STILL a Fruity Mac: Lemon
Written: Jan 25 '04
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Pros: Stylish, beautiful, sleek, fast, powerful.
Cons: Temperamental in OS9, loud, runs hot, very fragile
The Bottom Line: A beautiful, yet temperamental beast.
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| submerge76's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G4 15.2 in. (M8362LL/A) Mac Notebo... |
I have a love/hate relationship with my Ti Apple PowerBookG4 over the past 2.5 years. As a graphic designer and electronic musician, I'm a slave to Apple. I've been using Apple Computers since the 2nd grade waay back in the Apple IIe days. People can laugh at the Performa series, but mine lasted from 1995-2001. It moved 5 times, and was used in several smokey venues for my electronic music shows. It was a little workhorse.
In one case, my TI laptop has certainly served me well. Its traveled with me around the country. I've done hundreds of hours of chatting and emailing and web surfing. I've designed web pages for clients and made some great music on it.
THE GOOD
Object De Arte first of all, the Ti laptop is simply one of the most beautifully designed laptops till this day. Thank god for Apple's Industrial Design team, it's probably half the reason they are still in the race. Its sexy, sleek and sophisticated. In simple words, it just LOOKS f*cking cool. I felt like James Bond when I first got mine. Its the AUDI TT of the computer world. Its no wonder that you see them as props in tons of movies, home furnishing catalogs and tv shows. Even Ms Carrie Bradshaw on Sex In The City has one.
That SCREEN! One of the best features of this laptop is its huge screen. Up to that point, I had never seen a screen that wide on a lap top.And the color and resolution is stunning.
Lightning Fast I have one of the first G4 towers built in 1999/2000 and the TI Laptop blew it away in all aspects of performance. Web pages downloaded quickly. Photoshop opened and performed at blazing speeds. Copying to discs was also a quick breeze.
I Tunes, I Photosome great extras on the computer. iTunes is probably THE best digital music player out there, and very easy to use. Kudos to Apple on that.
Upgradeable The TI powerbook does give you room to grow with a pci slot, video and monitor outs, along with ethernet and modem inputs.
DVD The super drive was nice..while it worked. Don't like the in flight movie?Just bring your own DVD on that long flight to Europe.
THE WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE
No Audio Inputs
This is a problem with all Apple Computers. Why does apple refuse to put RCA stereo audio input/outputs on their computers. This is where PCs win hands down.
Especially since they are supposed to be the big music champions with iPod, iTunes, the iTunes Store, and their aquisition of Emagic, a music software company. Yes the G5 FINALLY has an optical audio input, but its a day late and a dollar short. And YES you can buy a USB audio interface, but that only uses up the one of only two USB inputs.
This maybe a small point for non musicians or music lovers, but crucial for me. That means either buying an audiocard OR a usb interface.
Dual Fire Wire It would have been nice to have two FireWire ports like on the G4 towers.
More Software maybe I'm greedy, but I remember my Performa being bundled with a lot of software, including AppleWorks word processor. Here you have mostly Internet software, along with iTunes and iPhoto.
THE UGLY
Those Small Speakers I know its a laptop (and the problem was corrected on the 2nd generation Ti laptops) but those small speakers are totally worthless.
Loud Fan, Runs Hot Dont use this thing with shorts or a skirt and have it literally in your lap or you'll have to call the local fire department. It runs VERY HOT. Good for the winter months I suppose.
Temperamental OS9 hopefully most of you have switched to the much more stable OSX by now, but OS9 on my computer was a dud. I had random shutdowns and freezes constantly. IE 5 was very prone to freezing up. Thankfully OSX fixed all these problems for me.
That DVD DriveI was VERY mad when my dvd/cd-r drive broke only 6 MONTHS after owning the thing. Horrible.
Power plug Had to replace my power adaptor. Their is actually a class action lawsuit going on about this. Looks like it happend to a lot of people.
Fragile Keeps a lickin and Keeps on Tickin is not a phrase this laptop knows. Its beautiful exterior scratches easily. There are reports of the hinges to the screen breaking off (though it hasnt happend to me) The paing on the mouse pad has worn away after use. The Space Bar on my unit has broken. The frame of my laptop is slightly cracked in one place. This thing may be beautiful, but it really wasnt designed for wear and tear. This could be bad for business travelers.
HD too small I have the 10gb model...entirely too small for someone like me with large graphic files and a lot of MP3s.
OSX I love OSX, but its a money trap. Beacause you have to upgrade all your old programs to the new platform. This is very expensive! Also the upgrade to Panther is too expensive. I would pay maybe 60 bucks, but Panther costs as much as the original OSX did.
Sony Digital Camera Woes my sony digital camera worked with the USB hookup, then STOPPED working when I upgraded to OSX.
THE PRICE as with all Apple products, its TOO EXPENSIVE. Yeah its beautiful to look at, but there are uglier, yet cheaper PCs that do the same thing at cheaper cost. At least you look cool in the office/airplane/train with this thing. You better be after you shelled out 2500 bucks for it. The AppleCare plan is also too expensive in my opinion. Their are also rumors of customer service nightmares. Apple Stores are still not as visible as say a Gateway store is in America.
I'm hoping the kinks were worked out in version 2 of the Ti laptop. With hesitation recommend the laptop, but be ready for a few headaches.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2500
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G4
Processor speed: 401-500
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
submerge76
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Location: Chicago,IL
Reviews written: 59
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
Electronic Musician and Graphic Designer In Chicago Suburbs
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