not as picky as eugenia, but I definitely find this LCD to be on par with, if not better than, the LCD in my previous Dell D266XT (also a 1998 machine). I slapped in an extra 256MB in my iBook and I’m not pretty satisfied with the performance. Chimera is sometimes sluggish scrolling really complicated pages, but usually it’s fine. Loading apps is quick enough, and even Quake3 performance is satisfactory. Not blazing fast, but > 40fps at 800×600, which is good enough for me. It’s an ATi 16MB something-or-other. Since I have a Dual Athlon Linux desktop to crunch to big stuff, this iBook has complemented it nicely. It’s nice and small and was light on the pocketbook too.
Thanks!
Correct me if I am wrong, but arent faster hard drives going to take more power to operate? If true then it seems like a wise choice to go for power conservation over speed when using a portable computer with a limited amount of battery. Otherwise it seemed like a fairly honest review.
Don’t know if you’ve changed this option Eugenia, but under System Preferences, there is the General prefpane. In it there is a option for Font smoothing style that has four options (Standard, Light, Medium, and Strong). By default, OS X has it set to Standard – Best for CRT. Try changing it to Medium – Best for LCD and see if that helps any.
I think it’s a good idea, personally, that you have to remove the battery to insert the AirPort Extreme card. Prevents any power from running while you’re inserting a Mini-PCI device in the system (I think the form factor is Mini-PCI). And having installed one in my work Al PowerBook 12″, I think it’s easier than installing a regular AirPort card in an iBook unit.
I just changed it to Medium, but I didn’t see anything different. Do I have to reboot for the changes to take effect?
Eugenia:
Did you try altering the font smoothing preferences of OS X in the General preferences panel? That may (and I emphasize may) improve the font appearance for you.
Heat does really become an issue if you are doing processor intensive stuff with the processor set to full. Just doing simple browsing, word processing the system is nice and cool. Compiling a bunch of code for a while and the thing is a furnace.
I had the same “crash” Eugenia referred to… the disconnecting crash. This was after I wiped the machine to begin to make it mine. I’m a bit apprehensive to call it a crash since the mouse still worked and the stupid water drop kept going back and forth….
As for the screen, I find it better then the ibook’s. For some reason, the font smooting comes preset for “best for crt”… duh. I changed it to best for flat-panel and also changed the font smoothing size to 10 (from 8). This leaves the print very nice. The viewing angle issue does kinda stink though.
The performance is very nice. Much, much faster then the 800 ibook. I don’t have xbench scores for it since most of the time with it has been spent building my tool sets and personal niceties. However, the interface is nice and snappy (I too would like to see the mouse move a bit quicker though), code compiles nice and fast, music encodes really quick.
The build quality is just amazing… really unmatched by anything I have seen in the market place. The system is more “machined” then assembled.
The keyboard is also simply amazing.
I have the airport extreme installed, although it is only running at b speeds. The range does appear to be a bit less then the ibook, although I have not done side by side stumblers, there are area’s in the house where the ibook showed full lines while the pb would drop a line.
I think the ibook does have better battery life then the pb…. I really haven’t seen the indicator tell me that I have more then 3.8 hours. It’s probably a bit early to tell as it really hasn’t been pushed with the exception of the recommended drain.
It would be nice to have the 1mb L3 and it would also be nice not risk sterilizing myself if I’m compiling a large app with the thing on my lap. On the other hand, I’d buy it all over again, in a heart-beat.
an I book is still cheaper, my screen is great (ibook 600Mhz), and you save a cool grand! Get a desktop for the heavy lifting (an eMac, used dual 867) and plug all your scanners and junk into the stationary unit. All this for the same price of the powerbook..
I liked the review, maybe a little buyers remorse but for two g’s you’re gonna want to be wowed.
I just rebooted, same problem, in fact, I could say that fonts look even worse. I am telling you, it is not the font rendering that is in fault, it is the LCD screen quality.
Now, I can see a bit red colors around the fonts, and this is *normal* for the sub-pixel rendering, however, for some reason, this just doesn’t play well with this LCD screen. The red color should not have been visible.
I just ordered a 12″ PowerBook yesterday, to replace my iBook (500 MHz). I like the iBook’s LCD display and I also liked the 12″ display when I tried one in a store last week. I always found it bright & easy to read with good color balance. I also didn’t find the heat any worse than my iBook.
What is Clear Type? Is it more then just Subpixel rendering? Because OSX has subpixel rendering. If you have the developer tools installed you can use the Pixie program to zoom in on the text and have a look.
cks, don’t buy an ibook. They are fine machines, but they are slow as I showed on the article. And G3s will soon enough be history for Apple, so you really want to have a CPU that the OS is optimized for. Better get this 12″ Powerbook rather than an iBook.
Thank for the review Eugenia, I really the way you tackle some issues other users don’t even notice until you mention it. I also have to tell people who are discouraged by this review to look at it this way. Eugenia has very particular taste. Give her new IBM notebook and she would kill it in her review, she is just like that and that’s what the people like who visit the site all the time. Reviews are always subjective and even though they try to be as objective as possible some preconceived knowledge would always stay in the way of it. She like some things that others don’t care, she doesn’t care for other things that we care etc.
I know one thing about Apple notebooks, usually first impressions are not that positive at all, but the machine grows on you. I could discover some very cool things even after one year of continuous usage.
About the fonts:
I use strong for my LCD. Sometime changes doesn’t not appear visible when you change that, but mostly after you restart app or even changing resolutions back and forth.
I’ve never seen any red around any fonts on my 12″ powerbook. I changed the font smoothing to medium and limited it to size 8 the day I got it and I’m telling you that in comparison to every other machine in my house, these fonts look just as good, if not better in some cases.
I know that you are blaming the problem on the hardware but I just don’t see it. Everything looks a-okay to me.
To see the red color, put font prefernces on MEDIUM and leave the rest on defaults (8 size for AA) and install and run the Fire application (fire.sf.net), which utilizes font size 9. Now check out the non-bold fonts on Fire (like the buddy names for example after you load an IM service for you), and you will see the fed color around the black-colored fonts of your buddies. You might to lightly turn a bit your LCD screen, but they are easily visible.
No, there is nothing wrong with my LCD btw.
I can’t speak about the 12″ display myself too much as I have just seen it in the Apple store here in NY. However my friend (who is a partner in a PC store in Staten Island, went with me to the store because he is planning to buy the 12″ Powerbook. He thought that the display was fine. He also thought that the cursor movement was too FAST at the preset speed (all the way up), and when I reset it to midway, he was satisfied.
As far as the 20″ is concerned, I don’t know what you are talking about, as it has been very well received in the professional photo. and graphics arts community, in which I work. The display seems to be felt as being better than the 22″, which is very popular.
People seem to “hear” things which aren’t always true. That’s why the rumors sites are popular.
There is a good reason why different resolutions are used on different sized screens. I’ve seen the 1600×1200 16″ screens, and except for a few purposes, the screens are too small for the resolutions used. Good for bragging, but too hard on the eyes for most uses, especially since changing the resolution is not really a good option. It used to be that 1024×768 was used for 17″ screens.
I thought all new machines manufactured since the last couple of years were on USB 2.0. It is a long time since I remember seeing kit spec’d with USB 1.1.
I guess it isn’t as important in the Apple world where everything is Firewire (presumably), but this would be unacceptable on any new Intel PC.
One note that may help your screen woes:
Open up System Preferences->General and at the bottom open the Font Smoothing Style pulldown and make sure it’s set to Medium.
Hope that helps!
Eugenia, what colour profile are you using. If you are using default ColorLCD I see what your problem could be, I’ve found sRGB to have more natural colours and it’s not as bright as some other profiles (System Prefs -> Displays ->Color tab)
I played with the color management too, to no avail. I tried all of them, and even the PC standard (which I found to be the best). I am still not happy with the performance of the LCD, it has different brightness and clearness on different places, and its response is slow. It is just a cheap a$$ LCD like the ones you buy at Frys for $250.
USB 2.0 has been proven to not even meet the speeds it is claimed to have. I have a 4 port USB 2.0 card in my G4 and its not any better than 1.1 for speed (USB 2.0 CanoScan LiDE 30).
My girlfriend just got one of the 800MHz 12″ iBooks about 3 weeks ago and the screen is ok… it’s not the greatest, but I’m used to the Powerbook screen, which is much higher quality.
However, it doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad as what Eugenia is describing. As others have said, perhaps she has much more picky eyes than I do. I also use a Dell 1800FP 18.1″ LCD screen at work that I hook up to my Powerbook and it’s almost as high quality as the Powerbook screen, so in comparison the 12″ screen is nowhere near as good, but for basic usage, it’s just fine. My girlfriend is very happy with it.
As for the speed of the 800MHz G3, it’s just fine. For mosthing things, it’s more than quick enough (such as web surfing, word processing, DVDs, etc.). The only things I could see as being a problem would be 3D games (though Warcraft III is basically playable on it and that’s a very CPU intensive game when you play with a lot of computer units), video editing, advanced photo editing, etc… which most people wouldn’t be doing on a portable machine anyway. Of course the iBook isn’t what I would call a desktop replacement, my 1GHz TiBook is only barely a desktop replacement.
>>USB 2.0 has been proven to not even meet the speeds it is claimed to have. I have a 4 port USB 2.0 card in my G4 and its not any better than 1.1 for speed (USB 2.0 CanoScan LiDE 30).<<
USB2 not reaching full speed isn’t the point. Any new computer should have all usb2 ports. They are full backwards compatable. To make them usb2 takes basicly zero effort on the maker. Just because USB may not be fast as it claims (if you statement is true) it’s still faster and USB 2 devises are out there in masses. People should be able to use them to their potential. It doesn’t matter if Apple wants to get people to use Firewire there is way more USB product out there and that isn’t going to change. They need to support whats out there not what they may want to. Not having USB2 on a newly designed laptop is just a flat out defect in the machine and apple.
The stuff I hook up to usb now – keyboard, gamepad, midi – it all works fine and there is no overloading. Hopefully more stuff will go bluetooth and less usb connection will even be required for things like PDAs, GPS, phones, even keyboards and mice.
So usb 2 is better for drives than usb 1. But if I am going to buy an external hard drive or optical drive, I sure as hell am going to buy a firewire one. There’s plenty available, especially in hard drives. If I wanted something new here, I would go firewire 800, not usb. It’s not as good according to numerous tests and it lacks sufficient power so you end up needed more power cords and transformers
I was looking into buying one of these and also noticed the heat problem and the fact that the LCD isn’t as good as the 15 or 17 inch powerbooks.
One quick question, you did try turning up the trackpad speed all the way right? I find the ‘default’ tracking speed of the mice in mac’s to be entirely too slow and end up usually turning it up all the way.
>One quick question, you did try turning up the trackpad speed all the way right?
Yes, I did. It is still as slow as I described. It is a driver problem, and it seems that the Apple guys leave it as is, because Mac always had slow mice, so they don’t want to alienate their users. However, what they CAN do, is allow for more speed in that preference panel, so the rest of us can have faster movement.
Eugenia try this for your mouse, I used it before Microsoft released a prefs app for my IntelliMouse. Hopefully it will work with the trackpad.
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=12205&db=mac
nice review btw
Sean
Well, I’m all set up here on my 12″ PB for the rest of the evening.
Eugenia’s review is great – she always calls them as she sees them, despite whatever anyone else thinks.
I agree with her on the Good. And, I can confirm the AirPort Extreme is fabulous. We have an AirPort Extreme Base Station too and it is tremendous. It has a USB port for printers, so I can print wirelessly now. Everything Aple is trying to do with Rendezdous is beginning to really come to fruition.
I have the full 640 MB RAM and Eugenia, it will be interesting to learn if any of your findings that could be affected by RAM will be altered when you put your 512 module in. I certainly agree that Apple should have had the base module at 256 MB, so you could pump it up to 768 MB. Shame on Apple for that 🙂
I, fortunately, did not have the crash when sending the info to Apple, but it sounds like it is more than an isolated incident. I haven’t had any crashes at all so far.
That left palm rest and bottom do get hot if you’re doing certain types of things, there’s no doubt about that. If you’re just surfing, it takes a long time for it to really heat up, but then it stays hot.
I do not have the trackpad problem – at least not to the extent Eugenia does.. I do have it set at the fast setting. But, I guess it depends on how one uses it. To me, it seems like it’s the rate of acceleration that is the key. And people do that in different ways. However, I would prefer not having to have it at the fastest setting to get it going as it is now.
Now comes the matter of the LCD. I always check that Displays preference for the right setting and have had it set for LCD’s since I got it. I don’t know what to say exactly. I don’t have very good eyesight. I wear bifocals and have a pair of special “computer glasses” so I don’t have to tilt my head up to read text. So, I may not be the best judge of this. I do know that Eugenia’s right about this being the cheaper LCD. To me though, it looks great. The colors are vibrant, text is smoothed but sharp. I don’t see any red. But, my eyes are not very sharp though. I’m very pleased with the display. I’m mad at Apple too for discontinuing the 15″ Studio Display – what a beautiful screen it has. Well, I have two of them, so I shouldn’t complain 🙂
A very fair and thorough review by Eugenia. I’m glad I have this PowerBook – I think what Eugenia said is very true – better to get this than G3 iBook, with the G3 being pretty much a goner.
Brad, I agree with you about USB 2. Well, Firewire 800 blows it away, but that isn’t the point. Apple has been deliberately dragging its feet on that. You’d think that having made the original iMac, which popularized USB, Apple would keep up to standards with it.
Well, Thanks for the review Eugenia. I was looking at the ibook the other day, as it really is a nice inexpensive way to get a newer laptop and OSX to boot. However, most of my in-store fooling around was getting the display to look OK. I was wondering if I was missing some settings (like contrast for example), but maybe not. Slow performance I can live with on a laptop (heck if my 486 had USB I could still use it), but a bad screen I cannot. Too bad, guess I’ll see what the next ibook revision brings.
Sean, MouseZoom is fantatic!! Thanks for posting that!
Sean, thank you for the tip. Indeed, this utility made it more like it, but it ain’t perfect. So, the poblem is that the OSX mouse driver starts to accelerate in the speed that you set on MouseZoom and on the mouse preference panel, *only* after you have reached a certain speed with your finger in the trackpad/mouse. Only after you reach that threshhold on how fast you move your finger in the trackpad, the acceleration you set up will take effect. So, for normal operations and precision and slow movement, the driver itself will have to change, because it moves at the same speed all the time no matter what you change… An additional slider should be added to the pref panel. Speed and acceleration are different things for mice. The BeOS mouse pref panel can control both speed and acceleration, entirely independantly.
I agree with everything you say except for the screen quality. Am I the only one who likes the new LCD screens? I bought an iBook three months ago because I hated the 15″ PowerBook screen. To me, it looked darker and not as sharp. I also have a 15″ iMac, and I see nothing wring with the screen quality. I believe Apple uses Samsung screens.
It must just be me.
Thanks for your review Eugenia. It hit on many of the points that were making me think twice about the 12″ PowerBook. The major setbacks for me:
* No L3 cache
* VGA, not DVI
* No PC Card/CardBus
* No backlit keyboard (hey, it’s a valid point)
* 1024×768
* No Firewire 800
* No gigabit ethernet
These are the points that make me think twice about this machine. I know that if it’s properly fitted, it won’t need all the future expansion capabilities. However, if I’m going to keep it around for a while, I want it to last. Also, my friend’s been using one to prepare a presentation in Keynote (wonderful piece of software), and the screen just doesn’t have the space. He was constantly showing/hiding the inspector, and moving palettes around (in Photoshop). I guess I’ll wait until they update the 15″ model (the 17″ is just too big and expensive for me right now), or buy a PC desktop, and milk my Lombard for a bit more …
Thanks again for your fair review. You always seem to hit on some points that I’m most interested to hear about.
— Rob
I played again with the settings and the slowness of the LCD, the fact that it is terrible on quality, clarity, its very limited angle of view, all these facts remain.
I was able to make the LCD a bit acceptable by choosing again the colorLCD colorspace and by adjusting its brightness to a higher level. Still, that doesn’t fix any of the above points though. ALL the other LCD monitors and laptops we have here at home, are all much better than Powerbooks’. If you have an iMac or an iBook you won’t realize much of a difference as they all use the same quality LCD. Get a SONY notebook though, or a Sharp one, and you will see the difference when you scroll and update the screen, the clarity, the fonts, the angle of view…
Eugenia, you might want to consider this:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/27/0042256&mode=thread&tid…
Donate your old laptop to the KDE developers
Naah, I will keep it, as I don’t have another usable PC laptop here (our SONY vaio only has 64 MB ram and it is not upgradable), and I might give it to my brother in Greece if I find no other use for it. That CTX laptop runs perfectly OS/2 and BeOS btw, all hardware fully supported.
Try getting a calibration program called ‘SuperCal’ (you can probably find it on VersionTracker). It’s considerably better than what comes with OS X, and improved the screen display on my older 15″ PowerBook. Obviously that isn’t going to make the LCD on yours better, but it may make it as good as it can get.
I suppose I’ll have to go and try the 12″ PowerBook’s trackpad now. I was just testing mine and I can move from the upper left to lower right in one swoop, at least most of the time–and that’s 1152×768 resolution.
How long does it take to startup OSX and have it usable on the 12″ with 256M?
BTW, I got a free epson printer and a Targus carry case with the purchase of the Powerbook. Too bad that the carry case is way too big for the Powerbook. Even the 17″ Powerbook would have lots of free space in the carry case and move around a bit too much.
Takes about a minute here. Maybe a bit less, but around 50 to 55 seconds. I will need to time it to say for sure though. The fact is that my Cube boots faster while its 20 GB Maxtor hard drive is pretty even with this laptop’s drive in performance (Cube’s Maxtor drive is one of the slowest PC drives in its range).
Your eyes start hurting after 1-2 hours (!!), yet you use it all the time while you could be off so much better screen-wise…
Hi there,
this is a bit OT, but I would like to know if anyone has the same problem with his IBook than me. When my IBook (14”MacOSX 10.2.3) goes into sleep mode, after waking up it is not possible to do any network-stuff any more. ifconfig showes me that there is no IP which is related to my en0. And ping tells me there is no route to host. ping 127.0.0.1 works. Is there a possibility to restart networking without restarting the IBook?
Thanks
Anton
Yes, my eyes hurt on this LCD monitor. But this is a new toy I got here, you don’t easily leave aside such a toy, do you?
I just read ALL comments on this topic and it seems that there are two groups:
– group 1 is happy with the lcd quality
– group 2 isn’t
Eugenia, any chance you can try another NEW 12″ Powerbook??? Maybe the screen problem is related to your machine…
Just a thought…
Take care,
Tek_No
Nope, my screen is just fine, there is no hardware fault. It is just a quality and performance and feature problem, there is nothing wrong with my LCD in particular. That’s what this LCD can do, and it ain’t good enough for me.
The ibook is a nice machine, per itself. I have been using one for a little more than one year, a combo (dvd + cd-writer) drive ibook 12″ at 600 mhz. Its small size and good battery capacity made it interesting. As a BSD user, I tried OpenBSD and NetBSD and finally used OpenBSD on the little ibook. Everything worked almost fine except sound and apm support. The display, being able to use frame buffer, was very nice when using console with a small kernel custom font and screen but I finally choosed to go back to Intel based hardware, and I’m now using netbsd 1.6 over an X30 ibm laptop. The apm support is a must and apple has never, ever made the slightest move to tell developers about apm, sound (the sound being full digital on the ibook series) and various stuff. An interesting experience though. Several people saw my ibook machine (some Red Hat developers and other people at various companies) and they liked the set-up I used under console (you can have a look there: http://open.bsdcow.net/gallery.html – first picture on the page) but apple definitely keeps it closed and unless you’re using (dead ?) macos or macos x they don’t give a fuck.
Well, using BSD is also something else and restricting the whole value of this post. The ibook is nice if you grab the small ones. display is quite bright, and the machine is very friendly under BSD or Linux (better hardware support there, like apm).
Have you tried “USB Overdrive” Eugenia? It’s a general purpose mouse tool, which can handle accelleration and speed separately I think…
i’ve got the 12″ powerbook as well, and man you leave the computer sitting there doing nothing for a while and it’s gets too cold. my palms feel like they’re resting on a couple cans of soda. you gotta go rip some cds to get this thing warmed up.
other stuff:
LCD quality: better than the 800×600 ibook i replaced, so i’m happy.
crashes when transfering files: happened here too, but my old 10.2.3 ibook never crashed. hmmm.
The spec haven’t been finalized, so if I’m all ready for wireless ethernet, I would probably get a a/b solution right now.. Besides, yeah, I have to agree with Eugenia on the screen. It sucks in comparison with other PBs, but compared with my HP laptop (which BTW is more than a year old), it is okay.
Personally, I find the screen okay. But my main problems with Apple laptops are
a) single mouse buttons. For desktops (something I would never buy from Apple), you can switch the bundled mouse for a Microsoft or Logitech (or some China brand) mouse. But on laptops, unless you are willing to use a external mouse (which is a no for travelling, at least for me), I would find it hard to use a single button mouse.
I don’t care about the ease of use involved because frankly i want productivity. I want to press *one* mouse button to get to the context menus. Why can’t Apple have custom built models having this? If they don’t want it by default, they should at least have an option.
2) My secon gripe about Mac laptops is that I don’t like any of the keyboard layouts. I like the 15″ best, but there are laptops, especially from IBM and Sony, which has better keyboard layout. Eugenia may like her keyboard layout, but I don’t really.
3) One of the biggest gripes against Mac laptops is the trackpad itself. On my HP and Compaq laptops, I’m rather use with tapping the trackpad to emulate a click. There is no such thing on the Mac. I find it rather inconvient to have one thumb on the button and another finger on the trackpad. But hey, I have Asian hands 🙂
3) One of the biggest gripes against Mac laptops is the trackpad itself. On my HP and Compaq laptops, I’m rather use with tapping the trackpad to emulate a click. There is no such thing on the Mac. I find it rather inconvient to have one thumb on the button and another finger on the trackpad. But hey, I have Asian hands 🙂
You might want to take another look at the preferences. Under MOUSE, you can set the trackpad to click, drag, and drag lock. Have been since System 7.
Oops. LOL Wrong button. I posted that. 😀
my 2 cents about the display:
The quality of the iBook screen was the MAJOR reason for me to by an iBook, about one year ago. It’s better than any PC laptop I’ve seen…Also, I think the iMac has the best TFT screen I’ve ever seen on a computer in that pricerange. And since I am a network administrator, I have seen my fair share of TFT screens. So, I have to say, I completely and utterly disagree. The screens used in iBook and iMac are of very high quality. So say many other reviewers, so I am really amazed by this review…
Why not return the laptop and get something else?
Does anyone know where to get real info on these notebooks, like what LCDs are used? There are so many rumor sites, that there has to be one with facts.
You can set up OS X to accept tapping on the track pad as a mouse click.
As for the review, I think that this powerbook is great but not for that money. I am going to wait until it is £800 on e-bay I think before i get one.
A truly outstanding review.
An object lesson to others.
Eugenia –
SuperCal is a must-have for you. With it you can adjust Gamma, Contrast etc properly which will make a huge improvement in font rendering on Apple notebooks. I used to hate font rendering on the iBook just as much as you until I used SuperCal. Also, like others noted – Subpixel rendering is an option in 10.2.x, the only thing I miss in Quartz’ font rendering is hinting.
Then, the iBook and the G3: Being available for less than $1000, the iBook is a good option for people that are on a strict budget. Also, the speed difference isn’t as big as you make it, it depends a lot on what applications you use. Many applications don’t use Altivec and run just as fast on a G3 as on a G4. If you google for some benchmarks (yes, we all hate benchmarks, I know), depending on the application a 800MHz iBook can be even faster than the 12″ Titanium.
In a test at <insert-a-mac-site-here>, the concluded that the iBook was actually faster than the 12″ powerbook. (because of the extra cache I believe). So heck, what’s going on here? 🙂
Eugenia, I was wondering when you get your airport card, would you mind writing a review on it? I know this is much to ask, but I do value your clear unbias view on hardware 🙂 And I have been wondering how well does Apple’s wireless card work with other wireless base stations…
-Masao
the AppleCare extended warranty is ridiculously expensive (especially considering how little the base warranty covers), it’s over $350 for an $1800 laptop, thats just bullshit; applecare is priced according to the series your new computer is part of, so ibook/imac/emac applecare is much cheaper than g4Tower/powerbook, but the 12″ powerbook is not -really- a powerbook (considering just the quality of the screen, it’s an ibook with a G4 processor and some other faster components)
If the PB 12″ is too hot for you, use this http://www.koolsink.com/product-tech.htm
Hopefully I’ve hesitated between the 12″ and the 17″ and decided to order the 17″
6 weeks to go before I receive my order ! (placed the order two weeks ago).
I think i’ve made the correct choice
. Nice upgrade from my ooold Apple iMac Revision A ! (a 233 mhz), my latest laptop was a 386 SX 20 from 1991 ..
Where is JBQ working now? He must be doing good in his post-Be days, considering last I heard, you can’t work in the US. It seems as if you’ve been turned into a Mac person over the past year or so, and so have I – I’m going to be buying a 17″ iMac by the end of March.
A lot of the things you already knew in advance, so why did you buy the 12″ aluBook anyway? (I’d go for the 15″ at least, or else an iBook).
>3) One of the biggest gripes against Mac laptops is the >trackpad itself. On my HP and Compaq laptops, I’m rather use >with tapping the trackpad to emulate a click. There is no >such thing on the Mac. I find it rather inconvient to have >one thumb on the button and another finger on the trackpad. >But hey, I have Asian hands 🙂
rajan: thats not true. There is a possibility in Preferences of MacX there you can define tapping on the trackpad as a mouseclick. I don’t use the mouse button any more
I don’t agree with Eugene’s comment about the “cheap” lcds used in iMac and also in the new 20″cinema display. The quality of the 20″ cinema display – despite of its low price – is considererd to be superior to the quality of the 23″ cinema display!
How is it possible for Apple to offer such a great display for such a low price? Because of a deal they signed with LG Philips – Apple participates in R&D-expenses and gets the lcd’s for about 500$ whereas other oem-customers have to pay around 1000$ to philips for exactly the same panel!
The 17″ lcd display in the 17″ AlBook is great. Have a look at the 17″ iMac.
Daniel
Wow, what LCDs have you used in the past? I’ve got one of the 12″ 700 MHz white iBooks and the screen is absolutely one of the best I’ve worked with. Now I haven’t used any high-end Apple products, but I’ve used a large number of PC laptops from HP and Compaq and Dell.
Eugenia, you claim that the 12″ powerbook uses a “cheap LCD” like the iBook and iMac, but then mention that the other powerbooks use “superior screens.”
But the 17″ powerbook uses the same screen as the 17″ iMac. I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about this screen from people who’ve seen it. Why would Apple cripple their absolute top-of-the-line machine with a “cheap LCD?”
Also, I’ve played with the 20″ screen and it is wonderful. Much MUCH MUCH better than the 22″, and arguably better than the 23″. The color reproduction and color saturation are heads and shoulders above other LCDs Apple produces.
So I really do think it’s possibile that you have a faulty powerbook, or at least one with a burned in screen. Maybe returning it, or going to an apple store and playing with other powerbooks will shed some light on the situation?
You repeatedly spelled it “Powerbook.” It is “PowerBook.” It makes the whole article read amateurishly.
don’t forget that usb is not a point to point connection as firewire – it is a bus. consider having usb 2.0 with all devices connected to it being usb 2.0 except for one device (as for instance a keyboard or mouse). the resulting bandwith will be that of usb 1.1. not one single usb 2.0 device could benefit of it’s broader bandwith!
if Apple offer usb 2.0 they should have at least two different usb busses (and you as the user have to be aware to which bus you hook up your usb 2.0 device, as the plugs are the same)
Daniel
I had many friends complaining that Apple is not using 5400 rpm drives. More rpm’s directly results in more power consumption – the battery would last shorter
The factors to consider are the data throughput and the access times. The 4200 rpm drives Apple is using are very similar in these respects to the 5400 rpm drives
I have to agree. The LCDs used by Apple are in the upper quality range even in the consumer line like with the iBook.
So these problems regarding the reddish (!) LCD and the slow trackpad definitely sounds like either:
a)some hardware failure, minimal or major, you might not be able to recognize it on the spot
b) fatty fingertips and uncleaned glasses.
Right now I am running Windows XP Proffessional in VirtualPC with ClearType FontSmoothing enabled on an almost 2 year old iBook 500 and surfing OSNews with IE 6. The only red surroundings I can spot are with Windows´ ClearType technology. You clearly (!) can see the false colored pixel shading in Wondows, not in OSX. It just can´t be with Apple´s technology, as it is using greyshading only.
So, Eugenia, maybe you´re turned color blinded or twisted by watching too much ClearType, I guess.
What tha hack,
George
You say you were dropping frames… were you running off of battery power, or did you have the power cord plugged in? I have a G3/Pismo PowerBook that drops a lot of frames running a QuickTime movie if it is running off of the battery (low-power mode).
I know Apple changed suppliers for at least some of the LCD’s they use not long before the new Studio Display and PowerBooks came out.. I don’t know which though 🙁 What an interesting controversy though. I wish my eyes were better.
I am the proud new owner of a 12″ PowerBook, and for the first week I was thrilled — it’s a fantastic machine with all the nice little touches that make one happy to own a Mac. BUT, this last weekend I went on a trip. I packed my laptop in my backpack, between two books, as I often do on trips. Sadly, when I took it out, it appeared that the power supply worked its way against the laptop and one of the books, and dented the top cover. The result — the display’s illumination is now oddly cracked, and the colors a bit screwed up. I have used Apple (and other) laptops for many years, and I’ve never had this sort of thing happen. Are the new generation of ultralight laptops simply less durable?
Eugenia,
I LOVE your reviews. You’re the only reviewer I know of who tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I just read the Washington Post article mentioned on Slashdot which was a typical worshipfest of Apple with no integrity or objectivity. Your reviews are honest and helpful. Thanks. If I buy a 12″ PowerBook, I’ll know what to expect. If I had only read the other article, I’d expect perfection, and been very disappointed as a result.
You RULE!!
Thanks for a timely review. I’m still debating about which notebook to go with when the time comes, and have had trouble finding really useful reviews of the newer PowerBooks. This gives me a lot better feel for what to expect.
I have one of the original dual usb icebooks(500 Mhz G3) and my one comment about the screen was WOW. It was the best screen I had had on a laptop and I have had several laptops. I still use it the ibook and I am still impressed with the clarity. I have been wanting the 12″ powerbook but was worried it wouldn’t have the great screen the ibook does. After hearing it does I am set to order mine.