Sublime Mobile Computing
Written: Jan 13 '05
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Pros: Beautiful, small, well-designed, amazing keyboard, best OS currently available
Cons: Could use more DVD options, one button mouse, minor details
The Bottom Line: This is the greatest computer that I have ever used. I cannot give a higher recommendation.
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| utchemmajor's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G4 15.2 in. (M8980LL/A) Mac Notebo... |
After ogling the macs in the mac lab on my campus and campus computer store, I finally made the jump and got a 15'' Powerbook G4 and I don't think that it could possibly make me any happier. This has been one of the most joyous experiences I have ever had with a computer.
Starting at the beginning, I ordered this a little before Christmas and put several upgrades into it: an extra 256 megs of RAM, the backlight keyboard, and a Superdrive DVD-R burner. The price was a bit higher than I would have paid for a Windows XP based laptop, but after playing with this thing for several weeks, I have to come to the realization that it was easily worth the extra money.
Once It arrived at my house, I opened the gorgeous packaging to see a flawless, aluminum Powerbook nestled in several layers of styrofoam and plastic protective wrapping. My first thoughts as I touched the computer for the first time concerned how remarkably beautiful and light the machine was. The entire enclosure is perfectly smooth, silver metal masterpiece of design. The unit is amazingly light, considering the screen size. All of the computer's ports are lined up on either side of the keyboard, which makes accessing them incredibly easy. There is no fumbling around the back of the machine to plug in a mouse, for example, like I had to do on my old Dell. The computer is a sexy 1.1 inches thick, 9.5 inches tall, and 13.7 inches wide, much smaller and more compact than any other laptop with similar features on the market.
Opening the lid, the setup is designed to be perfectly symmetrical. They keyboard is right where it should be: the center. Some laptops by Compaq or other inferior brands will have a larger keyboard with superfluous keys that throw off the balance of the keyboard to the left, but this is not the case on the Powerbook. The keyboard itself is one of the best that I have ever used, on a desktop or a laptop, in my entire life. There is a perfect amount of pressing distance with every key, there is absolutely no flexing, and the keyboard itself is large and feels wonderful under your fingers. I never have a problem with accidentally grazing the touchpad mouse with my wrist as I am typing, a problem I constantly had to keep in mind while using my previous laptop. When you turn out the lights, there is an ambient light sensor that will adjust the backlighting on the keyboard, which is truly beautiful. I don't know if it was intentional, but when you are typing, it makes it look like flashes of light move across the keyboard with every keystroke...just jaw-dropping.
There are speakers on either side off the keyboard, with an on/off switch toward the top of the right speaker-area (the computer's one asymmetrical feature). Although I almost never use the speakers (I prefer headphones), they sound very good for laptop speakers. It has a much better mid-range than I have ever heard on a portable, but don't deliver stunning base by any means.
Turning on the computer and getting everything set up was easy enough for my computer-illiterate grandmother to do. Getting this thing up and working on my wireless router took seconds, literally. Software wise, the computer comes with all of Apple's 'i' applications, including iTunes, iMovie, iCal, iChat, iDVD, iSync, and iPhoto, plus Mail, Sherlock, Text Editor, Garage Band, Address Book, and Safari. Aside from needing MS Office (which I got very cheaply from the campus store), the included software was more than enough to keep me very happy. Tying everything together is Macintosh OSX Panther, the best operating system I have ever used. The folks at Apple are years and years ahead of where Microsoft in terms of general usability and design. Every operating system should be this stable. I think I have perhaps one or two individual app crashes in three weeks of use and NEVER a whole system shutdown. Perhaps because OSX represents such a small number of computers worldwide, I never have to worry about getting some virus or having to see some stupid piece of spyware.
I think the most important feature that enhances user friendliness is Expose, a feature that scales open windows so that they can all be seen on screen. No more endless Alt-Tabbing like in Windows XP. Touch F9 and every window on screen comes thumbnailed. Press F10 and only the windows of the topmost application are shown. Press F11 and you get to see your desktop. All of it is animated and genuinely impressive to see for the first time. Expose makes using my computer so much faster and intuitive that it is difficult to back to my desktop and have to search through every screen on my computer. I cannot overemphasize how much easier this makes basic day-to-day computer use.
As for the rest of the included applications:
iChat- the best version of AIM out there. It has lots of logical advancements that AOL needs to consider integrating into every version of AIM.
iPhoto- great basic photo editor and photo manager.
iTunes- the best way to sync your iPod and a fantastic online music store.
Mail- great POP3 mail retrieving program, with a good spell-checker in compose mode.
Garage Band- Honestly, I don't know much about composing music, but I have seen others do some really nifty stuff with it.
iCal- Great simple calendar program.
Sherlock- An amazingly useful little app that lets me look at flight times, do an internet search, look up a word in a dictionary or thesaurus, find movie times, and translate something into just about any language you can think of.
Safari- the best, fastest, cleanest web-browser that I have ever used.
iMovie- I used this to make a quicktime video of a slideshow of pics of me opening my Powerbook for the first time to send out to people, with cool titles and transitions...and they loved it. Very cool.
iDVD- I burned several home movies to a DVD that was perfectly playable on my home DVD player.
Address Book- nothing fancy, but keeps track of all of my contacts and integrates into iChat and Mail.
Preview- an all-purpose image and PDF viewer. One of my favorite things about OSX is that I can print anything, seriously ANYTHING, into a PDF that I can send to just about everyone on the planet.
The screen that you view everything with is absolutely stunning. It is a widescreen LCD monitor with a resolution of 1280 x 854. Some laptops have higher resolution screens, but I am sure that I have never seen a screen this bright or colorful in my life, even paired with a desktop machine. There isn't a single dead pixel.
Concerning battery life and heat, the Powerbook is certainly acceptable in both areas. I messed with the power settings to give me maximum battery life by scaling down processor speed, dimming the screen, completely turning off the bluetooth, and ejecting the disc from the DVD drive and I got three hours and forty minutes of continuous power, while using the internet on my wireless LAN. There are better battery life numbers out there on other computers, but three hours and forty minutes is certainly nothing to poo-poo. The bottom of the case gets warm, but never what I would consider to be "hot" unless you are doing some seriously processor-intensive tasks, in which case you should probably set the computer on a desk or table.
So could things be improved with this laptop? Certainly. I wish that the DVD burner was faster and that it burned on a greater variety of discs, such as DVD+R and DVD+/- R. I wish Apple had offered higher resolution screens as an option. I wish a basic image creation application was included. I sure do wish Apple would start including two-button trackpad mice, especially now that OSX supports two button mice and have drop down menus that require a ctrl-(click) to open. I wish that Safari had extensions, like Firefox has. I wish I could place the trashcan on the desktop, rather than keeping it in the dock.
But regardless of that, this is still the finest computer that I have ever used. I have found that it is the small touches that only Apple would integrate that please me the most. For example, when you close the lid and the computer goes to sleep, a little light on the front dims on and off, mimicking the breathing of humans when they are sleeping. When you plug the computer in with the AC adapter, there is a little light right around the end of the plug that glows yellow when charging and green when charged. When you open the screen, the magnetic piece that keeps the unit closed retracts into the case, keeping what is usually an eyesore on other portables hidden. The paint on the keyboard perfectly matches the metal case, something I sense somebody worked hard to match perfectly. In the OS, it takes literally one second to switch from user to user. When you open the computer, it takes literally one second to wake up from sleep. The icon for iCal displays the correct date in the dock. It is these, and thousands of other details that make the computer special, unique...mine...
I can't imagine being any happier with a computer. I would recommend this to anyone who has any interest in taking computer-use into a nirvana-like level of joy.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2100
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G4
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: SuperDisk
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
utchemmajor
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Reviews written: 1
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