Mike Mertsock

About a week ago, I bought a Macintosh PowerBook laptop. It’s time for a review. To summarize, it is working great.

It is a PowerBook G4 15″ with 512MB memory, 80GB hard disk, DVD/CDRW combo drive, 64MB ATI graphics, and 1280×854 resolution. A widescreen 15 inch display is as wide as a traditional 17″ monitor; actually, the visible region may be even wider than that of a 17 inch monitor. This computer is the standard 15 inch PowerBook with no extra options. I picked it up at an Apple retail store, which turned out to be very convenient. The Apple retail employees were all knowledgeable and helpful. They don’t work on commission.

Photos

Sorry that this post is all text. I’ll take some photos this weekend and either update this post or make a new one. Update 2005-10-03: I added a photo album of relevant illustrations for your enjoyment.

Alternatives

I didn’t want a Windows laptop, so I compared PowerBooks and laptops that run Linux. I really tried hard to like Linux laptops, but I basically found that Linux isn’t ready to run on a laptop yet. The performance of the Linux OS and applications themselves is great, especially on the 64-bit AMD systems I considered. Laptop-specific hardware support is the problem. Linux has notoriously bad support for wireless network cards and often has poor support for customized and uncommon hardware, which is hard to avoid on a laptop. Power management isn’t very good. The Linux laptops I considered had battery life in the range of 2–3 hours. All of this defeats the main benefits of having a laptop. Some day, hopefully, the operating system will have the hardware support necessary to be appropriate for a laptop.

Bundled accessories

When opening the box, the first items I got to unwrap were the various cables the PowerBook comes with: a phone cord for the modem, the power adapter and extension cable (see below), an S-Video to composite (RCA) adapter, and a DVI to VGA adapter. All of the cables, even the phone cord, are custom-designed in the glossy white Apple theme. Snug-fitting clear plastic caps protect the ends of each cable. The materials are sturdy and good-quality.

The extendable power adapter is simply genius. It has one of the basic little clips on the cord so you can attach the cord to itself when you wrap it up for storage. But this clip also holds on to the end cap while the power adapter is in use. If the clip didn’t do this for me, I probably would have already lost that cap. The jack that fits into the computer is round. I have always considered round power jacks to be superior to those custom-shaped flat ones with special little clips that a lot of mobile devices have these days. There is a 1 mm ring on the jack that glows green or amber to notify you whether the laptop is fully charged or charging up.

The power adapter itself is a box on the outlet end of the cord. The prongs that fit into the outlet fold into the adapter unit for storage. There are two sturdy brackets to wind the cord around for storage. They provide just enough room to fit the entire cord. These brackets fold flush into the body of the adapter so you don’t damage them. Now for the best part: you can remove the plug from the adapter and attach an extension cord that more than doubles the length of the laptop. In addition, this cord is grounded and has no adapter on the end, leaving neighboring outlets free on power strips. The plug and extension cord slide onto the power adapter in a direction that prevents them from accidentally detaching while in use.

Hardware

The all-aluminum enclosure is durable, functional, and stylish. The advertising says that it helps keep the laptop light (about 5.6 pounds). The large expanse of aluminum surface in front of the keyboard feels smooth and cool on your arms/hands while using the laptop. The 15 inch widescreen display fills the entire length and width of the laptop, with only a 1/4″ bezel. The hinge, instead of being on top of the laptop body, is on the back of the body. This probably adds half an inch to the height of the screen without increasing the overall dimensions of the laptop. The display is clear and bright. It is viewable from any angle horizontally with no color distortion. Vertically, you can view the screen at angles up to around 45° without significant color distortion.

The DVD/CDRW drive is a slot-loader, instead of a flimsy and damage-prone manually-controlled plastic tray. The laptop has a full set of powered USB 2 and FireWire 400/800 ports, built-in Bluetooth and 802.11g wireless, and a PC card slot. I’m slightly surprised that the PowerBooks don’t come with any sort of media card reader. But this isn’t a big deal — it is usually just as easy to connect the device using a media card directly to the laptop using USB/FireWire or a wireless technology.

The PowerBook has efficient and smart power management. I am averaging about 4–5 hours of battery life without any tweaks to the Energy Saver beyond the basic options. This is while using wireless networking. OS X has some nice default power management techniques such as slightly dimming the screen when you switch to battery power and reducing the screen to half brightness after a minute or two as an extra step before the display shuts off. The Energy Saver makes it easy to store separate custom profiles for wall power and battery power. You can check the status of the battery itself by pushing a button on the surface of the battery. This works even when the battery is not in the laptop.

Usability

The keyboard and trackpad are quiet and include a number of useful features. An ambient light sensor activates the illuminated keyboard when the room becomes dark. The key labels glow with a white color. Function keys adjust the intensity and can turn off the illumination entirely. I have indeed found the backlit keyboard useful. The trackpad includes an innovative two-finger scrolling feature. To scroll vertically and horizontally, you just slide a pair of fingers on the trackpad in the same manner that you slide one finger around to control the pointer. This is superior to any other laptop scrolling feature I’ve used.

The operating system makes a lot of laptop-specific tasks easy. The wireless networking just works, with no issues. When the system detects a network, it simply identifies it by name and asks if you wish to join it. That’s all there is to it. Of course, there are plenty of configuration options for those who need them, but I think that almost nobody would need to do any manual configuration.

Attaching a second display or projector to the laptop is also intuitive. It automatically detects when you attach another screen and opens the dual-display configuration dialog if you haven’t configured that particular display in the past. The two primary choices are to extend the desktop or mirror the current desktop. Instead of trying to configure both screens in a single dialog, OS X places a separate dialog for configuring each screen on the respective screen. This is a pretty cool idea, though I’m not sure what would happen if the second display isn’t working properly or can’t yet display an image when you first connect it. Extending your desktop onto two screens works as expected with no unexpected behavior, even in desktop-specific activities such as Exposé.

Dashboard and Exposé are perhaps two of the most noticeable eye-candy features of OS X, and I have found that they are indeed good ideas. Exposé is a good compliment to the Dock and desktop concepts of OS X (as opposed to the taskbar and start menu concepts in Windows). I have already begun to rely on some Dashboard widgets such as To-do Tracker.

Programming environment

I’m happy with the programming tools available. The RIT Computer Science department does everything in Unix, so it is handy to have a shell and all the various Unix tools available right on the laptop. X11 should allow me to use ports of many graphical Unix tools or port them myself. X11 did not come pre-installed, but after some research I found that it was included on the OS X install disc that comes with the laptop. Eclipse works on OS X, and that’s important for me. However, an official implementation of Java 5 is not yet available for OS X. It better come soon.

Software

The iLife application suite seems pretty good. I don’t use all of the iLife apps, but what I do use is nice. iCal, specifically, is the best calendar application I’ve used. I’m waiting for the Mozilla Sunbird project, which is basing some of its features on iCal to mature, but I might stick with iCal in the long run. I haven’t played much with iPhoto yet but it seems almost as good as Picasa (the only non-game Windows application I miss). The built-in DVD player is good, etc.

One of the most interesting comparisons to make is Safari/Mail versus Camino/Thunderbird. After trying Safari and Mail, I switched to Camino and Thunderbird (on Windows, I use Firefox and Thunderbird). Both Apple programs make for good competition with the Mozilla products. Perhaps the best thing going for Mail is its integration with other Apple products such as Address Book. The integration is not coercive and monolithic like MS Office. I like Thunderbird better because of its configuration and account setup options, its RSS/news reader, and a variety of purely personal preferences. If you don’t want an RSS/news reader integrated with your mail reader, Apple Mail might be a better choice.

Camino has a decent degree of integration with other OS X utilities such as Keychain. I prefer its configuration and tabbed browsing implementation over that of Safari. Both browsers offer comparable (high) levels standards compliance and rendering capabilities. You might pick Safari over Camino if you want more integration with OS X or prefer to have a full RSS reader integrated with the browser. Camino can store RSS feeds as live bookmarks but does not have a heavyweight RSS reader as Safari and Thunderbird have.

I tried Firefox on the PowerBook before choosing Camino. It works almost as well but the port to OS X leaves a few unfortunate artifacts. Rendering of OS-native widgets such as form fields is not perfect. The biggest problem I have is the program’s interpretation of the trackpad’s two-finger scrolling capability. If you are scrolling vertically and happen to move your fingers horizontally more than a few millimeters, Firefox will interpret this as a request to go back or forward in the page history rather than an attempt to scroll horizontally. This gets tiresome. Camino has the correct interpretation of horizontal trackpad scrolling.

Instead of using MS Office or Apple iWork, I chose an OS X port of OpenOffice.org implementation called NeoOffice®. This port is a little more Mac-native than the direct X11-based OpenOffice.org port. Everything works fine, so I’m happy.

Software usage

Software I use out of the box

• Address Book (maybe)
• Dashboard
• DVD Player
• iCal
• iChat
• iPhoto
• iTunes

Third-party software I use

• Camino (replaces Safari)
• Cyberduck (a Mac-native FTP/SFTP client)
• Eclipse
• NeoOffice/J 1.1.4 (replaces iWork)
• Mozilla Thunderbird (replaces Mail)

All of this software is open source.

Dashboard widgets

• Calculator
• Calendar
• iTunes
• Pong Mini
• Stickies
• To Do Tracker
• Weather

Accessories

I bought a sleeve, not a case, for transporting the laptop. The idea of a sleeve is minimalism. It fits snugly around the laptop and does not provide extra storage capacity. Its only purpose is to protect the computer. For extra protection/convenience, I can put the whole thing inside my book-bag. I chose the Tucano Second Skin folder (it’s hard to find online, I found one locally). It is a padded neoprene sleeve that comes in various sizes custom-designed for each PowerBook and iBook model. My sleeve came with a separate case for cables. It is a really great sleeve for a good price (half the price of comparable sleeves through the online Apple store). It even has an inner lip that protects the computer from the zipper.

If Apple makes a Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse, I would consider getting that and a Bluetooth keyboard.

I promise photos within a week!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Computer Science, Fun, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.