Stunning
Written: Feb 18 '04 (Updated Oct 23 '04)
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Pros: Gorgeous aluminum case, small and light, stable OS
Cons: I hate touchpads, 90-day tech support is a joke
The Bottom Line: The most beautiful laptop on the planet is also a versatile machine for the traveller. Only the $500 cheaper though equally capable iBook takes away from the mini-PowerBook.
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| lawman67's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G4 12.1 in. (M9007LL/A) Mac Notebo... |
I’ve been reviewing laptop computers here at epinions for a few years now, including two reviews of Apple Macintosh systems. Those Apple laptops, however, have been very old models that I once owned and used, but are no longer anywhere near current. To put my Macintosh experience into perspective, I was a very advanced Mac user between 1993 and 1998, and even worked as a Tech Support trainer for Apple from 1995 to 1996. When I bought my first Mac, a PowerBook 145B, System 7.1 was the latest thing, and vastly superior to Windows 3.1, its primary competition. At the end of my Mac days in 1998, OS 8.6 was still more advanced than Windows 98 or NT4, but the gap had closed.
I switched from Mac to PC in 1998 simply because I needed a new laptop and Apple didn’t have anything acceptable (I require an Active Matrix TFT screen) for under $2000. Windows was clunky, but by the 1999 release of Windows 2000, stability had actually swung back in the PC’s favor, while Macs became cooler, but less stable through the various releases of OS9.
Now I’ll state plainly that I’ve been very intrigued by OSX’s promise of UNIX stability and Macintosh polish, but until recently, I just couldn’t justify another switch. I’ll explain below how “switching” isn’t as simple as Apple would have you believe, but suffice it to say that OSX has, in my opinion, been a work-in-progress until the release of OSX 10.2 “Jaguar” last year. Jaguar was the first version of OSX that offered true compatibility with the Windows world, as well as sufficient insulation from the confusing mass that is UNIX underneath that a knowledge of command lines and Xfree86 wasn’t required.
Well, its been a year, and Jaguar has been improved upon by OSX 10.3 “Panther”. Like the second production year of a car design, Apple’s had time to find and kill the bugs while polishing the interface and adding a few more features. Finally I consider OSX to be “ready”, and so, here I am, the proud new owner of a PowerBook G4 12”. Actually, that second year car production analogy applies to the hardware as well. I lusted for the “Little PowerBook” last year, but stories of case warpage from the heat and other reliability issues made me wait for the first revision. My PowerBook is the 1Ghz ׀nd Edition” model, and from what I’ve seen so far, just like the OS, the hardware bugs have been found and fixed.
I’ll start with the hardware. The 12” aluminum PowerBook is simply gorgeous. Just like with last year’s model, everywhere you look there is smooth aluminum in a matt finish, with no edges, doors, latches or anything else protruding to snag on clothes or bags. The computer is also tiny, even smaller than the very compact 12” iBook that I came very close to buying for $400 less.
This machine is remarkably well equipped. It has a DVD/CDRW combo drive that loads though a slot instead of a tray (very cool), a pair of USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire 400 port. There is a mini DVI video output, and what almost every iBook owner into music wants, a microphone input. Perhaps my favorite feature, though, is not any port or control, but rather the fact that every port is lined up neatly on the left side of the case. This is wonderful, and puts cable-clutter to an end.
Apple has always taken multimedia seriously, and the amazing DVD playback quality of this machine shows their experience. What is perhaps even more impressive than the picture quality is the quality of the sound. The 12” PowerBook has three speakers, two tweeters and one midrange, which does wonders for getting full and rich sound out of such a small laptop. These three speakers reflect sound off the screen, and are just a but bit more justification for my $400 as the iBook has only two, tinny-sounding speakers above the keyboard.
The tiny PowerBook is fitted with a gorgeous 12” LCD that while not as vivid as the 15 and 17” PowerBook models, is still far better than anything in the PC camp. I can only describe the screen as jewel-like, it is that nice. Of course, the considerably cheaper iBook shares THE EXACT SAME SCREEN, but I’ll save the iBook for another review (I borrowed one for a week before I bought my PB). The touchpad is as good as a touchpad can be, which for me means it is horrible, but I am one of those weird people who likes IBM’s eraserhead mice. Still, while I find the trackpad awkward to use, it is accurate enough and I’ll adapt to it, or buy a Bluetooth mouse.
Bluetooth mouse? Oh yeah, the 12” PB comes standard with Bluetooth, which in addition to keyboards and mice, can also connect to other computers, PDAs and cell phones. With a cell phone and Bluetooth you can do cool things like program phone numbers and dial calls, but more importantly, you can even surf the web.
I don’t surf using my cell phone, not because it is difficult, but rather because I also bought an AirPort Extreme card. My PowerBook is the base model, so I had to install the card myself, which following the directions in the PowerBook’s manual took me all of two minutes with no tools other than a quarter (to remove the battery). Finally, I still only have the 256MB of ram that came in the computer, but I plan to upgrade to 512MB this weekend. My usage is modest and 256MB so far feels fine, but with OSX I tend to forget to quit programs and end up with a dock-full of running apps, making more ram a good idea.
The reason I forget to quit applications is because when you close a program’s window, you are only closing that document or project, not the program itself. This isn’t better or worse than how Windows behaves closing the program when the last document is closed, just different. Back when I was a Mac user in the 1990s (this behavior has a long history) I thought the Mac way was more intuitive, but after 6 years of Windows my brain has been rewired to close windows instead of quitting apps.
Other things that aren’t as intuitive to me in OSX as they are in Windows (or even OS8) is file sharing. Of course use will breed familiarity, but for now, I’m still looking for everything, which is in logical places, but not where I expect to find it. Panther really does have every bit as much power and capability as Windows XP, its just that I skipped the last 6 years of Mac evolution and have been left behind in terms of my knowledge.
Honestly, I expected that OSX would be easier to get comfortable with. Windows in its modern versions has borrowed so much from the older Mac OS (7, 8, and 9) that switching from OS8.6 to Windows 98 was very easy. OSX is UNIX, and UNIX is NOT user friendly. That OSX is as intuitive as it is says a lot about the quality of Apple’s interface developers, but I think that Windows XP is perhaps a bit easier to figure out, at least for me.
That brings me back to the whole “switch” thing. Apple’s advertisement suggests that it is as easy to switch from a PC to a Mac as it is from a PC to a newer PC. This is simply not so. First, you need to replace your PC software with Mac versions. That wasn’t too bad, as most of what I use is Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office for Macintosh is very similar to Microsoft Office for Windows, similar enough that I feel right at home here. Internet Explorer is fine, if a bit slow on the Mac, but Apple’s Safari browser is fast, stable and, in my opinion, makes Internet Explorer with its many security holes a thing of the past for me.
What was VERY difficult was getting my email from my PC into my Mac, a process that even after a week I’m still busy with. I use Microsoft Outlook 2000, and there simply is no way to directly export from Outlook 2000 into a file format that Entourage v.X can read. Other programs integrate better, with Word v.X Mac using the exact same file format as Word for Windows (versions 97-2003 share file format), thus not requiring any form of file format translation, which can destroy complex formatting.
So what else is there that this switcher finds interesting? Well, peripherals just work better on the Mac. When I plugged my digital camera in for the first time on my Windows XP PC, it was recognized instantly, and then I was prompted for the CD that came with it, followed a number of prompts, and 10 minutes later my camera worked perfectly. That is plug and play. Sometimes a device, such as my camera, requires an external driver, sometimes, as in the case of my scanner, it simply loads the driver from Windows’ cache of drivers. One thing always in common though, is that the first time the device is used, you will have between 30 seconds and a few minutes delay, and almost always will have to configure how the device behaves.
With the Mac running Panther, things were much the same as in Windows XP, only faster, and without the need to configure. When I plugged in that same camera the Mac simply recognized it and downloaded the pictures directly into iPhoto. The same with my scanner, plugged it in, and it suddenly worked. Ditto my USB 2.0 DVD burner (the reason I didn’t buy the PB with built-in superdrive), which simply worked when I plugged it in.
Back to the hardware. As I described earlier, the PowerBook 12” is simply gorgeous, easily among the most attractive, dare I say sexy laptops on the market today. Of course, there are some very nice PC laptops out there, not to mention other Apple laptops that rival its beauty. The iBook is also a gorgeous laptop that is only a smidge larger and heavier, with an equally stylish white plastic case that is less sophisticated, but more playful. The laptop this is replacing, an IBM ThinkPad X21 is also a very stylish machine that gives this PowerBook a run for its styling dollars.
The ThinkPad is about the same size, only .2” thinner and 1.5lbs lighter. To save that size and weight, it makes do without a built-in optical drive. Still, in its 3lb case IBM managed to put an equally bright 12” TFT screen (Windows XP isn’t as pretty as OSX’s Aqua, but the LCD itself is equal), a slightly smaller but perhaps more comfortable keyboard, and what matters most for me, the eraserhead mouse that I really like. To that it adds equally exotic construction from titanium, only IBM in its conservative fashion dresses its Thinkpads in basic black. The ThinkPad look is formal, attractive and an icon in the computing world. Apple’s metallic case is much the same, though in a flashier way. In my opinion, Apple’s current laptop lineup are about the classiest computers on the markup, though the advantage isn’t as great as it used to be.
So with the difficulties involved in switching platforms and the expense of not only replacing my computer, but replacing software as well, why did I buy a new PowerBook G4? Mydoom, a32.swen, sobig.f, IloveU, Melissa, klez, you know them and love them as much as I do. I was a very content PC user last year, and still tolerated it just two months ago, but since the new year, my daily inbox load of a32.swen (fake Microsoft service pack) emails has gone from perhaps 20 to over 300, and at 142k each, even with DSL it takes forever to get my email. I would disable attachments but I regularly receive documents and photos as attachments that I need for work. I use filtering but the script-kiddies sending this shlt always seem to be a step ahead of the filters.
No, using a Mac will not clear my inbox. What it will do is take away the worry that perhaps despite all of my antivirus software and diligence about attachments, that perhaps one of these intelligent criminals somehow got through and infected MY computer. With a Mac I am not invulnerable, but the odds are FAR better as there are almost no viruses written for the Mac platform.
Last week’s announcement that much of Microsoft’s NT/2000 source code was stolen and released to the public is equally terrifying, and already four known “malware” products have been unleashed taking advantage of what the criminals learned through that code. The PowerBook G4, for me, was peace of mind.
Finally I’d like to address value, and this is one area where unlike the past, Apple has really taken the lead. My G4 at 1Ghz is fast and powerful enough for anything except gaming and hard core video editing (the faster PowerBooks are great for that). Compared to the current ultralight Centrino laptops, the G4 offers similar performance. DVD playback is flawless (one of my key measures of laptop performance) and large graphics are easily manipulated and without delay. My last Windows PC was a Pentium III 700Mhz, and this PowerBook is noticeably faster. Compared to a 1.8Ghz Centrino that belongs to a friend, the G4 is just a bit slower in feel, though my benchmarks are anything but formal. I’m not interested in benchmarks, just daily use of office applications, DVD movies and light photo editing, and for these tasks the PowerBook performs beautifully.
So with speed not being an issue, what about price? My PowerBook G4 has a price of $1599, but as a student I was able to buy it for $1399. The current version of my Thinkpad, the X31, starts at $1800, and that is before you add an optical drive and the required device bay to run it in. Even compared to “consumer” grade laptops from Compaq, Dell and Toshiba, $1600 will not buy anything this small, this light, and this capable. In fact, the only computer that really makes the PowerBook 12” a questionable value is its little sister the iBook G4, which at $500 less retail ($400 less student price), offers 95% of the small PowerBook’s performance and features at the sacrifice of .3lbs, a few fractions of an inch, and a less sophisticated appearance. My rational side screamed iBook, but my aesthetic side had control of my wallet, and so the PowerBook made the trip home with me.
I’d like to sum up this review with one of those little “surprise and delight” features that really makes ownership of one product more enjoyable than another. The PowerBook (and any other computer running OSX) plays DVD movies without matching the RPC region code. On a Windows PC, you must play only one region’s discs, such as Region 1 for the USA or Region 3 for S. Korea. Laptop drives and DVD player software allows 3 or 4 changes of region setting, and then locks. I travel frequently between the USA and Korea, and own many DVDs of both region 1 and region 3. In the past, I’ve resorted to carrying two DVD drives, swapping them depending on the region of the DVD I wanted to watch. Later, I used a software program to intercept the DVD and bypass region coding, but this was a bit buggy and simply would not play certain DVDs at all. The PowerBook just plays everything, without add-on programs or hacking the firmware of the drive. Its about time.
*** Update 3/3/04 ***
Well I've used the PowerBook as my only computer for almost two weeks now, including a business trip, and have learned a great deal more about this machine and the operating system it runs.
First off, I was wrong about the DVD region. The drive was set to region one, and it turns out the region 3 disc I played (2009 Lost Memories) was actually region 0 (all region), only mislabeled from the factory in Korea. When I put in a "real" region 3 DVD (Musa, The Warrior - Korean release), I was prompted to change region and warned that I only had 4 changes. A quick trip to "The Firmware Page", which is easy to find on Google, led me to a hack for the combo-drive's firmware and a region switching utility for OSX. What this did is converted my RPC2 (locked) drive to RPC1 (unlocked) and eliminates the software lock in the Mac OS. Of course, this was done at my own risk, as an error could have rendered my drive inoperable and would not be covered by the Apple warranty. For me it was worth the risk, as roughly half of my DVD collection is region 3 and I travel frequently between the US and Korea.
I love the AC adapter. This is strange to say, as that part of any laptop is usually just an appliance that we take for granted. Apple's AC adapter is a thing of beauty, with an indicator at the computer end that glows orange when charging and green when the battery is fully charged. The adapter itself is very compact, and has a very cool folding prong design as well as clips that fold out so the cord can wrap aroud them. The folding prongs are even removeable, and can be replaced with a standard cord, though Apple includes a very nice matching one that clips solidly into place and attaches securely. I bought a spare to keep at my desk (with the extension cord attached) and carry one in my bag with the folding prongs attached.
I've not gotten used to the trackpad yet, but I do make fewer mistakes than I did when I first bought the computer. Its not bad, but I'm planning to buy a mouse for use at my desk, and will just use the trackpad when I travel.
I can't get over the quality of the picture and sound. On my trip I watched "Lawrence of Arabia" on the 12" screen and enjoyed it a lot. WHile the picture is smaller than on most TVs and even other laptops, it is very sharp and smooth. There were no jitters (lost frames) or artifacts of any kind, and the sound from the tiny laptop speakers was loud, full and rich enough that I didn't bother with headphones.
I even bought an intalled a game, "Return to Wolfenstein", which uses the Quake III Arena engine. The 1GHz G4 and nVidia 5200 GPU provide very fluid motion and outstanding detail. Its been many years since I've played a 1st person shooter, but I was delighted with the quality of the gaming experience on the 12" PowerBook.
I have really come to like the keyboard, which has a much lighter touch than my IBM did, but once acclimated, my typing speed and accuracy are about what they were with the ThinkPad.
Of course the OS itself and its built-in applications are also more familiar now. OSX has yet to crash, and with 512MB RAM now installed, I don't notice any hit regardless of how many apps I have open. iPhoto and iTunes are terrific, and Mail is so good that I don't even use Entourage from Office v.X. Mail, unlike Entourage, uses the OSX Address Book program for contacts, and while Entourage won't sync to my Palm device, Address Book (and thus Mail's contacts) DO using Apple's iSync and a free Palm OS conduit at the Apple website. WIth a cheap USB/serial adapter I am now able to sync contacts to Address Book and Calendar to iCal from a 5-yeasr-old serial PDA to a brand-new PowerBook, and much faster than my PC ever did.
To sum it up, while moving from a Windows 3.1 PC to a Mac back in 1993 was a revelation from the moment I turned it on, the switch in 2004, while less drastic intially, is every bit as positive now that I've played with it a bit. I'm already trying to sell the desktop family PC and locate a suitable used Mac to replace it. The desktop only handles very light email, web browsing and educational titles so an older model will do fine, so long as I can run OSX 10.3 on it. The Mac experience is that good.
*** Update 04/01/04 ****
Well, its been over a month since I switched from a PC laptop running Windows XP to the 12” 1GHz PowerBook G4 running OS X Panther. In that time, Apple has updated the operating system from 10.3.2 to 10.3.3, and I have also updated some of my impressions and useage of the PowerBook.
First, the updated OS. 10.3.3 boots considerably faster than 10.3.2. According to several sources on the web, the previous 10.3.2 update did something that slowed down the boot process, and the new update corrects this. Booting my PowerBook takes perhaps a minute at most, and seems to be no better or worse than Windows XP in that regard. Shutdown is also fast, and of course sleep mode is near instant.
As far as my own use of the PowerBook, I have finally taken the draconian step of disabling the touchpad’s “tap to click” feature. With the feature enabled, I found that no matter how careful I was typing, I would still “accidentally” click somewhere on the screen OTHER THAN where I wanted my text to appear. As a touch typist, this was a disaster, so despite my preference in click feel of the tap over the actual button, I’m back to using the button as my only means of clicking the mouse.
The PowerBook running OS X Panther remains a delight to use in day to day computing. I’ve really gotten comfortable with the keyboard, such that my typing speed is now every bit as good as it was on my ThinkPad running Windows XP. Movie playback, sound quality and even game play continue to delight, but none of these are what make the 12” PowerBook an improvement over my ThinkPad. No, the one feature that above all others makes the PowerBook the best laptop I’ve ever used is the sleep function.
Sleep function? Windows has two sleep functions, standbye AND hibernate, so why would the sleep function on OS X have me so happy? Simple, it is very fast, and it always works. In Windows XP (or 2000), hibernation is extremely reliable, as stable as OSX in fact. Every time the computer would write the contents of RAM to the hard drive, and then waking up it would write the hard disk’s hibernation file back to RAM. Sure, hibernating the machine was often slower than shutting down, but it was so reliable that once it started, you could throw the laptop into your bag and be on your merry way, knowing that your laptop would shut fully down as soon as the hibernation file was written to disk.
The problem with Windows hibernation was the time required to resume the machine, which was even slower on computers with a lot of RAM installed (larger file to read and write). My ThinkPad with 384MB of RAM took up about 20-30 seconds to enter hibernation, but required about twice that to resume.
Well, Windows has standbye you might say. Yes, it does, and unlike hibernation, there is no writing to disk involved, with the contents of RAM merely supported by the batteries. In theory this should be very fast, but in practice, once again, it takes anywhere between 5 seconds and a full minute to either put your machine into standbye or to wake it up fully (the point where the computer responds to keyboard and mouse commands). That is when it works. The longer you standbye, regardless of batterylife, the longer it would take to resume, and the more likely the computer wold not come out of stanbye at all, requireing a forced reboot and loss of any unsaved data. Windows 95, 98 and ME were even worse, with even less reliability for the suspend features than the very stable 2000 and XP.
Panther, on the other hand, takes at most 2 seconds to enter sleep mode, which is accomplished by merely closing the lid (Windows allows this on many laptops as well). More important, however, is the fact that when the lid is opened, the computer resumes in the same one to two seconds, waking up fully each and every time. So far in roughly six weeks, I’ve only rebooted the computer when a software installation required it, such as the 10.3.3 updater. I’ve put the machine to sleep, however, well over 100 times and it always resumes quicly and without a hitch. This is what mobile computing is all about, and the 12” PowerBook is as good as it gets.
The other key area for a laptop is battery life, and once again the 12” PowerBook delivers. Apple claims 5 hours, and that is a very wild boast. 4 hours is easy to obtain, however, if you dim the screen, which remains readable, if a bit dark (set to just one dot). I also set the processor to custom mode, with it running “slow” when on batteries and at maximum when plugged in. Even slow on batteries it feels nice and fast and never leaves me wishing for more muscle.
The 12” PowerBook attracts a lot of attention. The aluminum case with the glowing white Apple on the cover is stunning, drawing envious looks from users of lesser laptops, which means just about everyone else out there. Even set next to the 15” and 17” PowerBooks, while it lacks the startle factor of those big, wide screens, the compact dimensions of the smallest PowerBook are their own wiz-bang attention getter. The size is simply perfect for the highly mobile user, while perhaps a bit restricting for those who use a laptop more as a transportable desktop.
So in conclusion, again, while I bought the 12” PowerBook out of my frustration with all of the viruses and worms aimed at Windows, I ended up really falling in love with the hardware and the software. Things really are better on the Mac platform.
***Update 10/23/04***
Wow, has it really been almost nine months since I bought the PowerBook and switched from Windows? Calendars don't lie, and here I am using a machine that still feels new and exciting to me long after the novelty of a new computer has worn off.
I'm usually rather fickle with my laptops, and quickly tire of using the same machine for any real length of time. There have been a few keepers, but those were a long time ago and I had sort of resigned myself to frequent upgrades and sometimes even downgrades, just for the fun of working on something different.
Well, nine months later and the aluminum PowerBook is still a delight. It remains fast, stable, comfortable and as the title of this review suggests, STUNNING. I cannot take this thing out of my bag without it attracting envious glances.
I've upgraded my 12" PB a little bit. First, the 256MB of ram that Apple provides, while enough for basic web surfing, word processing or email, is not enough for more demanding workloads, such as running all of the above applications at the same time while listening to music in the background and video-conferencing through iChat. My 12" PB has an addition 512MB of ram added for a total of 768, and with this I have no trouble launching practically everything in my applications folder at the same time without much of a slowdown.
As mentioned in the review, I added the AirPort Extreme card the day I bought the laptop, and so equipped (newer models come with the card pre-installed) I have no trouble logging onto my own, and other wireless networks. Reception is vastly superior to the PC card adapters I've used on PC laptops, and almost as good as Apple's own iBook, widely regarded as the best Apple laptop for WiFi reception.
The last upgrade came just last week. You see, this computer is so handy and its software so convenient, that I found my iPhoto library contained every digital image I had taken since 1999, while my iTunes library had swelled to over 10 GB of downloaded and copied (ripped from CD) music. Add that to another 10 GB of documents and the 40 GB hard drive was rapidly filling up.
In place of the 40GB Toshiba hard drive that Apple included, I had a local shop install an 80GB Hitachi TravelStar. In addition to double the capacity, the new drive has an 8MB cache instead of the 2MB on the Toshiba drive, and also spins at a fast 5400 rpm, compared to 4200 rpm on the old drive.
I knew I'd like the extra space, but the extra speed is also quite nice. The computer already felt fast, but the difference is quite dramatic. The only downside was the difficultly of installing the drive, as these computers are not built for easy access. Normally I would do the installation myself, something I've done dozens of times on a wide variety of laptops, but on this one, I took one look at the instructions and the 100 steps to just reach the hard drive, and decided to just spend the $90 and have an Apple dealer (not the Apple store) do it for me.
I guest the best thing I can say about the 12" PowerBook is that nine months after purchase, I'm still quite smitten. In fact, the only real annoyances with this machine are the newer model that runs at 1.33 GHz and comes with better video, larger hard drive and includes the airport card for the same price, and the new iBook that runs at 1.2GHz, includes the airport card and gives up very little to the PowerBook, all at a $600 savings.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1400
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G4
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 12 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
lawman67
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Member: Andrew F
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 213
Trusted by: 64 members
About Me:
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl but she doesn't have a lot to say.
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