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Love my Powerbook g4 12" 1.33
By: Ray Moss
February 18, 2008 @ 9:22 AM
I upgraded my RAM to 768 and my HDD to a 5400 80 GB. It runs Photoshop pretty well and I can do most anything with it. I installed the latest version of OSX leopard and it runs amazing! The size makes it perfect for travel and taking notes in class to! I love it! Couldn’t be happier!!
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Usable. Only just.
By: Amri Rohayat
December 26, 2007 @ 10:30 PM
Mine is the 1.33Ghz version. Upgraded to max 1.25GB RAM and a 7200rpm Hitachi hard disk, it runs so hot sometimes that it keeps going to sleep. This makes it pretty much useless for anything but light “productivity” work, such as checking e-mail, doing up some non-graphics intensive pages in InDesign, and surfing non-Flash websites.
Here’s the thing that pisses me off about this otherwise perfect form factor: open more than 10 tabs in Camino and the fan goes crazy. Browse a folder full of pictures in Photoshop Elements and the fan goes crazy. Touch up more than a couple of photos in Photoshop Elements and the fan goes crazy. Open up more than one document in NeoOffice and the fan goes crazy.
When the fan goes crazy, it’s just a matter of minutes before the thing goes to sleep. I’d say this thing can’t cope with 30% of the things I need to do on a computer.
I use it with external 19″ LCD monitor, mouse and keyboard. Removing the battery when you’re using it as a desktop replacement helps keep it cool a bit, but not much. Maybe using a slow hard disk and less RAM might also help a bit. While you’re at it, you might want to run it off an external firewire hard disk. All of which will turn your 1.33GHz processor into something more like 800MHz (I’m just guessing).
If all you need is a portable computer to ferry between home and office without having to go through the batty file synchronising procedures, a Mac Mini is probably a better bet. All you’ll need then would be two sets of external monitor/mouse/keyboard/hard disk at either end.
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
dont insult, mines fine
By: kk
November 24, 2005 @ 7:21 AM
had the 1.5g model with 512ram as standard from pc world, is great. no problems and i have extended battery life through a patch pc world gave me on cd. is a generraly great laptop, not quite as good as my sony, because of size of HD, but this is a great gadget. is a bit of a radiator, but what do you expect? theres hardly gonna be a great heatsink in there is there??
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
The body is too easy to be bended
By: tarcylin
October 18, 2005 @ 3:08 PM
I bought this computer within a year. When I received it, the keyboard was kind of pushed up a little. I didn’t think it is a problem so I didn’t bring it back to Apple computer.
Today, I found the metal part that close to the CD or DVD drive is distorted, and the battery won’t fit to the place. I brought back to Apple, they said this is not under the warranty because they believe it was cause by drop. I never ever drop the computer. I ask how they judge the cause of the damage is by someone drop it. They said because they see a lot of the same case.
I do not agree with them, and I think if it is happen a lot. The design has problem itself.
This PowerBook G4 is expensive, and I only use less than one year the damage occured. They said if I want to repair it, it will cost me $600. I could buy another computer with that price.
If you like PowerBook G4 12″, just be aware this is a common problem that would happen within one year. One of the leg is on the battery. Now since the battery won’t fit, the 4 leg won’t stand correctly. This is just too bad.
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Excellent Buy
By: Me
September 12, 2005 @ 9:43 AM
The Powerbook 12″ G4 is definitely one of the best purchases I’ve made for the simple reason that in this case, form follows function. The aluminum chassis helps get rid of heat faster than a plastic chassis or even the titanium one from before. Guys, read up on the history of the Powerbook before getting upset over it.
P.S. James, you’re a fucking moron. Put your stupid liberal whiney “oooh the whole world is going to hell” bullshit propoganda somewhere else, like a political forum.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
APPLE SUPPORT IS A JOKE
By: JOHN
March 11, 2005 @ 4:44 AM
I am a expat working in Jakarta Indonesia.I purchased my first ever Apple products from a main Apple dealer in Singapore late July 2004. A 12″ G4 Powerbook with Airport & Bluetooth plus extra memory. I also purchased a Blue tooth mouse, keyboard and 40 gb I-POD. The equipment was planned to be used purely for music. I have since also purchased another 60 gb I-POD, Airport Base Station and Airport Express. Why did I buy all the other Apple junk, well, because I was so dumb I believed Apple would help me resolve the problems, what a huge mistake!!! I have been unable to use most of the equipment for over 80% of the time that I have owned it and I have been unable to use any of it all since mid January. Details follow:
The laptop has only ever been used in my airconditioned lounge and has had a very easy life.It ran well for about 1 month in August 2004, then became very unreliable, very hot doing almost nothing,frequently failing to boot , locking up, blue tooth and airport ceased working etc etc. I installed all the latest software upgrades via the internet, but the problems became worse until in late October the powerbook would not even boot. I returned the powerbook to the dealer in Singapore late November and received it back late Decemeber, with logic boards hard drive etc having been replaced, well thats what I was told. I also lost over 200 cd’s, all legally owned, that I had taken many hours to load up to feed the I-POD.I yet again was a dumb ass and assumed all would be well, and bought a new 60 gb I-POD. The Powerbook ran ok for about 2 weeks and again began to behave exactly as it had done before, very hot running only I-Ttunes and eventually becoming unusable mid January. To date every time I power up I get a screen message telling me that I need to restart, also yet again incredibly hot running nothing and that is as far as I can get. I ran the diagnostics software which as previously, reports a hard drive unrecoverable error and also cannot detect the modem, I have no idea why?. My Airport Base Sation Power Supply, installed in a different part of the house, has now also failed and that effectively precludes me from even using my DELL Laptop via my wireless network.I will be returning the failed equipment to Singapore in March but I have been advised that they cannot even give me a date to fix the Base Station and are unsure how long the Powerbook will be gone for, so I will most likely be without my equipment for a number of weeks yet again. I also asked if I could return the Powerbook and buy a larger 15″ or 17″ unit but the dealer advised that they would only give me about $900 for my unit,which is derisory given I paid $3400 only 6 months ago and through no fault of my own, have only had the use of it for about 5 weeks since I bought it. Given the options presented to me by Apples main dealer, and the grave doubts that I have concerning reliability, I am now at the point of giving serious consideration to simply throwing the power book et al in the trash can and buying a top end PC laptop,given that many PC models I have owned in the past and present perfom faultlessly. Not impressed Apple, very, very poor show. I have also not received one single constructive response from Apple, they simply appear to be disinterested. CAVEAT EMPTOR
Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Sweet laptop shame about the screen
By: Hussein J
September 16, 2004 @ 11:33 AM
I’m using a 1.33GHz Rev C 12″ Powerbook here with 768MB RAM. Its my baby. I’m a first time MacOS user after using Windows for the past three years and its a very natural progression. Having nothing against commericial software, I can now do all my UNIX geeky stuff, learn C# in mono, write my Perl, PHP and Python natively, surf the net, watch movies and play Call Of Duty all on one machine! Its the best (and also most expensive) laptop I’ve ever had, but its not without its problems. 1) It has the worst TFT screen ever. Compared to my 2 year old Sony VAIO R600MX its not bright and lacks quality. There is far too much motion blur. Compare it with a 15″ or even the 14″ iBook and you will be surprised at how bad it really is. 2) The battery does not fit flush on the bottom. It is a minor point but it really annoys me! I can feel the ridge every time I pick it up. 3) Warping. For the first couple of weeks doing a few intensive tasks the laptop warped so it would rock on any flat surface making it virtually unusable on a desk. I put it on my knee and applied some serious pressure on it (with the screen open) to correct the warp and now its OK! Very dodgy though. On the whole, I love this laptop. The screen quality is not excusable, but if they fixed this, it would definately be a perfect 10.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
great...but hot!
By: james
August 9, 2004 @ 7:30 AM
I love the G4 PB 12, its the best but…ohhh..it does get hot, so I have to agree with an earlier review that it does represent form over function. The review stating 2 min app launching is w i d e of the mark however – their one must have been shagged. PS PLEASE DONT GIVE BUSH A SECOND TERM GUYS – ITS TOO DANGEROUS FOR EVERYONE
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Awful design decisions
By: bob k
April 19, 2004 @ 12:54 PM
This notebook is a textbook example of what happens when FORM is the bottom line instead of FUNCTION.
The 12″ Powerbook *looks* spectacular. If you base your computer buying decisions on fashion then don’t hesitate, it looks great.
But performance wise it is a dog compared to similarly-priced non-Apple offerings (even on the slowest PC laptop I have never waited a full two minutes for an app to launch; this happens regularly on the powerbook). And it sheds heat like crazy. Maybe if you live in a cold climate this is acceptable, but given the existence of climate control, central heating etc. , I seriously doubt it.
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
System Hampered by Poor Themals
By: Saundby
April 14, 2004 @ 5:31 PM
This is the most portable system you can get-it’s about a pound lighter than many other systems of comparable size. But if you’re a power user, you’ll find it running hot when you run apps that stress the CPU. Most normal apps won’t, but if you’re a LAN party gamer you’ll find it halting the processor on you when it starts running too hot. Very frustrating.
A base of some sort with a heatsink and fan will help pull some heat off the left side, where the CPU and GPU and RAM are, but at the cost of portability. Get the wireless mouse and keyboard to keep your arm off the hot case. But if you’re really planning on running apps that are going to push the processor on a regular basis you may want to look into something else. This one can’t get enough air across the chips to get rid of the heat fast enough. You’re not going to get sustained 1GHz performance out of this thanks to the heat problems.
If portability comes first, you might still get it, and just be prepared to live with the limitations. That’s what I’ve done. I’m still disappointed by how easily it overheats, though.
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Great notebook
By: Josh G
January 29, 2004 @ 1:32 PM
I’ve been using a 12″ RevB Powerbook for almost 4 months now as my main computer. I have been extremely pleased with it and my productivity in college has improved significantly. I shopped around for nearly a year before ordering the powerbook and I waited for the B revision to come out in order to get DVI output. The powerbook suited my needs better than anything else in the class and had the best features/price ratio of any notebook that I looked at. Not to mention it’s damn cool and all my classmates compliment it on a regular basis. It does get a little warm, but with the way the weather has been here lately, that’s almost a plus.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Damn near perfect
By: Andrew C
January 9, 2004 @ 8:13 PM
This is probably one of the best notebooks out there: It’s pretty damn fast with a 1GHz G4, has Bluetooth and 802.11G, a DVD burner, DVI-out, and a very nice full sized keyboard. However, it still weighs just 4.6 lbs, and costs less than $2k. It’s light and durable (pick it up from one corner and it won’t bend or creek at all), so it’s easy to take it wherever. Don’t forget how good it looks: on what other laptop can you look cool using a unix console. Also, heat might be a problem for some, but it really doesn’t bother me. On the other hand, I can pick up fairly hot stuff with my bare hands, so you might want to go to the nearest CompUSA or Apple Store and test it out.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Now at 1Ghz!
By: beto
November 2, 2003 @ 11:32 AM
With improved speed. And many other enhancements this new Powerbook is the way to go. I couldn’t be happier.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
also doubles as a heater
By: bd
October 19, 2003 @ 1:19 AM
careful if you use the powerbook in your lap. powerbooks have always run hot, especially on the bottom — as do thinkpads and sonys and just about any other small notebook made after the 600mhz ibook — but the 12-inch is a real scorcher. put a coffee-table book or a few magazines under it and you should be fine. alas, the palm-rest gets warm too. the region under your left hand is noticeably hot; that must be the disk drive. the 15″ and 17″ models don’t get quite that toasty. (to see if the heat would bother you, go into the store and type on one for 15 minutes.) for me the heat at the palm-rest was a deal-breaker.
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Powerbook 12"
By: Audrey Cendres
July 21, 2003 @ 6:34 PM
An absolute power in the notebook world. Great for the traveling DJ, high-end gamer or productivity specialist. With 640mb, the ability to multi-task 12 applications simutaneously, has the usability of a full featured desktop, in a ultra-cool and scratch proof small footprint.
Give in to what i feel is a new form of expression which differs so much from, and which we nevertheless after a little time take to be, reality itself.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No