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nickgold2012 · Nov 22, 2003, 07:53 AM

Yesterday my baby arrived. 12" iBook G4 800 640MB 40GB Airport Extreme Bluetooth. I wanted to share my impressions after one day of bliss.

I knew this thing was for me when I turned it on, and the background music during the Setup Assistant was an obscure (in the USA) Norwegian group I _really_ dig called Royksopp. Nobody I've ever met has even heard of them before, and here my iBook is, blaring Royksopp at me out of the box. I literally had a tear in me eye, it was so... odd, yet moving. :-)

The LCD is gorgeous, I'm thinking. Very bright -- I mean, this thing is niiiice. NOOOO stuck or dead pixels, thank the almighty! Phew!

Airport reception immediately proved to be quite good, both of our base stations at work immediatelty popped right up. Oh yeah, at that point I knew I needed to get a wireless router for my apartment (which I did later that night... $50 Linksys 802.11b router at Best Buy, and now The Matrix -- the name of my wireless network -- is radiating from my apartment).

This iBook is pretty perky, I immediately observe. Compared to my eMac 700 at work, and G4 450 at home. So granted, I'm not comparing it to a dual 2 GHz G5. But still, this thing will be more than adequate for my needs (I am in the process of learning C, with an eye toward moving on to Obj-C and Cocoa development). This iBook, along with O'Reilly's Safari service, is going to be my "interactive electronic textbook." Poor-man's grad school in a slab? ;-)

Something AMAZING that I wasn't used to, having been a desktop owner most of my life -- this thing comes out of sleep BY THE TIME THE LID IS OPEN! Holy moly, now that is slick!

The fit and finish of the whole thing is VERY impressive, and the keyboard is a dream -- much better than the more "plasticky" iBook keyboards of the past, and in fact, nicer than the Powerbook keyboards in a way (I prefer a wee little bit of spunginess, as opposed to very stiff). Plus it's a CIP part, so if it ever goes bad, they can send me a new one, instead of me having to send the iBook in under AppleCare.

The trackpad too is verrrry nice to use. I'm not sure if it's identical to other recent models, but both the trackpad itself and the trackpad button are the nicest I have personally used on a laptop.

Everything about this machine so far has been a dream, and the more I use it, the more I fall in love. I have had hands-on experience with just about every model of Mac made in the past 5 years, and I have been using Apple computers since I was around 5 years old in elementary school 20 years ago. I honestly think that this is one of the nicest machines they've ever put out.

If you are considering the iBook G4 (especially the 12", which has the superior form-factor IMHO) but are having a hard time deciding on whether to go for it or not, I say one thing -- stop thinking, and just go for it. You will NOT be sorry. :-)

One last thing, about shipping time. I placed my BTO on 11/15, and estimated ship time was on or before 11/24. Well, the laptop was actually sent from Taiwan on the 20th, and was in my hands the morning of the 21st. VERY impressive ship time (to Baltimore, Maryland). Another win for Apple, and FedEx!

I would love to hear the impressions of other fawning iBook G4 owners. :-) Isn't this thing toooo cool?!

SOLIDAge · Nov 22, 2003, 04:52 PM

me uncle just got one today, his first Mac! he had a rocky start setting up .Mac on a dial-up and he couldn't find AOL at first...I got called every 3 minutes heeh i'll see him over Thanksgiving and i'll get to see this beauty as he's going to get some "iBook classes" over break. i think i might get him the missing manual for christmas ;-)

enjoy your machine.

alien · Nov 22, 2003, 07:36 PM

Yesss, more R�yksopp fans out there. I trust you knew that the trackname Eple is the Norwegian word for Apple.

The director of Apple Norway gave some comments on public (youth) radio too.

Melody A.M. is a great record, my favorites being Poor Leno, the remix of Remind Me (both with Erlend �ye), and Sparks. The Eple video is pretty cool though.

Hope you enjoy learning Cocoa on your iBook. I do so on my iBook 500. Time to buy a new model i think!

StuartB · Nov 23, 2003, 02:25 AM

Nov 22, 2003 9:47pm Package status C.K.S. INTL AIRPORT TW

My iBook appears to be stuck at the airport?

This thread's makin me pumped!

CeRtiFiedSkitZo · Nov 23, 2003, 02:31 AM

Originally posted by StuartB:
Nov 22, 2003 9:47pm Package status C.K.S. INTL AIRPORT TW

My iBook appears to be stuck at the airport?

This thread's makin me pumped!

Yeah, it'll be there until Monday, is this airport in your city, if so you might get it delivered to you on Monday.

Mines shipped out on a Friday and I got it on Monday.

StuartB · Nov 23, 2003, 02:38 AM

Originally posted by CeRtiFiedSkitZo:
Yeah, it'll be there until Monday, is this airport in your city, if so you might get it delivered to you on Monday.

Mines shipped out on a Friday and I got it on Monday.

It's the airport in Taiwan!

Mr Scruff · Nov 23, 2003, 04:43 AM

Glad you like your new machine. I just received mine on Friday after waiting about a month...

Inevitably there's a problem. The enter & . keys are over sensitive and register double entry the majority of the time.

Now I'm going to have to take it to a 3rd party service centre to get it looked at.

Other things I've noticed:

- The inside edge of the battery sticks out about 1mm - it's not flush with the ibook case.

- My CD drive was initially extremely noisy, although it appears to have settled down now. It also has failed to play certain DVDs that other macs here have played without a problem.

Anyone else see these problems?

CeRtiFiedSkitZo · Nov 23, 2003, 04:53 AM

- The inside edge of the battery sticks out about 1mm - it's not flush with the ibook case.

Anyone else see these problems? [/B]

Yeah I noticed that too, I tried looking to see if there was anything making the battery stick out like that but I couldn't find anything wrong.

nickgold2012 · Nov 23, 2003, 08:53 AM

What do you mean not flush? The inner lip of my battery is maybe 1/4 mm away from being totally flush, and is certainly not a problem. Most iBook batteries have always done this. I would indeed take it into a shop to make sure you are within spec.

Jens Peter · Nov 23, 2003, 10:22 AM

Originally posted by nickgold2012:
Royksopp

Royksopp makes great music.

Nice review, now if I just had the money to get an iBook...

StuartB · Nov 23, 2003, 11:23 AM

Just woke up, iBook seems to still be in the Taiwan airport! It got off to such a good start when it shipped after like 2 days!

One last thing, about shipping time. I placed my BTO on 11/15, and estimated ship time was on or before 11/24. Well, the laptop was actually sent from Taiwan on the 20th, and was in my hands the morning of the 21st. VERY impressive ship time (to Baltimore, Maryland). Another win for Apple, and FedEx!

Wow, that's fast! The Taiwan to you part!

cryon · Nov 23, 2003, 01:01 PM

It's the same for me. The iBook shipped after only 2 days, even though it's a maxed out iBook 12". It still hasen't left taiwan or maby it haven't even left the factory. I'm starting to wonder if it really has been assembled yet or if it's just apple that trying to sound a little faster then they really are.

CeRtiFiedSkitZo · Nov 23, 2003, 02:01 PM

Originally posted by StuartB:
Just woke up, iBook seems to still be in the Taiwan airport! It got off to such a good start when it shipped after like 2 days!

Yeah it's not going to move on Sundays, check when you wake up tomorrow.

StuartB · Nov 23, 2003, 02:06 PM

Originally posted by CeRtiFiedSkitZo:
Yeah it's not going to move on Sundays, check when you wake up tomorrow.

Dang! Thought FedEx still moved stuff 24/7, just didn't deliver Sunday!

AdrianH · Nov 23, 2003, 04:30 PM

I got my iBook G4 800 256MB a few days ago - so far, it's pretty great. I have an Athlon XP desktop, which has been getting slower and slower as the months go by, so it's really refreshing to have a computer that will (apparently) accelerate as new releases of OS X come out!

The LCD is great, with a very high DPI and no dead pixels. It feels pretty speedy even with only 256MB RAM (although I've already ordered an additional 512MB) and I've already fallen in love with Expos� and Launchbar.

The thing that gets me is that it's so easy to install apps in OS X! With Windows, you're used to it being a hassle to install new apps, telling it which path to use and rebooting all the time. With my iBook, I can just drag an icon across and it just works. Incredible.

The battery life is very good, and the 12" size means that I can just put it in a sleeve and sling the whole thing in my backpack. The important thing for this laptop is that I can carry it everywhere and use it everywhere.

At home, I've connected it to my Athlon using Airport Extreme and used Win2VNC for keyboard and mouse spanning. At the moment it's become my audio/visual machine for music and DVDs, but I imagine that when I start travelling more and working at the lab, the iBook will really come into its own.