This is one of the new Aluminum G4s @ 1.25ghz and it is good!
Written: Jan 20 '04
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Pros: Thin, light, smooth, stunning looks, good ergonomics
Cons: Cheap power supply, noisy superdrive, white spots on screen, rattling battery, want a G5 CPU
The Bottom Line: It isn't the cheapest machine out there, and it sure isn't the fastest - but it is by far the highest quality and best looking.
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| stenz's Full Review: Apple PowerBook G4 15.2 in. (M8859F/A) Mac Noteboo... |
I switched in late 2003 from a die hard PC fan to an Apple fan. My job is a Windows network admin and programmer. Prior to this position, I only had to use Windows myself, and it was fine - but the more I see of my current users on the network using Windows, I see that most people just aren't getting it.
This combined with all of the viruses and whatnot lead me to switch for my personal laptop.
But I digress, that is more Mac OS X than it is the laptop hardware.
This is one of the new aluminum 1.25ghz 15" G4 Powerbooks. It has a 80gig HD, 512MB RAM, Superdrive, built in Bluetooth and 802.11g.
First impressions when I took it out of the box compared to my HP laptop were literally jaw dropping - it is just absolutely gorgeous. It is ultra thin and yet super strong. Even though it is so stiff and strong, it is still very light. The screen is nice a bright, the keyboard is firm - and backlit!
Going over the components in a top down manner of sorts:
Wireless - 802.11g - that means it operates at 54mbps, which is really only for my internal network since my DSL connection maxes out at 256K download. The 802.11g standard unit built into the laptop will also work on 802.11b networks (which runs at 11mbps - which is also still faster than the 256K outside connection).
Bluetooth: I have yet to test this - just today I got a Sony/Ericsson T616. That will talk to this via Bluetooth and allow up/down transfer of files and it will let me use the phone to control iTunes. Technically I could also use the phone as a wireless modem on trips as well (a very slow one as I understand).
The Screen: It is wide and nice and bright. I did a test and not a single burnt out pixel. But... I have the "white spots" which the new Aluminum 15" Powerbooks are getting known for. Worse yet, I live in Bermuda, so getting this fixed is going to likely not be something I can do since I need my laptop all of the time. On the good side, the white spots don't make your computer unusable, they are just something that is there - a lighter spot on a light background (this web page for instance). It is a known issue with the early ones - supposedly later builds have been corrected by changing the LCD supplier. Other than that, it seems like a great screen.
Battery/Power Supply: I tend to have the laptop on my desk at work and it is plugged into the power supply and then I bring it home and it sits on my lap and is connected to the power supply - so I am rarely on the battery. I have occasionally let it drain all of the way down to see how good/bad it is - I apparently didn't pay much attention - I think I got about 2 hours or so of use from it - but I could be wrong since I don't recall exactly. The physical battery itself has a button on it that you can press and it will light up a series of LEDs on the battery that indicate how much of a charge that it has - this is very useful if the battery is not with the computer and you want to know if it has a good charge to be used or not - AND it looks cool.
One downside is that the battery will move slightly if you put your hand under the laptop and press on the battery - it shifts up into the body of the laptop a bit - certainly not a big deal and could likely be fixed with a small shim of rubber in there.
The power supply is a tiny white squared puck shape. It allows you to slide on/off different plug types - good for people that are world travelers - also let's you add a longer cord to it, which it comes with.
Two flaps extend from the device and allow you to wrap the cord around that and keep the cord managed - the cord has a small part on it that allows the last bit of cord to latch onto itself so that it is contained.
The plug to the power supply that goes into the computer has a ring at the tip of it that lights up based on its charging status - orange if it is charging your computer, green if the charge is complete. The tip is made of what looks to be gold.
One complaint there is that it very easily gets stuck in the socket and I have no idea why. Of all of the components of the Powerbook, it is by far the cheapest in quality, but is still quite expensive to buy a replacement.
Keyboard: The keyboard in this model is all aluminum. This takes a bit of time to get used to - especially if you are like and you tended to use your nails on the keys more than you realized - it results in a "nails on the chalkboard" type experience... but over time it either goes away or you get used to it. Each key has its symbol on it, but on closer inspection the symbol (letter, number, etc) is actually a window in the key. In dark conditions (can be simulated by placing your hands tightly over the speaker grilles), the keyboard will light up with a blue glow so that you see each character clearly. It sounds like a gimmick, but it is actually quite a useful feature if you tend to find yourself in changing light environments (planes are a big one of course).
The keyboard is firm and has a nice snappy response.
My only complaints about the keyboard are coming from a PC world, I don't like the "Enter" key next to the arrow keys - I too often strike that. I also don't like the "fn" (function) key in the bottom left of the keyboard - that is where I am used to the ctrl key being - I would prefer the lesser used fn key being in the top right where the eject key is (which I never use). I use Emacs a lot, so the ctrl key location is one of those things that I am picky about. There is a program Ucontrol that will let you edit some of that, but with each update of OS X, it changes what it can access and what it can't... as of the last I checked, it can't do the fn as of yet.
Trackpad: the button, when I first got it, was a bit flaky - only responded if pressed in the direct center of the large button. But over time it has gotten better - at first I thought I was just positioning my thumb differently to fix it - but I purposely pressed off center and it definitely is responding better now... must be something that breaks in over time.
The response on it is different than on my HP - at first it greatly annoyed me - now I am finally used to it and it is sufficient.
I have heard very good things about the Microsoft 5 button Bluetooth mouse, but since I spend a lot of time with the laptop on my actual lap, the mouse isn't as apropos for me.
Ports: There are a ton of ports on the machine - none of which are on the back of the laptop. The back is all part of the top and the hinge joint for the screen. The ports are all on the sides of the device. I have yet to use any of them at all other than the power and the ethernet. Ethernet cables get easily stuck in the ethernet jack - I tried different cables and they all got stuck, so it wasn't just the cable.
The Powerbook has a connection to add a monitor to it, and it comes with an attachment so that you can connect to PC style monitors as well. I have yet to try it, but apparently you can do dual screen so that your laptop screen is one and the monitor is the other, or you can just have the monitor, or they mirror each other (the last being good for presentations).
It looks as if there is only one PC Card type slot - I can't think of any reason I would need that, but I know many PCs have two of them, so I don't know if that would be an issue to anyone or not... it isn't for me.
CD/DVD (superdrive): In the front of the machine there is a slot for loading the CDs/DVDs. The SuperDrive can read and burn both CDs and DVDs. I haven't burned a DVD yet, but the CD burning is incredibly easy and is a total no brainer - especially for music via iTunes.
The downside of the superdrive is that it is incredibly loud.
Also, there is a hack for the drive which allows you to double the reading and burning speed - not sure what that does for battery life, heat, or noise - but I am pretty sure that it would void the warranty on it.
One final touch they made is that the button that you press to open the lid of the laptop once it has been closed, it has a light on it. When the laptop is sleeping the light "breathes" - it gets brighter and dimmer in a loop. Again, it sounds like a cheesy gimmick... and I guess it is - I can't think of what possible purpose it has other than a HAL sort of personification - but it is cool.
The skin on it has so far not gotten any dings or scratches that I can find, and I have made no real effort to baby it - but I also haven't exactly abused it either.
The trackpad and the keys will tend to collect oil from your skin in the small bumps of the brushed aluminum surface, but that wipes off with a shirt.
Also, where your hands rest on either side of the trackpad will leave grease and dead skin in the surface of the brushed aluminum... sounds gross... and it is. It will wipe out as well - but it accumulates easily.
The processor is a G4 1.25Ghz. The case gets rather warm - very nearly to the point where it could be something physically questionable in terms of safety against bare skin - but only when you are really using the processor/disk/RAM heavily.
I tested a Perl script on this machine and on a FreeBSD server that I have - thinking that they each are a FreeBSD base to some extent, so perhaps the Perl won't be too terribly different. The script does some analysis and is pretty much all CPU intensive. The server I have is 4 times faster than this laptop, and the server has an Athlon 2200+ in it.
Can't really say if that means anything at all other than if I want a 4 times speed up in my Perl code, I can move it up to the server to get that.
All in all - a very well built machine with a few issues that don't make it unusable, just perhaps not perfect.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3500
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:
stenz
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Member: Eric Smith
Location: Bermuda
Reviews written: 63
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
I live in Bermuda and I write software for the financial industry.
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