[pbinNov]

Hello- I'm seriously thinking about buying a 12inch PB around Thanksgiving to replace my pathetic Dell Inspiron 8000. It'll be my only computer. I don't have lots of money (poor grad student), or time to fix a computer, so I want to know what I'm getting into. I'll try not to ask questions from other threads, but I'd appreciate answers to these and any other general advice:

1. Is the battery life on the 12' satisfactory? Also, people have said things like 'Apple claims 5 hours-- that must be in SLEEP MODE!' Is this just sarcasm, or the the Pb's really drain the battery in 5 hours of sleeping. Basically, I can put my pb in my bag, open it up hours later and have a mostly full battery-- without having to shut down and boot up later, right?

2. Is the machine quiet? Hot? I mean in general, not the defective machines.

3. Are people getting good pb's? I keep reading threads about defects-- is this the norm?

4. When I hook it up to an external LCD (any suggestions on which ones are good), the VRAM halves, right? If I'm using dual display, then want to play a game on the external LCD, can I just shut the lid, or do I have to restart or reset preferences?

5. Does it really wake up in seconds?

6. Does the OS slow down with age, for no reason, like Windows XP?

7. Does the OS pick up crap from the internet I don't want, like XP sometimes does?

8. Does the CDRW burn at a consitant rate. My Dell burns at 4x, not the 8x its supposed to.

9. I get the impression that mac harware is pretty well integrated. Are there many device conflicts, driver issues, that kind of thing to deal with?

Thanks a lot, and sorry for the long post. I'd really appreciate advice from actual users-- I'm impressed there's such a loyal community of mac fans.

[sworthy]

I switched myself about a year ago. So, to answer at least most of your questions:

1. Is the battery life on the 12' satisfactory?

Yes, the battery life is excellent. I have been getting around 3 and a half hours and even four lately (much better than my old ti book, and apparently the new 15 Al's too). The battery loses roughly 1% charge per hour in sleep mode. The sarcasm you note has more to do with not being able to achieve 5 hours, no matter how you play w/ energy savings (like dimming the screen, lowering processor speed, etc).

2. Is the machine quiet? Hot? I mean in general, not the defective machines.

It is very quiet. It usually runs without it's fan running, unless you're doing cpu intensive tasks. When the fan comes on it is fairly noticeable, but nothing too huge. It does get warm, especially under the left palm rest, but again, nothing too bad - and much better than the rev a's.

3. Are people getting good pb's? I keep reading threads about defects-- is this the norm?

I haven't really heard too many bad things surrounding quality control for the 12"s, except for the "wobble". I too have this problem, and to be honest I don't really notice it much.

4. When I hook it up to an external LCD (any suggestions on which ones are good), the VRAM halves, right? If I'm using dual display, then want to play a game on the external LCD, can I just shut the lid, or do I have to restart or reset preferences?

I'm not really sure about this, but I suppose you're right. You can run in "clamshell" mode, but again, not too much experience w/ this. Check the peripherals section in the forums as there have been a number of threads lately about samsung monitors that are recommended.

5. Does it really wake up in seconds?

Yup, almost as soon as you get the screen at the angle you want, it's really amazing.

6. Does the OS slow down with age, for no reason, like Windows XP?

No! Well, unless you use haxies of sorts.

7. Does the OS pick up crap from the internet I don't want, like XP sometimes does?

nope, and w/ safari you can get rid of popups too.

8. Does the CDRW burn at a consitant rate. My Dell burns at 4x, not the 8x its supposed to.

To tell you the truth, since I just got this I haven't burned a cd yet. But with my experience w/ my old tibook was a good one and the superdrive always burned at the correct speed.

9. I get the impression that mac harware is pretty well integrated. Are there many device conflicts, driver issues, that kind of thing to deal with?

Device conflicts don't really exist (I think) on the mac side, though occasionally you might have driver issues (like they don't make one for macs, etc), but the OS includes tons of drivers for all sorts of things so usually it's truly plug and play.

Whew! anything else?

[Link]

1. Is the battery life on the 12' satisfactory? Also, people have said things like 'Apple claims 5 hours-- that must be in SLEEP MODE!' Is this just sarcasm, or the the Pb's really drain the battery in 5 hours of sleeping. Basically, I can put my pb in my bag, open it up hours later and have a mostly full battery-- without having to shut down and boot up later, right?

^^ apple laptops typically get 4 hours-4.5 hours by average. I've heard of people gettnig them as high as 5 and a half with the screen off

2. Is the machine quiet? Hot? I mean in general, not the defective machines.

^^ The 12" PB *used* to run hot but the newer ones seem to have a bit more insulation between the metal and the innards, they do run much noticably cooler.

3. Are people getting good pb's? I keep reading threads about defects-- is this the norm?

^^ I'd say 30 bad powerbooks compared to the tens of (if not houndreds of) thousands already sold.

4. When I hook it up to an external LCD (any suggestions on which ones are good), the VRAM halves, right? If I'm using dual display, then want to play a game on the external LCD, can I just shut the lid, or do I have to restart or reset preferences?

^^ yes vram effectively halves. Apparently on powerbooks when the display isn't plugged in you can go into the displays menu (which is optional depending on your system prefs setting) and hit 'detect displays'. I believe when it doesn't find the external monitor it'll go back to full memory

5. Does it really wake up in seconds?

^^ apple laptops (and most desktops) wake up incredibly fast.

6. Does the OS slow down with age, for no reason, like Windows XP?

^^ having run my desktops for weeks on end I can say NO they do not. When you run out of memory the computer will page out but that's still not as bad as it would be in windows and when you close apps the memory is automatically freed

7. Does the OS pick up crap from the internet I don't want, like XP sometimes does?

^^ no. Definately not.

8. Does the CDRW burn at a consitant rate. My Dell burns at 4x, not the 8x its supposed to.

^^ Yeah! It burns at a constant rate. I've RARELY heard of macs turning out coasters.

9. I get the impression that mac harware is pretty well integrated. Are there many device conflicts, driver issues, that kind of thing to deal with?

^^ The only conflicts I've ever experienced were with times when I'd have my drives configured wrong (wrong jumper settings) but this isn't an issue in laptops. Since 10.2 it is EXTREMELY rare to have driver issues of any type.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by pbinNov:
4. When I hook it up to an external LCD (any suggestions on which ones are good), the VRAM halves, right? If I'm using dual display, then want to play a game on the external LCD, can I just shut the lid, or do I have to restart or reset preferences?

You just shut the lid - the Powerbook will sleep. Then you wake it up by clicking a mouse button or pressing a key (on an external keyboard). Then it'll wake and use the external screen.

You can then, if you really want, open it again and the built-in screen will remain off.

Originally posted by pbinNov:
5. Does it really wake up in seconds?

Normally, my laptop wakes up before I've finished opening the screen.



Amorya

[pbinNov]

You guys are great-- thanks for reading the long post and answering all of my questions!

[nagromme]

All your questions make me think a Mac is what you want! You will say goodbye to those XP problems. And now it will have a $19 upgrade to Panther--or, wait for Panther to be pre-installed next month.

Regarding games and VRAM: PowerBooks have done something pretty cool for years. Whether you are in Mirror or Span mode (toggle with one keypress), when you run a game, the internal display goes black automatically to devote all GPU power to the game on the external. ITunes music visualizer does the same. Very smart. Even my old PowerBook G3 does this. Dual-display support on Mac has been around for years and is very slick.