Powerbook : Refined and Perfected
Written: Jan 03 '03
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Pros: Sleek, Stylish; Bright, high-resolution 15.2” display; DVD-R, Superb OS, FAST, cheaper (believe it or not!)
Cons: 802.11b range still suffers; I still worry about scratches and dents
The Bottom Line: GET THIS MACHINE. It has cutting edge features anyone doing creative media would kill for. It is the best laptop available and with new lower prices to boot. No Regrets.
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| iBen's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G4 15.2 in. (M8859LL/A) Mac Notebo... |
Apple’s Flagship Powerbook G4 has long stood out from its peers and rivals. No one has been able to match its combination of thin design, huge screen, light weight, long battery life, great performance, and functionality. In its latest incarnation, it adds a one of a kind DVD burner to everyone else’s “don’t have” lists. The Powerbook has been, and continues to be the most balanced, most stylish, and most innovative professional laptop around.
Titanium as Art
For those who have never laid eyes on a Titanium Powerbook before, get yourself to an Apple Store and just look at it for a minute. I joke sometimes that Apple’s stores feel more like art galleries than places where you’d go to buy a computer, but for the Powerbook, it is strangely appropriate; its creators designed it like a piece of art. Apple’s design is surprisingly minimalist, especially compared to the sweeping curves, flashy colors, and transparent plastics of Apple’s other current and past designs. Closed, the machine looks like solid slab of metal with only a simple white Apple logo centered on it to give it away. Those accustomed to other laptops may be surprised at its dimensions; it is wider, yet not as deep as traditional shaped laptops. Around its unbelievably thin edge, the usual laptop ports are carefully hidden not to disturb the solid metal look. Instead of a DVD drive with a tray, there is a mysterious slot on the front. Around the left edge, there is a standard PC card slot somehow made more stylish with a recessed cylindrical eject button next to it. Around back, a metal cover hides its numerous ports. Even its intake and exhaust vents seem to fit the machine’s aesthetics and aren’t visually jarring like on other laptops. When open, the machine’s impressive wide display dominates. Extending close to the edge of the case, there’s no doubt that the gorgeous display was the basis for the entire machine. The area around the keys and touchpad is simple and uncluttered.
By looking at it, you know that the titanium must be paper-thin in places, but upon feeling the machine in your hands, you’ll find that it is surprisingly solid feeling for its dimensions. Its is not a featherlight, however: it weighs in at 5.3 pounds. Still, it is not too heavy, and seems right for a laptop of its size.
Even without turning the machine on, I marvel at the attention to detail put into the Powerbook G4. Apple set out to create something more than a computer, a tool, a boring black box. It created an image, a look, and crafted it out of titanium. It is a thing of beauty. Over the past 2 years it has become a tech pop icon like many of Apple’s efforts for good reason. Its visage is now synonymous with power, grace, and style. No one else does it quite like Apple, and the Powerbook represents a pinnacle of inspired design for the only computer company around with a sense of style.
Stuff it comes with
Here’s a quick list of what to expect to be included with the Powerbook.
Power adapter – a nicely designed power adapter. It’s a small white squarish brick that has plastic hooks that flip out to wrap the cable when it’s not in use. You can either plug the brick itself into the outlet, or use an included AC cable for longer reach. The adapter gives good feedback; when you plug it into the Powerbook, the ring around the connector glows amber when the battery is charging, and green when fully charged.
Modem Cable – Self explanatory
DVI to VGA adapter – the video port on the back of the Powerbook for connecting to external monitors and projection devices is a digital DVI connector so that it can be used on digital flat panel displays. To connect to standard CRTs and others, this simple adapter is included.
Svideo to Composite adapter – In case you want to present video to a television that doesn’t have the newer svideo jack, you can convert the svideo to composite with this.
Restore DVD – After years of including a pack of 3 or 4 CD-ROMs for system restore, Apple finally wised up and replaced them all with one bootable restore DVD-ROM. Good show.
Manual – Apple has long prided itself for ease of use and computers needed no manuals, but the Powerbook comes with one anyway. At 116 pages, most of its fluff, but it’s definitely a good source of information on servicing internal components like the hard drive and the wireless card, both of which require the bottom plate of the Titanium to be removed.
1 blank DVD-R, Apple brand.
Specifications and Configuration
1 Ghz PowerPC G4
1 MB of DDR L3 cache
512 MB PC133 RAM
15.2” TFT display with a native resolution of 1280 by 854 capable of millions of colors
ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 video chipset with 64MB DDR memory
60 GB Hard Drive (4200 RPM)
Choice of Superdrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) or Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Airport (802.11b) card installed
One of the most welcome changes between this revision and the previous is actually a price drop. You heard me right, Apple actually lowered their price points for their coveted Powerbook line. The top of the line 800 mhz Powerbook previously would burn a $3199 hole in your pocket. The above configuration with the Superdrive is Apple’s “Fastest” configuration on their online Apple Store. That comes to a grand total of $2999.
RAM is easily upgraded on the Powerbook. Pull back two small latches on the keyboard, and lift the keyboard off, revealing some cool guts of the Powerbook. Its 2 SODIMM slots are right there. The Titanium can support 2 512 MB PC133 chips for a straight GB of memory. One note however. If you buy the stock 1 Ghz model, you will have to buy 2 512 MB chips instead of just one to get the GB because Apple puts in 2 256 MB chips stock. A slight annoyance.
The 60 GB hard drive is of good quality. It’s quiet, and fast enough for video work. It is presently the largest capacity available for laptops. This is definitely a necessity for video and DVD work, which gobble up incredible amounts of space.
Display
The Powerbook was designed from the ground up around a gorgeous 15.2 inch TFT display. It improves upon the first display used in the TiBook enclosure in resolution, brightness, and sharpness. It has a native resolution of 1280 by 854 pixels. Other manufacturers equip their laptops with screens with 1600 by 1200 pixel displays, and some may criticize Apple for not using that resolution. Its important to realize that greater resolution is not always a good thing especially for smaller laptop displays. 1600 by 1200 is the resolution that 21 inch CRTs generally run; these laptops try to crunch that into a 15” space, and user interface elements becomes very small. The Powerbook’s resolution is a compromise that allows for a great amount of workspace without making it excessively small. On top of that, the Powerbook’s display is a wide aspect (3:2). This give more screen real estate in the direction that is most useful to professionals who use pallet-happy applications like Photoshop. It’s also great for watching wide aspect DVDs as well.
Like any good top of the line laptop, the Powerbook can drive a second monitor or a television for presentations, either in mirroring or extend mode. The difference, though, is that the Powerbook has a DVI port instead of standard VGA, meaning it can extend onto slick flat panel displays as well as CRTs.
The possibilities become mind-boggling. It can even display video on Apple’s own high-end flat panel displays. Imagine extending the desktop of the Powerbook onto a massive 23” HD Cinema Display. Go to an Apple store and they might have one set up like this. Its is awe-inspiring. This is, once again, something that cannot be done on a PC laptop.
The chipset that makes all of this possible is the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64 MB of memory. A good update from the previous revision that used the Mobility Radeon 7500, the AMR 9000 is actually comparable to most desktop GPUs like the GeForce 4 MX or the ATI Radeon 9000. Games run nicely on this chipset, not to mention Mac OS X Jaguar’s new Quartz Extreme that takes a lot of the load off the CPU for the interface.
Processor and Architecture
The G4 processor in the Powerbook breaks the (largely psychological and misconceived) barrier of 1 Ghz in a Mac portable. For PC users (potential switchers) who may be reading this and are contemplating the smallness of that number, I’ll say it again. You can’t compare clock speed between Macs and PCs. We can probably go on a pretty lengthy discussion of this, but I’m not going to. Instead, all I have to say is that among portables, the 1.0 Ghz PowerPC performs admirably and, most importantly, does so without consuming an incredible amount of power like its Intel and AMD counterparts.
The Powerbook has a 133 mhz system bus. For those unfamiliar with the role of the system bus, is it the very important pipeline that connects the main memory (RAM) and the processor. Data that the processor needs must travel back and forth on this bus. Here is a quick lesson in computer organization for you. The operation of a computer is an intricate matter of timing. A 1 Ghz processor performs operations on the order of less than a nanosecond. Memory and the system bus, on the other hand, are glacially slow (the order of milliseconds) compared to the processor. Whenever the processor needs to read or write data (and it frequently does) it must wait for an eternity in processor time for the data to ride the system bus before it can do its thing. What did these brilliant computer engineers come up with to alleviate this huge bottleneck? Caching. Instead of riding the slow system bus every single time a piece of data needs to be accessed, data that is used frequently is copied into a smaller but much faster bunch of memory called a cache much closer to the processor than RAM. The next time it is needed, it takes much less time. Modern processors have several levels of cache. Level 1 and Level 2 are common.
I mentioned before that the Powerbook has just a 133 mhz system bus. You may have seen its PC counterparts have busses that are 333 mhz or even 533 mhz in Athlon or Pentium 4 systems. This is one of the biggest bottlenecks in Apple’s G4 architecture today, but it is alleviated by a third level of cache (the Powerbook has 1MB of DDR L3). Without this cache, the 1 Ghz G4 may very well be starved of data and would not perform anywhere near its potential. I applaud Apple for that, but a faster system bus would still be appreciated; hope for the next revision, of course.
DVD Burning Goodness
By far the most significant addition to the Powerbook G4 is the brand new slot loading DVD-R/CD-RW drive. Dubbed “Superdrive,” the drive is a marvel of engineering. First, here are some specs. The drive is a Panasonic mechanism.
Here are read and write speeds for various media:
DVD-R write : 1x
CD-R write : 8x
CD-RW write/rewrite : 4x
CD-ROM read : 24x
DVD-ROM read : 6x
This drive is not without its flaws. Bear in mind that the write speed for DVD-R is half that of the desktop Superdrives in Apple’s Powermac line and a fourth of the new 4x DVD-R desktop drives coming to market right now. 1x translates to approximately an hour to burn an entire 4.7 GB DVD-R. This is a compromise for slim size of the drive, and, speaking for myself, waiting an extra half hour for a DVD to burn isn’t so bad. Also, notably missing from its repertoire is the ability to write to DVD-RW media; its not officially supported by Apple, and in practice, it isn’t recognized as media. Finally, comparing the Superdrive to the cheaper Combo drive, the Combo has 8x CD-RW and slightly faster (8x) DVD read speed. Considering that, and the $200 cheaper price on the Combo drive model, the Superdrive is not necessarily for everyone. If you are considering the 1Ghz model, ask yourself if you ever need to back up large amounts of data or work heavily with video. The Combo is a good way of saving a cool $200 if your answer is no.
The TiBook comes with Apple’s own little DVD authoring app named iDVD. I found it to be very intuitive and easy to use, taking a little over an hour to encode an hours worth of footage and then another hour to burn it to a DVD-R. I’ve burned a couple of DVDs and have so far no coasters.
Connectivity
Lets check out the ports on the Powerbook, from left to right, looking at the Powerbook from behind.
AC Power – plug it in to charge, nuff said
One 400 mbit/sec firewire port – A powered port, it can power a portable hard drive on the Powerbook’s battery.
10/100/1000 Ethernet port – Gigabit Ethernet. Wicked fast. A feature added for professionals in need of serious bandwidth, it offers incredible hard drive bandwidth over Ethernet, again, another feature that no other laptop has
2 USB 1.1 ports
DVI – Allows the Powerbook to use digital flat panels and others as displays
Svideo out – Allows the Powerbook to present straight into an AV system or a television
Audio in – Restored this year, an actual microphone input
V92 modem jack.
Headphone jack.
Finally, the 1 Ghz Powerbook comes with Airport standard with antennas on the sides of the case for 802.11b wireless connectivity. The Airport card is a $100 value, and I think its great that it’s standard. A flaw though, going back all the way to the original Titanium Powerbook, is that the laptop’s reception is mediocre at best. Something to do with the placement of the antennas or the metal casing of the machine does it. The effect is noticeable. At a distance from my wireless point where my iBook would get decent signal, the Titanium would have no signal.
Battery
I mentioned before that the G4 processor is notable among its peers not necessarily for smoking everyone for speed, but for energy consumption and efficiency. Running all out, PC laptops with Pentium 4 processors would eat through their battery power quickly, within one or two hours. The fruit of a more efficient processor is reaped in battery life. Apple claims up to 5 hours of life out of its advanced lithium ion battery. In practice, I average around 3 to 3:30 hours with no processor cycling, and over 4 hours with reduced speed.
Software
The new Powerbook comes with the latest version of Mac OS X, dubbed Jaguar. This isn’t a review of the operating system, but with enhancements like Quartz Extreme, Mac OS X runs oh so smoothly and responsive on the top of the line Titanium.
Bundled with the Powerbook are Apple’s free i-Apps that represent applications that help manage digital media and other nifty digital lifestyle stuff. Here’s a list.
iTunes - MP3 organizer/player/ripper/burner. Really nice way to manage your music
iMovie – Edit video from your camcorder easily
iDVD – I mentioned this before. Innovative little app that takes it from where iMovie leaves off and allows you to create menus like you see on Hollywood produced DVDs and burn your movies
iCal – A calendaring application
iPhoto – basically iTunes for photographs. Organizes, publishes, and orders prints of photos
Some other nifty free stuff that is bundled with the machine :
Internet Explorer – Yea, we all hate it now, but it still comes with the computer
Mail – Apple’s own mail client with very accurate Junk filtering.
Snapz Pro X – a shareware application (that apple was kind enough to unlock for you) that I can only describe as Print Screen on steroids. Takes video of your desktop as well as pictures
GraphicConverter – another shareware that apple kindly paid for. A very powerful image editing application much like Photoshop that handles an incredible number of formats
Faxstf X – fax program
OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner – Paid shareware apps from Omni that handle outlines and diagrams
Altogether there is a very generous amount of software bundled with this computer, a lot of which Apple was kind enough to remove shareware limitations. No games like its iMac and iBook brethren, however, since it is still aimed toward professionals.
Conclusion
Ultimately, what matters most is the kind of experience that you get from using a machine like this. In the time that I’ve been using this laptop, I’ve thought to myself often, “this is how computing should be for everyone.” Its got bleeding edge features like the slot load Superdrive that you’ll have a hard time finding anywhere else. Its got a superb, easy to use operating system and superb applications like iDVD so that a user can put to use those bleeding edge features. Finally, the laptop has a sense of style that is noticibly missing in almost everyone else’s equation. It is truly a BMW among laptops. Beemers have great performance, but its refined style shows an attention to detail of the creators, much like this Powerbook shows Apple’s. The Powerbook is easily the most balanced, most well thought out machine on the market today, and take it from someone who has put it through its paces : it’s a joy.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2999
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G4
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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iBen
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Location: Marlborough, MA
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