Filed under: Portables, PowerBook, Reviews, Apple
New Powerbooks best yet says ComputerWorld
If you ask me, which you haven't, 15 inches is the perfect size for a Powerbook's screen. It is big enough so that you don't have to squint, and small enough that it doesn't feel like you are toting around a desktop with you. Ken Mingis, of ComputerWorld, disagrees. He is a 17 inch man and says that the latest iteration of the Powerbook is the best yet.The high res screen is the real killer feature of these Powerbooks, plus you get another hour or so of battery life. The big question is, should you have a G4 based Powerbook or wait for the Intel versions? Ken gives the same advice I do, if you can wait you should, but if you need a Powerbook now you can't go wrong with Apple's current offerings.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kacy said 11:43AM on 12-01-2005
I just got myself a new 15 inch powerbook and i am very happy with it. The new high resolution display is amazingly roomy. Definitely worth buying. My advice on waiting for the Intel powerbooks is slighly different than what you suggest. If you can wait until the second revision then wait. I highly recommend avoiding the "version 1.0 curse." Otherwise I am sure you will be more than happy with the latest model.
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Jason said 11:45AM on 12-01-2005
I know this is misplaced, and I apologize, but I can't find a weblogsinc tech errors link or E-mail. There seems to be a problem with weblogsinc rss feeds in Bloglines. This site, tvsquad and bbhub are all having errors.
This site has errors in Feed Validator as well.
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MacMove said 11:53AM on 12-01-2005
There is a post about this very question over at MacMove. Written by a brilliant and - ahem - handsome commentator. :)
http://www.macmove.com/mm/archives/apple/ask-mm-should-i-stay-or-should-i-go
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Praveen Sharma said 11:56AM on 12-01-2005
Are you guys kidding me? Apple laptops, as much as I love and use them, are sickeningly underpowered and overpriced! We're running 5 year old technology at speeds a couple thousand mhz slower than our PC friends.
Crap. Hopefully intel laptops will finally break the slump apple has been in with their laptops.
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dharmafighter said 12:43PM on 12-01-2005
ummmm... haven't you been paying attention? MHz don't matter! haha... right. Go use a PowerBook. It's a hell of a lot more responsive than my PC desktop, with higher specs, running the exact same software (hooray, open source...). Oh, and... you call PC Users "friends"? I'm sorry.
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Brian said 12:15PM on 12-01-2005
henh, you said "17 inch man "
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James said 12:27PM on 12-01-2005
If you plan to buy a Powerbook in the next two years, buy it now. (Full disclosure: That's what I just did, and for the following reasons).
Why? Rev. A hardware is notoriously buggy. The Rev. A 12" Powerbook had a slew of problems, and that wasn't even a particularly new architecture. I'd give it enough time for a shakedown before I decided to buy an Intel powerbook. That probably accounts for the next year or so.
Why the extra year? Well, this may be controversial, but Apple is headhunting Vaio engineers from Sony to help them get the x86 Powerbook to market. If you've ever done any kind of volume tech support on Vaios that should chill you to the bone. Of mainstream x86 laptop brands, Vaios are the most compromised, chained-down, unreliable, piles you could fear encountering. Some of them need byzantine combinations of BIOS updates just to flatten and reinstall them. Some of them don't even work with Sony's own Memory Stick standards! Personally, I'll be giving it 18 months to see exactly what the Vaio connection ends up being, and make my decision then. In the meantime the new Powerbook has the HD screen I'd been waiting for, and that was why I went for it.
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Chris said 12:42PM on 12-01-2005
I bought a PB about a year ago. Will wait another 1.5 years before I get another. Yeah, people will get them because they need em. I guess one could still buy now, but the intel PB's should be introduced by next summer (I should think). I will buy a second iteration. Once they have the bugs shaken out.
I love my PB. 15" is fine. Although, I wish I had the better resolutions.
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Bill said 12:59PM on 12-01-2005
This may be a ridiculous question, but, is the better batter life a product of higher-capacity batteries, or superior power-management on the part of the new PBs? I'm guessing it's the latter - but want to make sure...
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arkowi said 1:19PM on 12-01-2005
I just bought a 12" 1.5 Ghz PowerBook refurb to compliment my Dual G5 PowerMac. I love it. Perfect balance of portability and power. My worry about the first version of Apple's intel based laptops is that they will not be able to run the PowerPC based versions of sofware I am using (Photoshop, FinalCut, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc) at fast enough speeds. I forsee the first Intel based laptops to be more "consumer based".
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Onno Feringa said 1:34PM on 12-01-2005
There is a production problem with the new 15" PB's. The screens all have a problem which is discribed here: http://15inpbscreen.appleplace.com
If you bought one, please check your screen with this image: http://crankycat.com/pb15_problems.png and contact Applecare for a replacement.
My company ordered three, they got this issue. We god replacements for all three that also have this issue. Also the PB's in the two Apple Centres in my town have this issue and the shop personel haven't seen a good one yet...
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Brett Edwards said 2:11PM on 12-01-2005
I just picked up a new 15" two days ago, and it is awesome. There is NO screen defect or "horizontal lines" issue as has been documented elsewhere, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. When I bought the first editions of the 15" 1.25 PowerBook, it had two manufacturing flaws, the latch not closing and the white spots on the screen. Apple owned up to this problem and replaced both features. My point is I think the display issue has been fixed, and was probably only in the first few units.
As for waiting for the Intel books, if they are really that fantastic I will upgrade at the time. My guess is that there will be some kinks to work out with the processor switch, and I'm happy to sit that out with my PowerBook.
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Kacy said 2:20PM on 12-01-2005
I'd like to add that I have not had any of the display problems. (I got the machine a couple of days before thanksgiving, so it is very recent). I have several friends and colleagues with this same model who do not have this problem either. I am sure some people are having these issues but it is not ALL machines as has been suggested.
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Nathan said 4:40PM on 12-01-2005
Wow, so Apple's finally, almost gotten it right, you guys are saying--
On rev Z.
Yay for Apple!
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