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Solid little performer
By: Champs McCready
June 17, 2008 @ 1:47 PM
I love my Powerbook G4. I have traveled the world with it (from Canada to Australia, New Zealand and back again) and this little sucker has not quit on me once. I have dropped it, spilled juice on it, thrown it, flown it…this little trooper never protested. I had an issue with the battery where I went to Japan without turning it off properly and the battery went completely dead and would not charge. Regardless of my incompetence, a great rep a Mac found a way to exchange the battery free of charge, so I am very happy with the service and overall reliability of this great Mac product. Just make sure you cycle your battery properly. The new batteries will give you 400 full charges/discharges before performance starts to be affected.
I’m not sure if the video card has enough “oomph” to handle full size HD video at full frame rate, but a little more RAM might help fix that. That’s my only concern with performance. Also, since the bottom is the cooling area, it can get very hot at random times. Usually a reboot will chill the system out if you’re not doing anything to video or memory intensive. I use it for a whole host of professional video and editing applications and the dedicated video card is great for all of these things. Also many many ports for firewire, external VGA monitor/projector, USBs out the ying yang.
Obviously they don’t make these any more, but if you’re looking for a Mac and are still not sure about the Intel Mac series, this is a great bet.
No built in webcam though…
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
perfect laptop
By: booly
December 15, 2005 @ 4:30 AM
Apple OS is so easy and this computer is really perfect.
Best ratio quality/price
fully stable and high performance. Everything is include and not necessary to buy external accesories like modem, bluetooth, …
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
new aluminum model has ddr and ata/100
By: bd
October 19, 2003 @ 1:34 AM
this review was about the titanium 15″, but the new aluminum 15″ uses ddr memory (333 mhz) and has an ata/100 disk. it also has that fun backlit keyboard that will wow your workmates when you bring it to a conference room where they’ve lowered the lights for a presentation.
(http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html)
a mac has never been a good computer for bargain hunters. to be fair, though, if you equip a dell or toshiba with the same hardware as a powerbook, you’d end up spending a few hundred dollars more than what apple charges. (and then, adding insult to injury, you’d be stuck with windows instead of mac os x.)
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
great.. great.. perfect...
By: Laurentiu Ardelean
July 10, 2003 @ 7:46 AM
i own this notebook and i think it is pretty much flawless. perhaps the technology is a little “dated” but i compared it to top of the line dell & co. and it oubest them. how do i know that?? my friend owns a dell.. and a compaq laptop.. both top-of-the-line… but you know what they dont have… the dont have a dvd burnere… they dont have onboard firewire (the dell does) they dont have unix… they dont have…. you get the point… truth is.. if you want to be on the cutting edge.. and SAVE MONEY (something you do when u buy apple) you should look into this laptop. its also 1 inch thin. now.. you look at it and say… but… i can get a sony for like $1800… well… you can… but youll get a sony… thats all youll get… youll still have windows.. youll still have DRM up the wazoo… you wont have freedom.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
I duno about this one
By: Colin Hsien
June 11, 2003 @ 11:06 PM
I dont own this notebook, but I am actualy looking to buy one. But I notice that the ram is the old style pc 133 which kinda bothers me because its slow, and also because it uses the ata 66 (max hard drive tansfer of 66 megs per second)
The new 12 inch and 17 inch both have ata 100, and they both use ddr ram (233 and 333 respectively)
To me it seems this computer is a little dated, apple needs to upgrade to ata100 and ddr ram and then I would buy it…….if I could afford it. Apple also needs to learn to lower prices…
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No