Apple's new Mac PowerBooks out today.

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Eug
Erasmus, don't complain... I paid a LOT more for my TiBook 1 GHz (in 2002).

P.S. Here are some pictures of the 15" AluBook innards.

Aww man, they got rid of the removable keyboard. The fact that you didn't need a screwdriver to install RAM was the coolest.

 

[wetcat007]

Isn't it ironic that, IBM makes chips for Apple? lol

 

[addragyn]

Not really, IBM makes chips for whomever will pay for them. There is the double benefit that both companies have an interest in furthering PPC development.

 

[Erasmus-X]

Not really, IBM makes chips for whomever will pay for them. There is the double benefit that both companies have an interest in furthering PPC development.

Ummm....IBM has been both producing and co-producing (in conjunction with Motorola on certain chips) processors for the Apple platform for several years.

 

[Erasmus-X]

Aww man, they got rid of the removable keyboard. The fact that you didn't need a screwdriver to install RAM was the coolest.

Yeah, I like that feature on the TiBook. The only problem with that design however, is the fact that the keyboard is dangerously close to several internal parts (like the RAM). That means when you're an idiot and spill beer on your keyboard like I did about a month ago (I must commend Apple on making durable hardware because my TiBook actually SURVIVED with no parts replacement after cleaning it and letting it dry), you can possibly fry your whole laptop. So putting the RAM access on the bottom of the unit was probably the smartest choice.

But the flip-side of the equation is that the keyboards are easily replaceable in case of physical damage. Most places will sell you a replacement one for around $150, which is far cheaper than replacing a whole laptop.

 

[50]

My friend bought the 15" model you described above....blew his whole life savings on a mac. What is this world coming to?

 

[BaboonGuy]

dvd burner is sweet... and with a 9600 thats awesome

i swear macs would be 5x as popular if they could play CS. hl2 better come out for macs or apple could be in more trouble

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Excelsior
This is the update so many were waiting for. Man this is killer.
17-inch TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.33GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
ATI Mobility Radeon
9600 (64MB DDR)
Backlit Keyboard
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
AirPort Extreme built-in
DVI & S-Video out

This isn't any cheap toy unfortunately. A bit too much on the financial side!

 

[Erasmus-X]

This isn't any cheap toy unfortunately. A bit too much on the financial side!

That's actually quite reasonable for what you're getting. I paid the EXACT SAME price that the new one retails for about 2 months ago with less features. And Eug probably paid close to $3k for his before tax. :0 You're getting a quality machine though. How many PC manufacturers do you know that build their laptop cases almost completely out of METAL and not plastic?

 

[BudAshes]

Wow apple actually put a top of the line graphics card in their machine? Very cool, these actually look like pretty kick ass laptops, and not that badly priced.

 

[HomerSapien]

I bought mine(tibook 667) back in november of '01. I can buy two 12" now for what i paid. haha. But in hindsight, it was a really good purchase since i see myself using this till it falls apart and it is fast enough for everything i do. It just needs a bigger hard drive.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Erasmus-X

That's actually quite reasonable for what you're getting. I paid the EXACT SAME price that the new one retails for about 2 months ago with less features. And Eug probably paid close to $3k for his before tax. :0 You're getting a quality machine though. How many PC manufacturers do you know that build their laptop cases almost completely out of METAL and not plastic?

Yeah, it was pretty spendy, but well worth it. I think I spent close to that much, although I did get somewhat of a discount (and work covers part of it too). I've since played with the 15" Aluminum PowerBook. Sweet machine. For the price it's actually quite a good deal, at 1.25 GHz. Centrino machines with the same feature set are in the same ballpark price range. Indeed, the only Windows laptops I'd ever consider aren't any cheaper anyway.

I'm waiting until 2004H2 though to replace my 1 GHz G4, if the G5s appear. Hopefully with some design tweaking and the die-shrink to 90 nm, they should be able to stick a 1.5-1.6 GHz G5 in a PowerBook. Or maybe I'll wait until 2005, since this TiBook is already quite speedy for most stuff, esp. now that I'm running Panther X.3. And Exposé rules. The time when I notice I could use more speed is when I encode MPEG-2 for DVD, but I don't do it all that often these days. When I do I just set the thing running and go and have dinner or whatever.

 

[Idoxash]

I want to pick up one of thoes new iBooks my self but always a "?" that comes to mind seeings that I be useing the modem instead of broadband. Are the modems software base or hardware? Every x86 notebook I gotten in the past came with software modems that were plain dang slow, slows the system even with fast cpus, and gave me lots of issues with the cdrom useing 100% cpu and killen modem when connected. Any feedback would be really nice, thanks in advance.

--Idoxash

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Idoxash
I want to pick up one of thoes new iBooks my self but always a "?" that comes to mind seeings that I be useing the modem instead of broadband. Are the modems software base or hardware? Every x86 notebook I gotten in the past came with software modems that were plain dang slow, slows the system even with fast cpus, and gave me lots of issues with the cdrom useing 100% cpu and killen modem when connected. Any feedback would be really nice, thanks in advance.

--Idoxash

The modem apparently works fine, but I can't really say. I only tried it a couple of times a few years ago, but have not touched dialup on my laptops since. (I'm on wireless, hooked up to broadband DSL.)

Dialup makes me want to rip my hair out.

 

[ViRGE]

The organization I used to work for used Macs exclusively, and to my knowledge, we only had a modem issue once, where the machine(an iBook) would simply refuse to connect to the local dial-up system at a decent speed. Other than that, we never had any other issues with the Mac modems.

 

[Idoxash]

Sounds good to me. It sucks useing dial up but to be honest I have no use for broadband. Even thoe where I live for 15 dollars more I can get a very nice cable connetion I can find a lot of uses for 15 bucks instead of broadband when I rarly download anything huge enought that needs it. Thanks for your feedback.

--Idoxash