[cold aspiration]

ok I am very satisfied with everything about os x and nearly everything with the ibook. This is saying something. Now when my brother was shopping for a laptop, he was checking out some toshibas and centrinos at best buy and I noticed a common thing among these "high end" pc laptops, is that they have very nice speakers. I mean compared to the ibook speakers, they have excellent base, can get really LOUD and this is in a noisy best buy store too. I always find myself trying to get headphones to watch a movie on my ibook because the sound quality is so bad. I heard that the speakers on the pbooks are quite impressive too. So why did the ibook get stuck with the lousy speakers while pc notebooks around the same price have pbook sounding speakers? maybe the next generation of ibooks will incorporate this..

[Detrius]

Believe it or not, the powerbooks have a third speaker embedded inside that Apple calls the subwoofer. It's a one inch speaker the does the bass. The iBooks don't have this third speaker.

[wataru]

As far as volume goes, I've found my iBook G4 (12", 800MHz) has a much higher maximum as compared to my girlfriend's iBook G3 (12", 600MHz).

[cold aspiration]

^ thats good to hear

well yes I know what a subwoofer is but maybe thats why the ibook has a longer battery life, even if slightly compared to the pbook.

[Lancer409]

nah .. the pbook "subwoofer" is really for midrange. the cool thing is, the speakers are pointed at the monitor and the monitor reflects sound at the user. i found that neat .. keeping a clean design. i dont get too much base .. but i never like using speakers when i can use headphones anyways.

i never knew the chime from start up actually had a rumbling bass to it. i always thought it was a midrange/high pitched chime .. try it with good in ear earbuds ... the bass rumbles ... lovely