Apple PowerBook G4

Hahaha, finally all the years of trailing around as “the friend”, “the houseguest”, “the girlfriend” and now “the fiancée” of ‘him indoors’ has finally paid off as the boy has come good. His latest technical contract is with a graphic design company that issues all its employees with Apple Powerbook laptops. Regular readers of my ops know how much I love techie bits and pieces and therefore can imagine the unparalled joy on my face when he came home with his new toy the other week.

In the name of quality assurance and to make certain that it actually does work after his Herculean effort of lugging the machine across commuterland, I have been using it for the last 7 days. “Any excuse” I hear you yell and you know what I am going to yell back; “too blooming right” : )

I am not writing a highly technical op here, this is for Mr. And Mrs. who have seen the TV ads (aren’t they fabulous!) and are wondering what Apple computers are and if they are something that they may have a use for…….

What are Apple Powerbooks?
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They are the laptop (portable) version of the Apple iMac computer. They are the same in comparison quality as the desktop computer most people are reading this op on to the laptop version of that same machine.

Versions available:
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12” screen with 40gb HD
15” and 17” screen with 80gb HD

Oooooh no, acronym hell! What are HDs and GBs?
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A computer hard drive (HD) is a tangible piece of hardware that the computer uses to store any information that you, the user, wants to save. The space available on a hard drive is measured in gigabytes (gb). To give you an idea of how much ‘space’ 40gb are; a document with 2000 words saved to hard disk will take up about 40kb (kilobytes). There are 1000kb in 1gb (see, you are reading the lingo like a professional now)….. Those with fast minds or fast calculator fingers will realise this is a LOT of space to store information on.

So which model are you reviewing?
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The 12” screen version with the 40gb HD and Superdrive CD/DVD reader/writer

It’s not the size; it’s what you do with it
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The 12” version has to be the best choice for people who commute. As well as the small frame — just 10.9” in width, 8.6” in depth and 1.18” in height, it weighs a titchy 4.6 pounds. This is the weight of 8 bricks of butter. It makes me weep when I think of all the time I spent lugging around the concrete block of a laptop that I used to have when we first started the business. (an old 8.8lbs Dell Latitude) Even today, I still have the marks on my shoulder where the straps dug in. The nice thing about the dimension of the Apple laptop is that you can throw it into a rucksack or a large handbag if you don’t want to announce to every would-be mugger that you have something in your keeping worthy of their attention.

Now boil the kettle, there is a lot more to go in order to complete this op!

I am a PC person, I wouldn’t know where to start with a Mac
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I am a great believer in RTFM and for this reason, I purchased Mac OS X for Dummies from Amazon: (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI​N/0764525646/ref=sr_aps_books_1_3/202-29​27088-3563061) for £15.99 to bring me up to speed quickly with the out of box abilities of the operating system installed on the Powerbook. Obviously this op is about the computer and not the various guides available to accompany it but I will just say if you have never used a Mac before or haven’t had your hands on one in a few years (like me), a Dummies book is the best way to go in my humble opinion. For anyone interested, my first Mac was a school machine a Performa 250. Everyone who is into Macs will smile at this memory and everyone else can just nod and try not to look too bored.

Hang on, hang on, hang on …. WTF does RTFM mean?
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It means read the ….* errr *…. manual. Apple does provide a guide for users in the shape of ‘QuickBooks for Mac’ (New User Edition) but I like the look, layout and chatty way in which the dummies books are written. That is not to say anything 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:
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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 the fantastic idea of making the casing in any colour except the traditional lively shades of beige and grey (riveting and inspiring tones, I am sure you agree) As a result machines in such fabulous colours as “translucent” (clear plastic) "blueberry" (royal blue) "tangerine" (orange), "graphite" (slate grey) "indigo" (dark blue) and "key lime" (radioactive green) were produced and they were (are) gorgeous!

Where can I buy this marvel from?:
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http://www.microwarehouse.co.uk/ (Inc. VAT) (£1,291.31)
http://www.dabs.com/uk £1,291.32 inc VAT. There is an online finance deal available from this site paying back at a rate of £67.86 for 24 months
http://www.cec.co.uk/ £ 1,333.10 (Incl. VAT)
http://uk.insight.com £1398.24 inc VAT

The kettle must have boiled by now, no sugar and lots of milk for me please.

So is it worth all the bother of learning a new operating system?:
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VIEWING
The first thing to notice when you turn on the Mac is how sharp the 12.1” screen resolution is. It comes out of the box with the output (what you see in front of you) set to 1024-by-768-pixels and this is perfect. The images are so clear; it is like plugging your laptop into the TV. It becomes clear just how sharp it is when you go back to your old computer and the output on that appears slightly fuzzy around the edges.
The PowerBook also supports a dual display mode and video mirroring. This means the user can output what is on the computer screen to another source like a television or a projector. The former option does require an Apple Mini-DVI to Video Adapter (a cable) to connect the TV to the mini-DVI port on the laptop. I feel this is a bit of a swizz as Apple makes a big fuss about this functionality and then sell the necessary equipment to carry it out as a separate accessory. Naughty Apple!

For anyone unfamiliar with what a pixel is, it is the measure of output on the screen in front of you.

CASING
The case comes is an aluminium alloy. Apparently “resistant to stains and scratches”. As this was not my machine, I had to put this to the test and I can confirm that the housing is resistant to marks from baby rattles, carpet dragging, wooden tabletop dragging but not housekeys. (Yes, the same infamous housekeys that featured in my iPod op)

CD/DVD
The feature I love is the SuperDrive which comes with the ability to read from and WRITE to DVDs and CD’s. This means that you can back up all your precious data to a cd, save digital film files to a format viewable on a DVD player (great for sending the Grandparents home movies of the baby running around with a tea towel over his head giggling (We make our own fun in our house) listening to music CDs and watching DVDs.

INTERNET CONNECTIVITY
54Mbps AirPort Extreme — This is the networking card, which is supposed to be up to 5 times faster than anything of its peers available on the market at this time.

It is a wireless networking card which provides internet connectivity to anyone with a wireless router plugged into their broadband connection at home. Before you all yell at me “well it is not very wireless then, is it” the wireless part refers to the laptop connecting to the router via radio waves and obtaining access to the internet that way.

Note on home wirelessness: (Thanks to Jill Murphy for pointing out that I missed this) In order to get a wireless network card to work at home, you need a piece of equipment called a wireless router (a small piece of hardware about twice the size of a glasses case) plugged into the broadband socket. I would recommend the Lynksys one (http://www.linksys.com/products/product​.asp?grid=33&scid=35&prid=544) as this is the one we use.

For anyone who lives 'out in the sticks' receiving their broadband connection through a satellite link, it would be a better idea to ask your connection provider what routers they recommend to work with their equipment.

There are increasing numbers of wireless-enabled “hot spots” in hotels, airport lounges, coffee shops and bookstores around the world, which means that with this laptop in your bag, you can get online from practically anywhere. I know from personal experience that there is a chain of coffee shops in Hong Kong which offers free hot-spotting as long as you buy a coffee and a sandwich in one of their branches as long as you bring your own wireless enabled laptop.

Unfortunately if you are still in broadband-less land, you will have to splash out and buy an Apple network card with a modem adapter to plug into your phone socket. These are about £100. The cheapest I found were from dabs.com for £97 but they are on a 3 week back order.

Do you have a biscuit to go with this cup of tea?

BLUETOOTH
Bluetooth ‘ing. This is not a painful aftermath to a session gone wrong with a dentist but another wireless method of connecting devices. It has a much shorter radio wave range than AirPort extreme so it is used to connect devices to swap information (called ‘synching’) between then rather than for internet connectivity. For example, on my Bluetooth enabled phone, I have 111 contacts saved to the address book. If I turn on Bluetooth on my phone and laptop, the 2 devices can see one another and exchange any updates I make to my contact list from whichever piece of media. So, if the worst happens and my phone is stolen or lost, I can buy another Bluetooth enabled phone and sync it with the computer and have the phone populated with my contact list.

PORTS
FireWire and USB 2.0. These are the names of what my sister calls the ‘holes’ on the back of a computer. They are more commonly referred to as ‘ports’ and their names refer to the type of data that they can accept.
On Macs, FireWire is usually used for connecting (and therefore exchanging information with) external hard drives and Digital cameras, whilst USB 2.0 is used to connect graphics tablets, digital cameras, printers and scanners.

PROCESSOR
The processor in the laptop has a feature called a Velocity Engine. For those unsure as to what a processor does, it is the captain’s cabin on the good ship laptop. Without a processor, nothing happens, with a fast processor, everything happens very fast. The Powerbooks cabin processes data in huge 128-bit chunks (about twice as fast as the computer you are sitting in front of now) used in traditional processors. This means that the computer does not appear to pause for thought when an intensive piece of processing is required by next-generation video, voice and graphics applications. In plain English, things happen very fast on the Mac!

GRAPHICS
There is no point having a super slim screen unless there is a great graphic card to accompany it and Apple have inserted the NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 card into the Powerbook. As I have already said the quality of the output to the screen in among the best I have ever seen and that is as a result of the excellent quality of this piece of hardware. It is an especially good card for gaming graphics. Not that we have any time for that sort of thing in our house. * Ahem *

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X Panther v10.3, Apple’s operating system. The cogs and wheels of the whole system and one that takes a bit of time and study to master. Is it worth it, if you have spent years getting used to the quirks and “features” of Microsoft’s operating system Windows? I think it is. Apple have put a lot of time and effort into revamping the latest incarnation of their software and it really shows, features like system sensing if a user is connecting from the office or outside and connecting them to the internet accordingly are wonderful. There is also the fantastic ‘Instant On’ feature, which means the Powerbook can go from a state of hibernation (sleep) in less than one second. More and more hardware manufacturers are seeing OS X as a viable alternative to Windows and are writing drivers for their devices to work with Macs so although there is not the range of supported toys out there that Windows have, it is getting better.

iPhoto – photo editing software. Has a range of very simple and very functioning options to expand, shrink, cut, paste, change the colour, get rid of red-eye and save as monochrome your digital photographs or images.

iMovie – digital movie editing software. Has a range of very simple and very functioning options to cut, paste, change the tone, get rid of red-eye and save as monochrome your digital films. Very intuitive to use.
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iTunes - This is a music organising and purchasing programme that will allow you search for and buy music. iTunes will then organise your music into folders of your choosing (e.g. by artist, by genre or by release date) Once you have been through the menu options on the other two applications, you feel like an expert at this piece of software. I like the way Apple have kept a similar ‘look and feel’ between all 3 applications so it does not feel like you have all this new functionality to learn every time you open a feature.

Graphics tools: FAXstf, Art Directors Toolkit, Test Drive, FileMaker, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner and Graphic Converter

Microsoft Office v.X, Pro Trial. The version of Office (Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint and Outlook) designed by Microsoft for the Mac.

MUSIC
All the usual features like built-in stereo speakers (fantastic sound out of them) stereo headphone output jack - this is somewhere to plug your headphones into just in case anyone in the office/airplane doesn’t share your taste in Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath.

How long does the laptop battery last?
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After a complete charge (machine switched off to charge) 4 hours 53 minutes unplugged was the longest I got out of a working machine before I had to plug it into the mains. This is pretty average for a laptop battery but I suppose more uptime on after a single charge would mean a heavier bigger battery and therefore a h and b machine as well which is what Apple are trying to get away from.

Related URL’s:
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http://www.apple.com
http://www.apple.com/ibook/

Thanks for reading
Xx
E.