Still Sleek and Still Sexy...The story of a middle aged Powerbook G3.
Written: Aug 11 '02
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Pros: Stylish, great display, stable with highly respectable performance
Cons: OUCH! it gets hot!
The Bottom Line: This machine has grown old gracefully, still very capable despite being superceded. Delighted with my purchase.
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| adicarter's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G3 (M7308LL/A) Mac Notebook |
Ok folks, here’s how the story goes.
Once upon a time Adi got into computers, he started building his own and generally began a learning curve that would last up until this present day. He would upgrade and update while slowly but surely gathering knowledge on the subject. He would begin using computers for more and more things and on a more and more regular basis.
Eventually he would even switch platforms, leaving behind the Wintel camp in order to go the way of the Mac (it made sense for the heavy load of music apps I wanted to run at the time).
Adi however would never be truly satisfied, sure he got through his fair share of desktop machines and a veritable plethora of PDAs (techno junkie that he is). However one thing he never seemed to get round to owning was a decent laptop.
Until now…
I had decided that I could finally justify a laptop, I was doing more and more techie stuff as well needing a machine with me for the times when I could sit down and do some work for my part time degree. Sometimes at work and at University the machines were in use when I needed one so I finally bit the bullet and got myself the machine I had always promised myself.
Now although the machine I have bought is a G3 Powerbook it isn’t necessarily one that falls into the ePinion category. The model I am currently running here is a venerable 266 Mhz PowerPC jogging along with a modest 128Mb of RAM installed.
I picked this particular model up on eBay, the price was right and I was in a position to buy it so I dived straight in (of course a better model came along straight after I had made the purchase but ain’t that life for you).
Since making the purchase a few months ago I can honestly say the Powerbook experience has been a happy one. Right from the outset I’ve been pretty impressed by the way this ageing wonder has performed in an time where Apple seem keen to leave behind anything that has an age bracket older than six months.
Starting from the outside this model is one that most people will be familiar with. You know the one, as seen in Sex and The City and I believe Mission Impossible to name but two examples of product placement from the Apple camp.
Despite what’s under the hood on the surface this machine still has it in the looks department. Sure it ain’t all white like the iBook or all shiny like it’s younger more dynamic sibling the Powerbook G4 but all the same, as laptops goes this is still a sexy piece of kit.
Finished in traditional laptop black this machine screams subtlety in the appearance stakes, all sleek lines and discreet curves what you have here is something of a design classic. Embossed with the white Apple logo on the hood (O.K it’s upside down, but hey! It glows in the dark) this machine remains a killer in the looks stakes.
But before I bore you with my ritual new toy drool fest I guess you folks might want to know a little bit about the machine itself. Well as standard it comes with the 14.1” screen. For starters that’s a boon on some of the older laptops I have had the chance to play with over the years.
The display itself is crystal clear with excellent visual reproduction at higher resolution rates. Thankfully this generous display real estate means that I can work on this machine without my eyes feeling like they’ve been poked with sharp sticks. That put paid to my initial reservations about going from my desktop 17” monitor down to a size I said I would never work with again.
The keyboard is one of the last of the “black” models before they started the major upgrades to the Powerbook series. First impressions aren’t that hot, the keys respond in an so sensitive way to the touch but if you find yourself using a desktop keyboard all the time, I figure that a period of adjustment is always going to be necessary.
Still, the keyboard does remain my one worry on this piece of kit. Although it’s been faultless so far under my tender mercies it does look a little bit on the flimsy side. Another thing is the way it sits on the machine, in my eyes it always looks like it’s sat a little proud of the casing. However I am assured that this is the case with most of these models. What you have to remember is the keyboard on these models is the entrance to the guts of the computer when it comes to upgrading, I guess that explains why it’s never going to sit as flush as it should.
Complimenting the keyboard is the customary Apple trackpad, a little weird to get used to if you are a dedicated mouse user but I found that within a relatively short space of time I was even using the pad for ‘double clicking’ options. If anything this made the way I work that little bit faster.
Just above the keyboard and below the monitor are the Powerbook’s speakers, these are tiny affairs and in truth I expected no real quality here. However in truth while I couldn’t live with their output as my main source of entertainment they do the job for those times when you just need to have music there and then. As a result I keep a little chunk of my iTunes library on here…just in case.
Take a look round the back of the ‘book and you find the all important ports for connecting your machine to the outside world. This model has the olde worlde ADB expansion port on the back. For those folks who don’t go back before USB this was Apple’s special little port that allowed the user to hook up a host of external devices “back in the day”. Things like mice and keyboards being the norm etc, although I can’t see it being a port I’m going to make use of very often.
Next up is the serial port once again it’s the round mini DIN adapter style that was designed for printers and external modems. Although this is another piece of history that Apple no longer places on it’s newer machines I have found it handy so far when I’ve had a need to connect to some older networks with this machine (Appletalk/PhoneNet etc).
After the serial port comes the all important Ethernet port, thankfully this model uses the common RJ45 telephone style adapter which means I’m not left out in the cold when it comes to connecting to more modern networks, it’s a god send as well because all though Appletalk connection over a serial connection might be quick and easy to set up, they are s-l-o-w in comparison.
You also get a SCSI port thrown in as well, this is handy for file transfer between Mac’s when a network isn’t necessarily available. The Macintosh OS even has a laptop friendly ‘Target Disk’ mode where the Powerbook forgets it’s a laptop for a while and becomes a glorified external hard drive for you to dump all that ‘junk you simply have to carry around’ with you.
Alongside that is an S-Video output port, once again this is another example of legacy hardware. Nowadays people use FireWire but then again I didn’t buy this machine for video editing so I daresay I’ll never use it anyway.
Finally in this bank of in’s and out’s there is a standard VGA adapter for the times when you want to use an external monitor or projector. Thankfully this port is still common place and you should find more monitors than not should work with this machine.
There is of course also the charging port which is self explanatory and the standard microphone in jack and audio out jacks which allow you to connect your laptop to a stereo or any other such audio device. Essential for me, I like my music loud!
On the left hand side of the machine you have a PCMCIA slot which is an essential item for a machine that doesn’t sport the latest in groovy input and output connections. Thanks to this slot you can stem the passing of time and the inevitable obsolescence by installing a PCMCIA USB/Firewire card. I haven’t installed one yet but I have seen a Macally branded USB card working fine in an identical model so the modern world of computing isn’t out of your reach yet.
Below that is the modem jack for the internal 56k V.90 modem. It comes with a flip down lid to protect it from dirt and dust. The modem itself runs fine giving me a comparable rate to the modem on my desktop machine, although in all honesty I have had more line drops than it’s deskbound brother.
The battery itself comes next, the Powerbook I bought has a battery in decent condition. You can check it’s status even when the machine is off by pressing a slightly recessed button on the battery itself. This shows a funky green series of LED lights to indicate the status of the battery itself.
In terms of battery life I’ve found myself hammering the machine with modem activity and CD’s and getting around two hours out of the machine before it dies. Incidentally under Mac OS X you get slightly less time but I’m sure that could be due to the increased CPU overheads on the new operating system. But saying that with sensible use throughout a working day I never find myself in danger of pulling a flat battery scenario.
On the other side of the machine is the Powerbook’s removable CD ROM drive. The drive itself is a 20 x model which gives the user a more than acceptable rate of transfer during use. Another bonus is that unlike many CD drives I have encountered this one runs almost silently, another unexpected bonus point.
Although removable media is nothing new in the laptop world I do think it’s a good idea. Thanks to this I can (if I so wish) install a Zip drive or a CD burner or even a DVD drive. If I’m going to be away from the mains for an extended period of time, I can ditch all these options and even install a second battery for extended power on long trips.
Internally when I bought this machine I knew there was one item onboard that was just not going to cut the mustard and that was the hard drive. The stock 4 gig hard drive just wasn’t up to my needs so that was the first thing to get ripped out and replaced. Thankfully upgrading the drive is easy enough if you have a little know how (if you haven’t then please take it an Apple authorized dealer for an upgrade).
I picked up a new IBM Travelstar 20 gig drive and installed it myself and now find myself with adequate storage for my needs.
The machine itself is running OS 9.2 and OS X (10.1). This was about the only time the Powerbook had me tearing my hair out (a little). Although this model falls into the category of being OS X compatible for some reason unlike the later models you have to partition your hard drive to install (OS X has to sit on the first 8 gig of any given partition, an oddity for this model I believe).
I was struggling to perform this particular upgrade for a while but now I’m happy to say OS X resides on one partition while OS 9 resides on a second (they each have more or less 10 gig each).
So how does this venerable machine perform running Apple’s latest and arguably greatest operating system. Well, I have to say I’m quite frankly astonished. I anticipated performance that would have been sluggish at best, however OS X boots quickly and so far has shown impeccable manners. Sure some of the funkier visual effects slow give the machine a slight (and I do mean slight) visual lag but they can be turned off easily enough.
All the apps I have installed under OS X perform with a real burst of speed and responsiveness I didn’t expect. Of course there are times when I need the ‘Classic’ environment but incredibly enough the machine doesn’t choke when I start putting these extra demands on it.
In fact right now I’m typing this on a classic version of Office booted from inside OS X. Now I might be easily impressed but all this from a machine sporting a meager 128 Mb. That’s Cool!
Of course for every upturn you get with a product there has to be a downside. Now in all honesty I can’t think of many, sure the lack of ‘modern’ ports might needle some folks but don’t forget this machine is getting on in years and if you want the latest I/O ports you are more than catered for thanks to the aforementioned PCMCIA slots.
One negative aspect of this machine that has to be mentioned however is the heat. This machine kicks out a lot of it during extended periods of usage, at it’s worst you can sometimes feel the heat rising from the keyboard or if you are typing wearing shorts you can almost go for the burn, that was the first surprise this machine threw at me, so the trick is to keep the machine well ventilated during use (in other words don’t use it while it’s rested on soft furnishings, carpets etc.)
Apart from that all I can do really is heap praise on the machine, the dedicated power users might find that a lowly 266Mhz processor is a little on the sluggish side but I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve used this machine as part of a studio setup since I bought it and since that time I’ve run a number of software based synthesizers on it. All without any problems whatsoever (that type of software is notorious for being CPU and resource hungry). I guess the machine also might weigh in a little heavy for some but with a good carrying case you won’t notice that (maybe some kind of built in carrying handle would have been nice a la iBook mark one) but these are minor quibbles.
Bottom line : If you can justify a laptop and you don’t need bleeding edge specifications then this could prove to be your very own ‘little engine that could’. This model (and it’s immediate successors) are showing up on eBay pretty much all the time now and represent affordable mobile computing that can still hold a light with some of the more modern machines.
Cheers
Adi
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 600
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G3
Processor speed: 201-300
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
adicarter
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Member: Adrian Carter
Location: Sheffield, UK
Reviews written: 101
Trusted by: 15 members
About Me:
A lifelong fan of anything electronic. If it goes beep, let me see it first!
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