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17" PowerBook G4: More reader impressions
March 21, 2003
by Steve Hildreth
Editor-in-Chief
More readers are sending in their first impressions of the 17" PowerBook G4. These are the most recent we've received:
"Just got my BTO this morning (I ordered immediately after Steve's keynote.):
* It's not as large to carry as some make it out. I haven't hauled it except around the house, but it really feels like the thinness balances the larger size. (I previously used a Powerbook G3.) It's also quite stiff. No flex problems at all.
* It's very quiet. Sitting next to my old G4 tower, I couldn't even hear the disk.
* Not very hot. I've been using it for a couple of hours on my lap and it's warm where the disk it, in the bottom middle, and also a little warm around the trackpad. Cooler than my old G3 Powerbook! Not uncomfortable to the touch on the bottom.
* The key light sensor works great and is located in the power on/off switch to the right of the keyboard. It takes about a second to adapt to light change. The screen changes brightness as well as the keys.
* I don't see a single dead/stuck pixel.
* The trackpad sometimes does not respond the first try. I think I read that it has "anti-palm" technology to avoid mousing around when you don't intend to and maybe this is partly the cause. It's disorienting because the cursor is not visible during this time.
* Keyboard very solid.
* The built-in Airport Extreme won't connect to my LInksys WRT54G if the Linksys is set in G-only mode. In mixed mode it apparently works. I'll have to figure a way to find out if it's connected at 802.11g speed and there's just a misunderstanding with the Linksys or if it's only connecting at 802.11b speeds.
* The sound from the speakers is good. It has a good stereo image and is quite diffused. That's good since it sounds like it's coming from all across the screen, but it's also a little gimmicky like putting a boom box in "super-stereo-spread" mode.
* The Matrix looks great playing fullscreen! (First time I played it, it left the Dock area uncovered and the menus showed. I put it in the background, it went to windowed mode, then when I went fullscreen again it was truly fullscreen.
* The screen has an incredibly wide angle of view from side-to-side. Looking almost edge-on it looks almost unchanged from straight on. Looking from too high an angle results in a viewable but lighter image. It doesn't have much tolerance for looking from below -- hard to do, I know. It gets unwatchable if well before your eyes get down to keyboard level.
* After running the machine for about 4 hours, the fan finally came on. It is quiet. In fact, I'd call it "timid" sounding. Soft with a bit of a surging sound. As quiet or quieter than a CD.
* FedEx had projected a delivery today by 10:30, but when I last checked last night around 2 or 3 am, it was still stuck in customs in Indiana. Somehow, it made it out and got to me an hour early. Don't be discouraged by the "Delayed" note for customs, FedEx must take that into account. I'm very pleased!"
"The Palo Alto store called me yesterday 3/20/03 to tell me that they had a powerbook in stock if I wanted to pick it up. I placed my order at the online store 1/9/03 but also got on the waiting list at the store. All last night I was playing around with the applications and wow am I impressed. It has been over 5 years since I have used a Mac and I can't believe the improvements to the apps. Within an hour I was creating, editing a move in iMove. I was showing my buddy at work today the iMove and he was blown away. He recently bought a top of the line Gateway three months ago and I got the feeling that he was regretting that purchase. Overall I could not be happier. Definitely worth the wait."
"It's a beauty - very fast, the 100dpi screen is extravagantly enormous, no bad pixels(!), and the Aluminium case is engineered to look incredibly sleek! Fingerprints don't seem to show up on the Al like they do on the Ti. The track pad is larger than the one on the 15" TiPB and is set a bit further back from the keyboard. The keyboard itself feels very nice to type on, and has enough "inertia" to give you confidence that the key you want is centred under your finger and responding properly to touch-typing. Or, maybe my hands are just the right size for this keyboard - most laptops feel uncomfortable to me. Once you do the usual setup routine, it immediately does a Software Update and upgrades Java, iPod, iMovie, plus a Security update, then re-boots. I immediately ran the Disk Utility. It found and corrected a few general file permission errors and quite a few problems with the Miniterm app and its associated files. In general, apps seem to launch and run much faster than on my PB550. Other first reviewers have noted that the font smoothing is defaulted to CRT rather than LCD value. Don't forget to open the X.509Anchors that are hidden in the System Library Keychains. I'm now restoring my backup files from my old TiPB, and note that you have to check the owner values (chown command) if you restore to a different user id (as I am). You can probably get away with just running the Disk Utility again to fix the owner and permission bits yet again. All in all, 'my heart soars like an eagle, my happiness knows no bounds...'"
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