Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on powerbook http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic powerbook Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Is Apple trying to rip me off? Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:27:52 +0100 My Dell Inspiron laptop is almost 3 years old and coming to the end of it's warranty and I was just casually pondering the idea of buying a 15" PowerBook. Not seriously looking you understand, but interested, browsing, ... Anyway according to Apple's UK store the price of the 15" Combo PB G4 1.5GHz is £1379+VAT. That's pretty steep (an equivalent spec Dell Latitude comes in around £967+VAT) but if you consider Apple styling, attention to detail, and having a Unix based computer with a nice GUI worth something then, maybe, you can live with that. However I was pretty ticked off when I checked US Apple store. The same PowerBook in the US costs $1,999 which, at todays rate, equates to £1,059. Why am I supposed to pay £320+VAT more to buy the same PowerBook here than in the US? In the interests of being fair it appears that Dell are charging UK customers approximately £100 more than US customers (although I could be wrong as I found it harder to match the equivalent models between their UK and US sites.) http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002478.html Second thoughts Fri, 15 Apr 2005 13:04:50 +0100 Apropos of nothing I popped into the Apple Store on Regent St. on my way home last night. I wanted to get a feel for the 15" PowerBook. Once I'd got a member of staff to turf one of the zillions of kids using HotMail off it (sorry kids) I was able to get my first real look at the computer I'm thinking of buying. Firstly I have to say I was shocked at how big (and heavy) it was. I thought he'd accidentally put me in front of a 17". In reality it's probably exactly the same size as my Inspiron (and lighter) but I think I had dreamed and expected something much more compact. I kept looking over at the 12" PB and thinking <blockquote>That's the kind of object I want to carry around with me...</blockquote>But the 12" PB is slower and restricted to 1024x768. Ouch! The 15" screen was okay but I'm suprised that the resolution is only 1280x854. Come on Apple what's going on here? Even my 3 year old Inspiron has a crisp 1400x1050 screen! That's about 25% less area to play with which isn't good news if you want to do development work (which I do). In use the machine seemed nice and smooth but what I really wanted to do was run Eclipse and Ruby and try some stuff out. Exactly the kind of thing you can't really do on a machine in an Apple store. I'm not used to particularly fast machines (my main PC is still a P4 1.6GHz) so I'm not expecting the earth but I am hearing people (e.g. <a href="http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008419.html">Russel</a>) talking in less than glowing terms about PB performance. Sometime last month I came across a benchmarking site which suggested (IIRC) that a 1.5GHz G4 would be roughly equivalent to a Pentium 4 2GHz. If confirmed that it it's probably fast enough for my purposes. Can anyone add anything useful on performance? My reason for wanting a PowerBook is to have a computer which:<ol> <li>is portable (my Inspiron is bulky and heavy)</li> <li>is simple and uncomplicated, a pleasure to use</li> <li>has good battery life (after 3 years my Inspiron gets about 40 mins on battery)</li> <li>has flawless wireless (Windows XP wireless has been very tiresome)</li> <li>will handle my email, surfing, and writing</li> <li>is good for presentations</li> <li>can be used to develop and test software (mainly <a href="http://www.ruby-lang.org/">Ruby</a> and <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.com/">RubyOnRails</a>)</li> </ol> #2 is pretty important to me. I'm not leaving Windows and I'll still have Windows machines around. But I'm tired of the Windows baggage - it pains my soul - and want a simpler, less complicated, life. This seems to be the promise MacOS X holds out to me. I want less bumps in the road. Having the Unix command line around would be a nice bonus too :-) Development wise I want to be able to have the full stack running, usably, on my machine at the same time. IDE (Eclipse), Database (MySQL or Postgresql), Browser (Firefox) and my application (MemeScope). This is what I have on my WinXP box and it means I can develop anywhere. However I guess I'm having some doubts about the PB. I'm wondering if I shouldn't trade developer friendliess and get the 12". Or maybe I'll be disappointed and find it no panacea? Or maybe it'll seem very slow. These doubts are exacerbated by me having to pay for this myself with precious cash which might otherwise be going to pay for my next course, or on conferences I want to attend, or on any number of other things. Please do leave comments about your PB experiences and, if you didn't buy one, what swayed you. I'll take all the advice I can get. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002496.html PowerBook quandry Tue, 07 Jun 2005 22:06:05 +0100 Apple's move to Intel has given me something to ponder. I had been planning to buy a PowerBook next month, now I'm not sure if I should wait. When are the first Intel based PowerBooks likely to hit the market? If it's early next year I'd probably hang on, if it's in 12-18 months time I'd probably get a 12" PB in July and see what happens. Damn. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002652.html Comparing light weight Apple notebooks Tue, 21 Jun 2005 23:23:05 +0100 Friend and former colleague <a href="http://blog.sockdrawer.org/">Paul Walk</a> has suggested another possibility vis-a-vis my buying a Mac. He was in more or less the same buying situation as me and thought a 12" iBook was better value for money than the equivalent PowerBook. He waxed pretty lyrical about it today and certainly it looked very nice. When he told me he hadn't shut it down in 6 months (he can just open & close the lid as necessary) I was pretty impressed. Hibernate has never worked under Windows XP for me. It's true that the benefits of the PowerBook seem more pronounced in the 15" and 17" models. My plan was originally to get a 15" PB but I have been seduced by the idea of carrying a super-small, super-light, Mac with me where-ever I go. The iBook is cheaper and that money could go towards getting a new PowerBook when the second generation of Intel variants start arriving in 18 months time. So, to compare: <table caption="iBook"> <tr><td colspan="2">12" iBook</td></tr> <tr><td>CPU</td><td>1.2GHz G4</td></tr> <tr><td>L2 Cache</td><td>512K</td></tr> <tr><td>FSB</td><td>133MHz</td></tr> <tr><td>GPU</td><td>ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 32MB DDR</td></tr> <tr><td>RAM</td><td>768MB PC2100 266MHz</td></tr> <tr><td>HD</td><td>60GB 4200RPM</td></tr> <tr><td>Wireless</td><td>Wi-Fi + BlueTooth</td></tr> <tr><td>Dimensions</td><td>3.42cm high x 28.5cm wide x 23.0cm deep (2241.8cm3)</td></tr> <tr><td>Weight</td><td>2.2kg</td></tr> <tr><td>Battery</td><td>6hr</td></tr> <tr><td>Price</td><td>£874</td></tr> </table> <table caption="PowerBook"> <tr><td colspan="2">12" PowerBook</td></tr> <tr><td>CPU</td><td>1.5GHz G4</td></tr> <tr><td>L2 Cache</td><td>512K</td></tr> <tr><td>FSB</td><td>167MHz</td></tr> <tr><td>GPU</td><td>NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 64MB DDR</td></tr> <tr><td>RAM</td><td>768MB PC2700 333MHz</td></tr> <tr><td>HD</td><td>60GB 5400RPM</td></tr> <tr><td>Wireless</td><td>Wi-Fi + BlueTooth</td></tr> <tr><td>Dimensions</td><td>2.8cm high x 27.7cm wide x 21.9cm deep (1698.9cm3)</td></tr> <tr><td>Weight</td><td>2.1kg</td></tr> <tr><td>Battery</td><td>5hrs</td> <tr><td>Price</td><td>£1099</td></tr> </table> The PowerBook should be a better performer. The CPU, RAM, FSB, GPU and disk are all faster components. But, really, how much of a performance difference will be noticable? The only online comparisons I could find of iBook vs Powerbook performance seemed pretty old. The iBook is cheaper by £200. This isn't as big a margin as I'd imagined but it does put the iBook under the magic £1000 barrier. Apple RAM seems to be extortionate even by their pricing standards. Am I safe buying memory from Crucial or Kingston? A 1GB stick for the iBook costs £88 from Crucial and £340 from Apple!?! (That would reduce the price a fraction to £862 at the same time giving me 1.25GB RAM instead of 768MB and probably a small performance gain into the bargain.) I guess I should also ask how many people buy AppleCare too? A concern I have about the iBook is that it can't drive a second screen. I see mention of mirroring and a suggestion that this means you just see what's on the LCD on the external screen. That would be a big minus. On the other hand it seems like you get an extra hour of battery life which is a plus. But, then again, the PB is 25% smaller (by volume) than the iBook. Now I'm not so sure Paul's made my life any simpler :-) And then, of course, Apple may confuse(please?) me even more if they rev the iBook/PB line at MWE next month. I've come up with some more information to muddy the waters still further.<ul><li>Because of it's graphics card the iBook does not support the new CoreImage feature of Tiger. It's not clear to me whether this is relevant to someone who doesn't do a lot of graphics heavy work. Will it affect the general OS X experience much?</li><li>There is some kind of ongoing problem with the scrolling and the trackpad on powerbooks although I'm not clear what the problem is or how serious.</li><li>Apple Insider have a <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1142">report</a> which suggests that either iBooks or PowerBooks might get a faster CPU in the October time frame. It's not clear which line or what the details are but 2.0GHz with a 200MHz FSB is not out of the question. This is only a marginal improvement but might be worth holding out another 3 months for.</li></ul> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002676.html Is the time for indecision past? Thu, 23 Jun 2005 18:08:43 +0100 So, my resistance to the lure of the Apple Powerbook is breaking down. It occurred to me today that even if new Powerbooks get announced in July I probably wouldn't be able to buy one for another 4-5 months and I really don't want to wait. I could, but I don't want to. In the intervening time I could be using <a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/">Keynote</a>, <a href="http://macromates.com/">TextMate</a>, <a href="http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/">Tinderbox</a> (finally), <a href="http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/">SubEthaEdit</a>, making <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.org/">Rails</a> run right, using Unix again, and just generally having a happy and portable experience. Despite the cost angle the PB is winning over the iBook on account of size, weight, and graphics issues (the inability to drive a 2nd monitor properly being foremost among them). The 12" PB because I want to take it everywhere with me. So, there is I would say a better than even chance that I will buy a 12" Powerbook at the Apple store on Oxford St. tomorrow. My strategy is to buy with 768MB of memory (a £50 upgrade) then buy a <a href="http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.asp?Mfr%2BProductline=Apple%2BPowerBook&mfr=Apple&tabid=CR&model=PowerBook+G4+1.5GHz+%2812-inch+Display%29&submit=Go">1Gb stick from Crucial</a> next month and auction off the spare 512. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002682.html The PowerBook cometh Fri, 24 Jun 2005 19:45:50 +0100 I am now the very proud owner of a 12" powerbook. My capsule review:<blockquote>It's f**kin lovely</blockquote> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002686.html These powerbook batteries are magic! Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:53:45 +0100 When I woke my laptop up from sleep a second ago it said I had 118hrs and 14mins of battery life left! Pretty good :-) http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002691.html PowerBook to Razr to the Web Mon, 27 Jun 2005 19:40:50 +0100 Any advice on how I hook my Motorola V3 up as a modem with the PowerBook? I seem to be able to iSync the contacts to/from the address book but i'm a bit lost with the modem part and Google hasn't helped so far. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002693.html No roaming Skype for me! Mon, 04 Jul 2005 11:48:32 +0100 Well this is annoying. I can't get my <a href="http://ph.motorola.com/pcs/bluetooth/features.asp?category=0&itemID=HS820">Motorola HS820</a> bluetooth headset to pair with the PowerBook for use in Skype. In fact the PowerBook doesn't even detect it as a Bluetooth device whilst my V3 does. What's up with that? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002717.html Blame where blame is due Thu, 14 Jul 2005 14:27:40 +0100 By the way, everyone bored of my droning on about how cool my new PowerBook is should go flame <a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</a>. He was the one who planted this seed. Oh, and <a href="http://www.bethlet.net">Beth</a>, who watered it! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002763.html Go go HS820 Thu, 21 Jul 2005 11:44:58 +0100 Too groovy. My thanks to <a href="http://www.headshift.com/moments.cfm">Lee</a> for sharing how to pair up the Motorola HS820 with the MacTop, now I can mobile Skype ;-)The trick is that it will only pair in one way. From the headset switched off you hold the button until the lights flash to show it is on, then you continue to hold the button for several more seconds until the light comes on solidly. At this point it will pair. Contrast this with the V3 which will pair as long as the headset is on. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002771.html What no screwdriver pooch? Thu, 04 Aug 2005 22:40:43 +0100 Yeeha 992Mb free! This is what I'm talking about. <a href="http://bethlet.net/catacombs/000780.html">Satchel</a> came through in the end despite not having the right screwdriver!! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002822.html No more 12" PowerBook? Sat, 05 Nov 2005 15:02:55 +0000 Am I reading <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1359">the scuttlebutt</a> right?<blockquote>The 12-inch PowerBook is no longer on Apple's roadmap -- <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1229">as reported in August</a> -- and the new Intel-based 17-inch model is slated for release several months later.</blockquote>Is this saying there will be no 12" Intel based PowerBooks? Is that why there was no update to the 12" PB last time around? Is the the 12" form factor is dead..? Waaaaah! How can this be? So many of those whose love of their PB encouraged me to switch are 12" PB users. Are we such a minority? For me the 12" PB is the perfect blend of style, function, and form factor. Where do I register my dismay to Apple? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003076.html I <3 Kawasaki Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:19:46 +0000 GuyK on <a href="http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/dear_god.html">his next PowerBook</a>. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003144.html It has occurred to me... Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:27:00 +0000 ...that Safari hasn't crashed for quite a while. In fact I can't actually remember the last time it crashed. Looks like whatever changes they made in the 10.4.3 update did the trick. Now, can anyone tell me why my Powerbook sounds like an Airbus getting ready for takeoff? It's been this way since I got home (many hours ago) but was fine earlier on today. Activity Monitor and XRG both show nothing much going on: CPU is at 54 degrees, load average is 0.37, 0.48, 0.62. It's puzzling. I don't want to restart if I can avoid it. My uptime has reached 24 days. My previous record is 27 days. Since I bought the Mac back in June I've never reached 30 days uptime. There has always been some update that required a reboot. I am determined to beat my record by at least 3 days. Let's see what logging out (and going to bed) can do... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003158.html Do we trust Logitech? Mon, 09 Jan 2006 20:11:39 +0000 As an experiment I have begun using my <a href="http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,CRID=2135,CONTENTID=9043">Logitech MX1000 mouse</a> with the PowerBook. Since I got the PowerBook I've been using the trackpad which, unlike any trackpad before it, I have found very useful. But I kept looking at the (expensive) mouse sat there unused all this time and thought it was a waste. It's a good mouse and maybe all those extra buttons could be handy... So I find that the basic mouse function fine but, without Logitech specific drivers, most of the extra buttons do funky things that, by and large, you'd rather they didn't do. The only solution appears to be to install the <a href="http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/downloads/software/US/EN,CRID=1792,contentid=9409,OSID=9">Logitech Control Centre for MacOSX</a>. My Mac has been working pretty well thus far and I think that this is, in part, because I have not installed any significant system affecting products from big vendors. In my experience Big Vendor system software is often a festering pile of crap made without a care for the users system. On Windows Logitech drivers and software were flawless but My Mac works good and I want to keep it that way. Does anyone have any experience they can share about using LCC on MacOSX Tiger? Am I being paranoid? Or should I steer well clear? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003161.html My 7 month Mac report Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:19:06 +0000 I just read <a href="http://www.scripting.com/2006/01/19.html#sixMonthMacReport">Dave Winers 6 month Mac Report</a>. It occurs to me it is just over 6 months since I got my first Mac, so heres my report. I bought the 12" PowerBook at the end of June 2005. I choose the 12" model because I wanted portablity over power. After 3 years of lugging a Dell around I was looking forward to something that wouldn't leave creases in my shoulder. For reference my Dell was a 15" Inspiron 4150 with a 1.6GHz P4, 1GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 7500 with 32MB VRAM, and a 40GB 5400 RPM HDD and boy was it heavy. Performance: The PowerBook seems faster than the Dell but not heaps faster. I guess you'd expect that given the relative parity of CPU speed and the poor bus architecture of the PowerBook. Certainly with 1.25GB of RAM the PowerBook is plenty fast enough for everything I do (including development work, I don't play games on it though). Where the PowerBook really scores over the Dell is how it performs under load, it stays very responsive even when the CPU is running on overdrive. That really does make it more usable. I've not suffered from the kind of typing lags that Dave seemed to have with his iBook. Usability: MacOSX is streets ahead of Windows XP in my book; they're not even in the same city really. The UI is generally well done, pleasant to use, and doesn't have too many surprises. I was able to switch in no time with only two things catching me out for a while: 1) In most Windows apps Alt-W gives you the window list, in MacOSX Cmd-W closes the current window. It took me a few weeks to learn to stop doing that. 2) Maximize doesn't. But I quickly adapted to whatever it is that it does do. In short I was more or less immediately productive with MacOSX. When you add that I can drop to Unix whenever I need, that QuickSilver is an incredible productivity tool, and access to a wide range of excellent applications like Omni Outliner Pro, OmniGraffle Pro, KeyNote, TextMate, and XyleScope. The only application I really miss is Trillian Pro although maybe Proteus is a replacement. Stability: MacOSX just doesn't crash. As I reported the other day I have had continuous uptime of over a month. I restarted at that point to install 10.4.4, who knows how much longer it might have run for. This is a compputer I am working out every day. That's a pretty good definition of robust to me. So, what don't I like? <ul> <li>Battery life isn't great. It's not a problem the way I work, but I imagine it would be disappointing if I were away from a power socket more often and for longer.</li> <li>Screen brightness isn't great. I didn't notice it before but now I have a 20" Dell panel next door you can see it. And if you want to get 4+ hrs from the battery you need to turn the brightness down.</li> <li>Safari still crashes or behaves unpredictably. Not enough for me to switch to Firefox but, after 3 point releases of Safari 2.0 it's pretty much unforgivable that it still crashes.</li> <li>Mail.App is bleh</li> <li>Firefox looks awful and Camino has few pluses over Safari.</li> <li>Some UI glitches as reported earlier.</li> <li>Umm... that's about it</li> </ul> Summary: Nicest computer I ever owned. I love it. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003257.html