[wolfeye155]

In their recent battle of the DVD burning notebooks, CNet's specs for the 12" PowerBook are kind of screwed up.

First it says that it has a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive (in an article about portables with DVD burning capabilites!?!) when it is a CD-RW/DVD-R drive.

Then it shows all of the networking options on all 4 notebooks:

Fujitsu LifeBook C series - 10/100 Ethernet

Apple 12" PowerBook G4 - 10/100 Ethernet, Bluetooth

Toshiba Tecra M1 - 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Intel PRO Wireless

Sony VAIO PCG-GRV600 - 10/100 Ethernet

They don't even mention that the 12" PB has the friggen best WiFi of all three!!! Grrr, they piss me off! Ok, I'm done now.

[sensorfreaky]

Relax guy... nothing inaccurate about that information at all.

CNET reviews products usually based on out-of-the-box models.

You can't walk into an Apple Store, CompUSA, or any reseller and get a 12" PowerBook with Airport Extreme already built-in. All 12" PowerBooks are only "Airport Extreme-ready" unless you purchase one build-to-order directly from Apple. There are resellers like MacConnection and MacMall that give you an AE Card for free with your purchase and they actually open a virgin 12" PowerBook box and install it themselves before shipping out to you. It does not have 802.11g WiFi built-in out of the box and that's why CNET reviewed it as such.

The only non-BTO PowerBooks with Airport Extreme already built-in are the superdrive equipped 15" TiBooks and the 17" AluBooks.

Besides, in their latest DVD-burning notebook roundup, weren't they comparing a 17" Powerbook with wintel notebooks and not the 12" model.

[Patcarla]

Originally posted by sensorfreaky:
Relax guy... nothing inaccurate about that information at all.

CNET reviews products usually based on out-of-the-box models.

You can't walk into an Apple Store, CompUSA, or any reseller and get a 12" PowerBook with Airport Extreme already built-in. All 12" PowerBooks are only "Airport Extreme-ready" unless you purchase one build-to-order directly from Apple. There are resellers like MacConnection and MacMall that give you an AE Card for free with your purchase and they actually open a virgin 12" PowerBook box and install it themselves before shipping out to you. It does not have 802.11g WiFi built-in out of the box and that's why CNET reviewed it as such.

The only non-BTO PowerBooks with Airport Extreme already built-in are the superdrive equipped 15" TiBooks and the 17" AluBooks.

Besides, in their latest DVD-burning notebook roundup, weren't they comparing a 17" Powerbook with wintel notebooks and not the 12" model.

Well nothing surprising there... CNET is pretty well known to delivers poor and inacurate sometimes very unreliables reviews...

[wolfeye155]

Nope they used the 12". Hehe sorry. I guess I got all huffy and wasn't really paying attention. It just seems that people less aware of Apple may not realize that it DOES have the option of these great features. They should have at least put "WiFi ready" for the books that didn't include a wireless card.

[BkueKanoodle]

I guess it only really would matter if they said that all the pc machines had wifi or had an internal slot for a MiniPCI wifie card (alot do) and they left the apple out of the picture.

After reading the article they are only looking at stock, models. So the comparison is accurate.

If you read their full review of it, not the comparison chart, they do mention that it does have a 802.11g slot, and they recommend putting one in.

Seeing as they gave the 12 inch the second highest rating, I would hardly call it a bias. Plus the Toshiba (rated #1 ) and the powerbook, aren't even a good matchup, since the toshiba is a huge brick.

So as far as lightweight notebooks with DVD, they are basically giving the pb the old cnet nod. I ownn both a toshiba (the model right below) and a powerbook, and while the toshiba is fast, it in no way comes close to the PB in overall usefullnes.

Mind you this is coming from a PC guy who before my powerbook, hadn't touched a mac in 7 years. I make my lifebllod oof of Microsoft products, and I do it all from a mac.

Otherwise, I think your getting yourself worked up over nothing

[Ryan1524]

Cnet is retarded...
they match up products of different level and make inaccurate and biased comments about them...

example: during the 'March Madness' where they have a cellphone tournament, they match a Nokia 7210 with a SE P800. wtf??
P800 is a Smartphone with PDA functions..and the 7210 is just a regular cellphone targetted to the more fashion conscious market...
obviously the P800 would win when compared feature to feature...

and don't even get me started on how biased they are towards Dell

[Mohammed Al-Sabah]

Originally posted by Ryan1524:
Cnet is retarded...
they match up products of different level and make inaccurate and biased comments about them...

example: during the 'March Madness' where they have a cellphone tournament, they match a Nokia 7210 with a SE P800. wtf??
P800 is a Smartphone with PDA functions..and the 7210 is just a regular cellphone targetted to the more fashion conscious market...
obviously the P800 would win when compared feature to feature...

and don't even get me started on how biased they are towards Dell

i agree Cnet is retarded... i never ever look at thier reviews anymore i rather search forums and things like that where REAL ppl say things about things but thats just me