YAY! I'm actually doing PPE at Oxford --> it's great with tons of familiar faces too. I came to C...
YAY! I'm actually doing PPE at Oxford --> it's great with tons of familiar faces too. I came to Ciao as I love all things tech related and reviewing them. All my reviews are posted at my site at www.cahtech.co.uk.
Member since:12.05.2004
Reviews:16
Members who trust:14
After I have spent more time with the laptop I can put more detail into this review. At this stage, this is just a general summary of what I have found from using one whilst my Inspiron gets fixed.
Design: Most people find these laptops with their seductive glowing apples beautiful. I would have to agree that there is to an extent a uniformity of brand signifier with the design. You just know that this is an Apple with one look....and it's not the apple that gives it away.
The initial wow factor of design relies on the fact that this laptop is very clean. The lines are clean and straight or well rounded. It has a straight and flat simplicity of design that shows no busy features and very little imperfections.
The ports are all recessed and neatly lined up along the sides. There is no CD tray, only a system reminiscent of the original iMacs where it angrily sucks in your disc. Simply, the lines are sharp and clean and bright.
However, that poses several problems, especially with this 14" model. The first is the fact that the laptop gets very dirty, very quickly. Scratches and finger prints become glaringly obvious on the beautiful case. At least with an ugly Dell or blocky IBM all of that was camouflaged. With this, all your sweat that you have created whilst typing lingers. It might make you satisfied that you worked hard, but when the white turns grey you won't be so chuffed with your work. Secondly, the edge of the laptop will cut against your wrists as you type which can get very very uncomfortable.
The System: 933Mhz G4 processor - good enough for everyday use. 384Mb is my recommended minimum memory. 9200 ATI radeon GPU -not bad for office tasks.
Connectivity: Optional WLAN integrated card - very good range, lower performance than some cards
with throughput. 10/100 - present and accounted for, but limited by HD for sustained transfers. Firewire and USB: for plugging in fast peripherals.
Everything you need there. Although networking suffers from glitches sometimes, it does allow for full samba (printer and file sharing) that is used by default in Windows. FTP, SSH, all work -although the FTP client is not reliable with some servers (especially GuildFTP). Primary domain authentication however is not included -although few people need that capability.
Performance: As I have never properly tested Macs before, my results at this stage can only be qualitative rather than quantitative backed on hard figures. Still, they should be informative.
With a 933Mhz processor and DDR266 memory the laptop seems to be very weak in comparison to some 3.4Ghz Pentium laptops with DDR400. However, this is meant to be a portable laptop with enough power to be productive whilst on the move, or working anywhere.
At this stage, it is important to point out that the Pentium laptops use the x86 instruction set whereas the G4 chip used in the iBook is a PPC risc chip. This means that the G4 chip is inherently more efficient than the PC one having more instructions available to satisfy different demands. Therefore, direct comparisons are impossible using the Mhz scale. In no way am I suggesting that 933Mhz can compete with 3.4, but it is enough to be adequate.
General usage tests: AC / Max Battery (s) Starting Word: 4 / 7 Open Office: 14 / 34 Dreamweaver: 18 / 30 Photoshop: 23 / 50
This laptop will hardly ever leave you waiting. The long time for Open Office is becuase it has to start an X display server as well as launch the application. This makes it a good test for memory speed, hard disk speed and the CPU. Even on max battery settings or slowest CPU speed you are not left waiting for too long. Word starts up snappily whatever the case, but problems appear if you type too fast and text can appear in wads. However, that is really caused by external processes running (system maintenance) that slows things down.
Dreamweaver and Photoshop are very heavy and large applications hence the longer time to start. Still, only Photoshop leaves you yawning. And then no mention has been made about battery life. I could get 5.5hrs when new from this laptop at dimmest visible screen setting and max battery. Not bad when most applications were still useable.
The supplied 128MB with the laptop which cannot be removed is a joke. Given the memory leaks (data in memory no longer used, but not removed) that occur and the memory intensive nature of Aqua, all the 3D effects and the applications that take up space, I would be surprised if with 128 you can do more than boot. Increasing memory to the maximum of 640MB is a necessity, not a luxury. If you can't afford a 512MB sodimm, then just settle with 256. It will be 'just' enough.
As for graphics, the 9200mobile graphics core can barely keep up with the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game provided with the laptop. Only on full CPU usage can it play really smoothly. Additionally, in low power mode the GPU cannot properly render the game and anti-aliaising and anisotropic filtering produce bad rendering issues when used. It might be game specific, or hardware -I can't say for sure yet. This is not a gaming machine, although if you play strategy games such as Command and Conquer Generals, then it will be adequate.
Be warned though that the hard disk rotates slowly and has a small cache -leading to low performance. Also, networking performance is therefore badly hit meaning that average throughput when transferring files can fall dramatically.
Screen: This is probably one of the most important aspects of any computer -its the thing you are looking at the most time. The panel itself is of relatively high quality. A bonus from the first and second generation iBooks is the presence of rubber feet on the screen to stop the keyboard making imprints on the LCD. As for actual quality the screen is well lit and provides adequate colour reproduction.
This is no monitor for CAD or design stuff, but perfect for general work and general surfing etc. Ghosting and blurring with fast paced games and DVDs is very obvious however and in this respect the iBook is far worse than the quick response times of the Dell 16ms laptop displays.
My other quibbles with the screen include the low resolution. At 1024x768 it is not the biggest on the market -but for some it is more than adequate. I have been spoilt by 1600x1200 monitors which display far more, but 1024 is good enough for a 14" panel. This is why the 12" iBook has a far crisper screen due to higher dot density. Furthermore, the screen's abilities with anti-aliased fonts is poor and some documents look very washed out. It might not be as good as Windows' Clear Type, but it is better than nothing.
OS: Rather than be just another Windows PC, this is an Apple Macintosh PPC (Power PC) running a BSD called Darwin that is run under the Aqua window manager. This *nix means that the system is very stable and relatively secure. Although it is secure by virtue of there being few Apples and there being little point in writing malware for it, the underlying BSD structure is superior to Windows -although less user friendly.
I will probably do an in depth review on the OS for a Panther review, but for now here are the highlights: Lots of applications available to replace your Windows ones -you can even buy MS Office for Mac. Stable and reliable - just as good as XP is now. Easy to use - 'nuff said. You could probably use this without reading any manual. It can be unintuitive at times though. Pretty -it is a good looking OS to satisfy the pretty chassis.
However, problems include bad networking reliability, and the lack of native Windows compatability in a Windows world pose major problems.
Accessories and must haves: I advise that for maximum connectivity you get the wireless LAN card. To install it, you pick up the keyboard with the two tabs and insert the card into the slot under the keyboard. Everything is explained in the manual.
Probably, a bigger hard disk rather than the default 40GB would be good since you run out of space rather quickly if you are like me -the more the merrier!
Due to the aforementioned memory leaks, and the memory intensive nature of all the 3D graphical user interface effects, maxing out the memory is essential to get the best performance. More applications will run simultaneously, and you will get much less stuttering and pauses during use.
Conclusion: Pros: 1. Adequate performance for most office tasks. 2. Relatively compact 3. Good battery life 4. Very good usuability. 5. Good value for money.
Cons: 1. Networking issues can occur (especially with DHCP). 2. Low graphics potential. 3. Low resolution screen. 4. Low hard disk performance. 5. Need to max it out with memory, HD and WLAN card to get the most out of it. 6. Relatively obsolete with 1.2Ghz iBooks and impending G5s. 7. Build quality not that good. (see star section) 8. It can get very hot on your lap when powered by AC (iPulse reports 50C under load sometimes going to 55C)
Overall, this is an adequate performer at a very good price. This reflects a balanced laptop that is powerful enough for all tasks but the most demanding with a very clean design and high useability operating system. Without doubt, it gets 9/10 as a portable price conscious work machine, especially helped by long battery life. For a performance nutter this can only get 4/10.
***Physical build problems I have encountered with these iBooks in general: 3 logic board failures -now free replacements being offered. 2 screen malfunctions leading to coloured lines, and loss of brightness and any coherent image. 1 Hard disk corruption Out of all the people with iBooks that I know of, several have had to be replaced and fixed at great inconvenience although most problems should be addressed now. My only current gripe is with the battery not lining up with the base of the machine and the battery locking clip cracking slightly********
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
very good review, very informative, might have to consider which mac i get now
paule23 06.10.2004 23:21
Top review mate, and I'm glad to kniow I wasn;t the only one to suffer a repeated logic board failure. Apple eventually replaced my computer with a new one, but not until 4 months had passed and I lost all the info on my hard drive!
May 14th, 2004
exceptional by (11%):
very helpful by (86%):
helpful by (4%):
