With the purchase of the PowerMac last night, my personal era of the PowerBook is coming to a close. Some things worked really well with it, and some things were flops.
First of all, let me get the bad stuff out to the way. Here is a list of things that did not work all that well:
- PCMCIA / PCCard interoperability - One of the reasons that I refused to get a 12" AlBook was that it had no PCCard slot for PCMCIA peripherals. The more that I thought about this, the more I realized that PCCard support on the PowerBook was not all that hot either. A year ago, I had various PCCards that I used for various purposes. I had a PCCard for reading CompactFlash, one that provided an RS-232 serial port for connecting with GPS receivers, a cellular modem, and various 3Com and Linksys network cards. Of these cards, the only one that I could use was the CompactFlash reader. None of the modems would work, and most sadly, the RS-232 card would be identified, but not enabled as a serial port. This is more a software issue than a hardware issue, but in retrospect the PCMCIA slot was next to useless for doing anything other than sucking pictures off my camera.
- Slot-Loading CD Drive - I could only load standard size CD's and DVD's into the drive. I could not load some of the various smaller disks that I acquired.
- Oily Keyboard / Oily Screen - Given the amount of time that I would be on the computer, it's only natural that some finger oil would be transfered to the keyboard. This was not a problem, but it getting on the screen when the laptop was closed was a problem. I hate it when there are fingerprints or smudges on my screens, so this was a source of constant annoyance.
- Quiet Speakers - I don't know if this is a recent development or has always been the case, but the speakers on the PowerBook are much too quiet. They really need external speakers to listen to music.
- No Line-In Jack - You can pipe sound out of the Mac via the headphone jack, but there's no way to get sound in.
- Chipping Paint - The TiBook is a beautiful piece of work, but paint areas around the wrist tend to chip if you are not careful.
- Weak 3D Adapter - I was pumped about Quartz Extreme, but dismayed to learn that the Rage128 Mobility adapter in the notebook was not up to the task. The very next version of the PowerBook had a better one. Figures.
- Power Adapters - Apple provides a single power converter with the TiBook that works fine. The only problem is the flip-out plugin part can get really loose and annoying after lots of use. I've had to substitute the original part with one from my iPod.
Ok that's the bad. I should mention that all references to PowerBook, TiBook, and Mac in this entry refer to the PowerBook G4 Gigabit Ethernet notebook. Now here are the things that worked for this model over other notebooks that I have owned:
- Airport - Airport means never having to say you're sorry for locating computers in awkward places and placing CAT-5 tripwires all over your apartment. I love having the ability to put things where I want and do tasks where I want. Because of Airport, all but a few devices in my apartment communicate via 802.11b.
- Slot-Loading CD Drive - I complained about the drive above, but the lack of a pop-out caddy for holding the discs makes things simpler and less prone to breakage.
- Firewire - Prior to owning the TiBook, I had used USB (1) in various was and was not too terribly impressed by it. The Firewire ports on the TiBook and the related peripherals have shown me how handy this technology is.
- 15" LCD - Though the aspect ratio of the TiBook's screen is more cinematic than its PC counterparts, the screen was a joy. It has always been bright enough and the colors were beautiful. The added pixels were a blessing as MacOS X tends to use more screen real-estate than Windows.
- MacOS X - This operating system alone has really sold me on the Mac philosophy. I have used Windows and Linux often in the past, and this OS takes the best from all worlds and combines it in a nice easy-to use package. The applications for this platform tend to be best-of-breed, commercial and free alike. I could go on and on about how OS X rules, but I'll leave it at that for now.
- Thinness - Despite being a 15" laptop, it's still very portable -- much more so than my Dell that I use for Quicken. It's also pretty sturdily built, not using plastic for things like hinges.
- Battery - The battery life on this thing is phenomenal. Over winter, I managed to watch three full DVD's on a single charge. On any other laptop, I would have been barely able to watch one.
- The iPod - No modern Mac owner should be without one. It's the perfect compliment to any Mac. It does music and also is a Firewire hard disk and read-only contact manager. Windows users can also use iPods, but I shudder to think of how MusicMatch (and I used to be a fan) compares to iTunes.
- iSync - This deserves mention on its own as it does what it was designed to do well. I had used MSFT's ActiveSync and Palm's HotSync, but it is obvious that iSync works better than both. Given that I use a Bluetooth-enabled Ti68 phone, this feature is great.
So that's the low-down on the TiBook. It's served me well, though I've outgrown it a bit. Holly will be purchasing the notebook and the related peripherals from me, so I'll still be working with it in some form or other.
In unrelated news, I've run into a problem. After having religiously watched Frasier for many weeks while the reruns were being caught by my Tivo, I came home from Scotland to find that it's been recording season episodes for the past week. This is a problem as I have season one on DVD. No new Frasier for about five weeks. Woe is me.
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