Ever since I ordered the 15" AlBook (1GHz, standard configuration with airport extreme), I came to this board and seeked answers for many questions. I had a great experience on this board. Today I recieved my powerbook and want to share it with you.
I ordered a powerbook, an ipod, and a printer (with $300 education rebate) on 9/26. The printer arrived next day morning by FedEx (very impressive, especially considering the fact it is Saturday 9:00 in the morning). The scheduled shipping dates of powerbook and ipod are 10/06 and 10/10, respectively. On 10/01 Apple informed me by email that the powerbook will be shipped 10/02 and the next day the same email about ipod arrived. Apple gave me the tracking number in the shipping notification. From my experience it is totally usefuless. After I received my powerbook today, I searched airborne with the tracking number, it still told me tracking information is unavailable. The working number is hidden in the second email apple sent to me. Finding the "waybill number", you can track the shipment from Taiwan to US (you cannot track any more after that). After the status is showing "cleared custom", two business day later your powerbook will arrive your place. There is still a question about my ipod. Airborne told me the ipod left ShangHai on 10/03, until today it hasn't cleared the custom. I don't know what happened.
When I was waiting for my powerbook, the only thing I do is going to this forum, read any new posts. Now looked it back, it is so funny to see how my mood changed with different posts, i.e., "2nd AlBook with white spots" is really sad, but "Good news for 15" Albook users" cheered me up.
So if you are still waiting for your powerbook, don't panic, it will arrive.
After I opened the box, oh boy, it deserves every second I was waiting. The screen is perfect, I ran PiXel Check, no dead pixels, no white spots (but someone said usually the white spots will not show up until three days later or so). I like the wide screen very much. So now I can write a paper on one half and plot the experiment data on another half. Mac OS X is a solid plantform for scientific work. It is one of the important reasons i choose mac; you really cannot do any serious scientific calculation under OS 9. Compared with my 12" 600MHz iBook, the speed increase is, of course, significant. I am very satisfied. The bad thing is I've been playing it without doing anything since I got it
I deleted Office X test drive immediately (because I can bought it for $7 from school). To my surprise, it includes iDVD3, which is supposed to come only with the superdrive model. After updating from 10.2.7 to 10.2.8, the battery life increased from 2:53 to 4:50 (I didn't directly test it, it is shown in the menu bar). So if the system calculated the remain time correctly, it will be a great news. Oh, I leave the bluetooth and airport off.
This machine runs very quite. After one day use, I didn't hear the fan. It becomes hot, I doubt Apple use the speakers on the side to cool (those little holes should serve this purpose well). But anyway, I can put my hands on it, no problem at all. And it is cooler than my iBook.
One problem is that every time when the computer restart or wake up, it make a not very big, but beyond average noise. I thought it might have something to do with the slot loading drive. Someone confirmed it, but I am still not used to it. I guess until I check another powerbook in the store, it remains a problem to me. Besides, I am new to slot loading drive, when I insert a CD into it, the noise surpised me.
Sorry about my English. Cheers!
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