"Bronze" PowerBook G3: luggable but nice
Written: Sep 28 '99 (Updated Sep 28 '99)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Fast, bright screen
Cons: awkward keyboard, still too heavy
|
|
|
| pawliger's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G3 (M7308LL/A) Mac Notebook |
I've had the 400MHz G3 PowerBook (also known as the "bronze" PowerBook due to the bronze/brown color of the translucent keyboard keys, or the "Lombard" due to the machine's code name before it was released) for three months now. It's my first portable and overall it's pretty good. Though two pounds lighter than its predecessor, the 300MHz G3 "Wall Street" PowerBook, at about 7 pounds with one removable Lithium Ion battery and the removable CD/DVD drive installed it can still can weigh down my shoulders even when it's the only heavy thing in my briefcase.
The machine has two "device bays" located under the keyboard to the left and right. Each of them (or both) can hold a battery, while the right hand one can hold the removable CD/DVD drive or any of a number of third-party removable peripherals such as a large-capacity hard disk or multi-format floppy/Zip reading "SuperDrive".
Battery life for my usage (software development and document authoring or watching DVDs on plane trips) was about 2-3 hours for a single battery. A nice feature if you have a spare battery is the ability to "hot swap" the battery without shutting down and rebooting the machine. You simply put the machine to sleep (via a menu pick or by simply closing the machine up) then swap the battery and wake it up. Very fast and very simple. There is also a standard control panel to set up different power consumption options for when the machine is plugged in vs. running on battery. So you can have the screen dim and have the processor cycle down after 5 minutes of non-use under battery power, but keep the screen on and the processor at full speed when running under wall power.
The keyboard is a bit problematic for me. The width is about the same as a standard Mac keyboard, but since I touch type and the keys have much less travel and have smaller keycaps that the standard keyboard, I often hit multiple keys at once. The keyboard sports an "inverted T" set of up/down/left/right keys to the lower right of the keyboard, but PageUp, PageDown/Home/End have to be accessed via a "function shift" key at the extreme lower left of the keyboard. Since I use the Home and End keys often, it's too bad Apple didn't use the remaining space in the inverted T above the left and right keys for Home and End - those spaces currently just have dead space (no keys at all).
The screen is a very bright and crisp 14.1" TFT with a fixed resolution of 1024x768 at the "millions of colors" (24 bits per pixel) settings. Another nice feature is this PowerBook, unlike the previous model, come with enough video memory to use a television or second monitor as an extended part of the screen. (Previous models had to use the second screen as a mirror of the first.) So if you want to watch a DVD on your TV, you can put the machine to sleep, plug in a TV to the S-VHS plug on the back, then wake the machine up. It will automatically recognize the second monitor or TV and reconfigure the screen setup on the fly. Very slick.
The fit and finish and design of the machine are better than most laptops, but not up to Apple's normally exacting standards. The machine latch feels flimsy - I would have rather had the latchless closure of the newer iBook. The eject levers for the device/battery bays are located right at the front corners of the machine - far too easy to accidentally pull as you pick the machine up or move it on your desk. This led to lost work several times as I essentially "pulled the plug" from my running machine a few times.
Software-wise, the machine comes with MacOS 8.6 and has all sorts of nice setup "wizards" for connecting to the net, configuring the machine for AppleTalk network use, etc. It also comes bundled with web browsers, a "personal web server" and other net niceties. The installation CD also has a nice extra option to restore the machine and disk to the exact condition it was in when it was delivered - very handy if you completely wreck the hard drive, or when you want to sell the machine and want to make sure it's wiped clean of your files but is still usable.
Rounding things out are a nice set of connectors on the back. There are hookups for stereo sound out, two USB ports, SCSI (unfortunately only via a $50 Apple-only SCSI cable), Ethernet, VGA video and S-Video. There is also a built-in 56K modem.
Standard memory configuration for this model is 64MB RAM and 6GB disk, quite adequate for everything short of video production work. As usual for Macs, the machine is quite pricey vs other comprably performing Windows notebooks, but does include everything you could want right out of the box, so depending on your needs the cost could start to even out.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
pawliger
|
|
Member: M Pawliger
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.