Take a high-performance PowerPC G4 processor, add a wide-screen display, and enclose it all in a lightweight titanium case. Apple has just created the PowerBook G4 - and redefined... more
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A review by Radical-Machine on Apple PowerBook G4 July 12th, 2006
Author's product rating:
Speed
Slow
Look & Feel
Excellent
Comfort & Portability
Excellent
Robustness & Durability
Good
Value For Money
Very poor
Advantages:
OSX is slick, Gorgeous looks, Great Bundled Apps !
Disadvantages:
Extremely Expensive, Gets Very Hot !
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
On the face of it, the PB G4 is awesome. I mean that in the least "college-kid" sense. It literally inspires awe! The aluminium casing is sheek and smooth. The whole unit is a masterpiece of design. The screen is beautifully bright and the keyboard illluminates with finesse and style. Hang on, isn't it a computer?
This is my point. The PowerBook looks so good, it almost diguises the fact it isn't really a very good computer.
I have owned mine now for nearly a year, since November 2005. Due to the nature of what I do, a mac is necessary and I was slightly pleased to actually be getting one. Although I'd saved long and hard, I thought it a worthwhile investment to put nearly £2000 on the table. However, I haven't had value for money.
There is no denying the PowerBook is a lovely looking machine. It is beautiful. But inside it's a different story. My model features a G4 processor running at 1.67Ghz. Compare that with other laptops on the market at November 2005. You could pick up a Pentium M at 1.6Ghz or an AMD Turion at 1.6Ghz. These were brand new processors and I had my faith that the G4 was also updated and revised. Why else would it be so vastly expensive?
However, I now know the G4 has about the equivalent power of an AMD Athlon XP processor, which was hot in the market in 2001-2002. I purchased one to build a PC with which ran at 1.666Ghz. Bare in mind, that, 3 years later I wanted something with a little more grunt than something I'd purchased all that time ago and was now selling new on eBay for under £20. Nevertheless I couldn't think it viable that it would cost so much if it wasn't faster than the competition.
I had a customised model built with 2GB RAM and a 7200Rpm 100GB Hard Disk.
When I received the laptop I was a mixture of excitement and disappointment. I love OSX, and using it is a pleasure. Expose is a superb idea and there are lots of other nifty enhancements which make it one of the best OSs out there! Unfortunately it just doesn't run very quickly. The G4 becomes overloaded easily and quickly. Running programs like Word, Entourage, iPhoto etc just taxes the system far too much for a piece of kit that cost £2000. I use Logic Pro 7, and it's almost impossible to use because the G4 simply can't cope.
In the machine's defence, OSX's networking and configuration utilities are far simpler to use than anything I've used before. Airport is wonderful and built-in bluetooth is a lifesaver. The speakers sound great, the illuminating keyboard is brilliant and the display is gorgeous. Optimal resolution is 1440 x 960 which is superb! But do you see the pattern? Everything that's great about the PowerBook is peripheral and accessory based! The guts of the machine are old hat. I doubt even the new MacBook Pro is as great as Apple claim it is. They've always been "optimistic" about their benchmark tests (remember the G5 and that court case?).
Ultimately, I'm shocked at the profit Apple made from me. I doubt the machine cost more than a few hundred pounds to manufacture, yet it was priced like a top-performing product and was made with out-of-date technology. Very little was available to identlfy the processor's performance against other similar Intel and AMD based systems and I feel let down by Apple. The machine is barely used for small admin tasks which are suited to its capabilities these days.
I doubt I will be purchasing Apple again.
PS - I would mention iLife, as it's a great suite of software, but it's common to all macs and not a PowerBook review point...
Advantages: Light, tough and has a huge screen Disadvantages: Small hard-drive
...Finally, a capable computer from Apple that won't be called "fruity" or "girly." The first PowerBook was released in 1991 and ever since then it's been a steady climb out of the land of small screens, wimpy batteries, and teensy hard disks. Apple's PowerBooks are so good now that the only reason they cost so much, I'd guess, is to give their desktop machines a reason for being. Every year the PB gets better, and this year is no exception. Especially ... ...they needed to flip the Apple symbol over. When you're out at a cafe and the case is open, or sitting across from someone in the boardroom, the Apple sigil is RIGHT-SIDE-UP on the Titanium. The Titanium casing is sleek and tight. One of my first questions was whether the thin new case would feel flimsy. Previous PowerBooks, cased in plastic, have always broken easily or slowly changed shaped over time. After a car accident 6 months ago, mine will ...
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Advantages: can compete with persent laptop with excellent graphics Disadvantages: Out dated...
...that is its Graphics card..Actually apple has launched this laptop to capture gaming market and they have provided better graphics as well as large screen size also.
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 AGP 4x, with 128 MB of graphics memory, not bad in present prospects also. If we see the present laptop market than many of the products has 128 Mb graphics memory and they are doing well in general application field and gaming environment also. So it is good ... ...to reviewing this product because Apple had provided such kind of featured laptop in that time when peoples were considering to buy desktop due to higher laptop prices.
Now the all important feature we have discussed, and other common featured I think the maximum what Apple can provide...they have provided..The laptop was the king of its era.
Summary: Solid product of the time ...
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Advantages: Good laptop, easy to use, good software bundle Disadvantages: Expensive, expensive software, not 100% PC compatible
...externally, bar the large white apple logo on the lid which gives away it's pedigree immediately. The case is a very sleek aluminium-type metal which gives an early indication of the quality contained within.
Opening the lid reveals a large 15.2" widescreen TFT, a standard laptop-size keyboard (with those strange additional Macintosh keys) in a silver colour matching the casing, speaker grilles located on both sides of the keyboard, a large silver ... ...even more from a genuine Apple reseller. There is a free driver for download from SourceForge which will allow you to run a standard PCMCIA wireless card in your laptop, but this does somewhat spoil the aesthetic appeal. Software is similarly expensive, and if you want to have the same programs on your PC and Mac, you'll have to fork out for two copies as they will not be natively compatible.
That said, this Powerbook is the best laptop I have ever ...
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...next best thing to an apple powerbook G4).
There are some extreme features such as light sensitive monitor and keyboard, which is really a novelty, but it does help, the luminosity of the keyboard and monitor adjust to "how much ambient light is available in the room", but like some features of a poorly built Acer computer this fails to amaze me and causes much a stir with the involvement of having to keep turning the brightness up.
It has amazing ... ...which offers outstanding performance with DVD's and whatever games you can purchase for a Mac.
Sound wise, I am appalled, it has a faint echo after a couple weeks of usage, and only offering up to 4.1 sound I was gob smacked, (that was the maximum I could reach with my creative speakers, which went up to 7.1).
Finally we come to the extras, the ways for it to show off. The unit comes with 1 2.0 USB port and 1 Fire wire, which offers support for ...
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Advantages: top looks, top performance Disadvantages: slightly less than orgasmic video card
...a tasty bit of kit? Apple has managed to squeeze the brilliant G4 Processor into a one inch thick, sleek as you like, titanium sex machine.
This is probably the best built laptop i've ever seen for professional use. The clean lines of it's rugged titanium body are a departure from the previous Powerbook designs which were curved and more bulky. It's also a million miles away from the design of the iBook, Apple's highly successful consumer laptop. ... ...world has been criticised for looking like an electronic handbag and tends to scare off the 'straights'. The Powerbook G4, however, looks great either in the boardroom or the design studio and makes the Sony Vaio (until recently considered the sexiest laptop around) look like a pile of old purple pants.
Not only is it sexy to look at but it's 400 or 500mhz G4 processor packs some real punch and easily out performs most Pentiums that are currently ...
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Advantages: very functional and portable, fantastically made and stylish Disadvantages: gets hot with long intensive sessions of work
...I have had my 12 inch powerbook G4 for about 5 months now and it is FANTASTIC. it is very attractive looking and is the best made laptop ive ever owned. It is very small and very portable, it is flawlessly engineered with a silver aluminum body and as such is very robust and very light.
i bought off ebay and it came with the latest version of the mac operating system, and an upgraded 1.3 GhZ processor. It is very fast and does everything i want it to do.
the screen is fantastic and crystal clear, great for watching dvd's and films on aswell as working and surfing the web. The built in speakers are very good and clear, The volume controls run along with the function keys at the top as well as volume control and the F8,9,10,11 and 12 are programmable to help speed up work and switch between windows.
It comes with a standard single click...
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Advantages: Thin, sleek, stylish, large screen and powerfull Disadvantages: Not very portable.
...As with all Apple products, the PowerBookG4 range of laptops are stylish and sexy and never look out of place in a film or advert. The three different monitor sizes available (12", 15" and 17") seem to provide a nice range covering those who want something ultra portable up to those who want a big screen with the usual laptop advantages. However, in my opinion the 17" doesn't really have a proper use as a computer. By this I mean that the noticeable difference in viewing area between the 15" and 17" model isn't a great deal and only really stands out when you compare the two side by side. For me, the extra bulk that comes with the 17", which makes carrying it around a bit of a task, isn't worth the extra viewing area.
Size issues aside there can be no real complaints about performace. With the capacity to upgrade and with its...
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Advantages: It is beautiful, fast, modern and sophisticated Disadvantages: None
...against QuickBooks (from Intuit, another publishing house that makes its meat and potatoes from User guides and manuals) it is just a personal preference. Although I didn’t use the manual, him indoors did and he remarked that it is a very easy to follow book that spells things out very clearly as well as giving tutorials and pictures on how to carry out the most common Mac tasks. (Well, he didn’t really, he just grunted at me from behind his mountain of email but I interpreted the grunt thus :)
Ooh, ok, what colours I can get the Powerbook in:
********************************
Silver, Silver or Silver. (Apple calls it “aluminium”) Unfortunately Apple has decided to drop the wonderful “rainbow of colours” idea they had with the ibook and the PowerBook models of computers. For anyone who has never seen these, the (wo)men in marketing had...
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OS Provided: Apple MacOS 9.1, Apple MacOS X 10.1 / MacOS 9.2, Apple MacOS X / MacOS 9.1, Apple MacOS X / MacOS 9, Apple MacOS X 10.2, Apple MacOS X 10.1.1 / MacOS 9.2.2, Apple MacOS X 10.3, Apple MacOS X 10.4
Software: Drivers & Utilities, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, Quick Time 4
Environmental standards
EPA Energy Star Compliant: Yes
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Listed on Ciao since : 08/04/2004
Manufacturer's product description
Take a high-performance PowerPC G4 processor, add a wide-screen display, and enclose it all in a lightweight titanium case. Apple has just created the PowerBook G4 - and redefined portable computing. If you need the utmost power for creative design, education, or business, the PowerBook G4 is ready to provide it wherever you go. Making a notebook computer the slimmest and lightest in its category shouldn't have to mean making compromises in performance and functionality. What makes a supercomputer "super" is its ability to execute at least one billion floating-point operations per second. It's a staggering measure of speed known as a "gigaflop". In addition, the PowerPC G4 can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle - two to four times faster than traditional processors. The PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine works with the PowerPC architecture to accelerate the data-intensive processing required by next-generation video, voice and graphics applications. Among the G4 key features is a vector permute function capable of rearranging data in the registers - a priceless benefit when converting data from one format to another (often necessary with voice, video and graphics applications, which typically need to save data in a number of different formats). These vector-processing acceleration advantages give the G4 microprocessor a significant edge when it comes to fast visualization of large data sets and intensive math for real-time simulations, making the PowerPC G4 perfect for everything from digital video, graphics and 3D games to astronomy, the biosciences and predictive modeling.
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