[Martin Cracauer]

Hi,

I have a few questions on the current ibook models, I'm sure somebody can help me out.

Is the display on the 12" ibook the same as on the 12" powerbook? Is the 14" display of the same quality (backlight evenness, brightness, response)?

Can you do dual-head with the Radeon 9200 in the ibook (using the internal display and the mini-DVI)? If so, what is the maximum resolution for the external display?

I heard Apple has problems with some of the new Powerbook touchpads and that the ibooks still have the old one. Does the old one have basic scrolling functionality?

A person in the office claimed that the Asustek built ibooks are generally of higher reliability than the powerbooks, apart from the white case looking like honk after two weeks, or two days with a caffeine-to-code device (aka programmer). What's the general impression on this forum?

Thanks
Martin

[SkaGoat]

umm, I don't know about the quality of the screen... but u can do all those things.... with hacks

to make the touchpad scroll like new Powerbooks there's a program called iScroll2 it wokrs very well, also to give you a dual head iBook, there's Screen Spanning Doctor

[Voch]

Originally Posted by Martin Cracauer

Is the display on the 12" ibook the same as on the 12" powerbook? Is the 14" display of the same quality (backlight evenness, brightness, response)?

They're the same display, but there's debates over "various screen vendors" and their quality on these forums all the time. You'll have to see one along with the 14" display to see if you like it (I liked my iBook/500's screen before I got my TiBook, and may be going back to a 12" model in the near future for portability and price reasons).

Can you do dual-head with the Radeon 9200 in the ibook (using the internal display and the mini-DVI)? If so, what is the maximum resolution for the external display?

You can run two displays with a firmware hack. The output is VGA only (or composite/S-Video with the $19 adapter). I don't know what the max resolution is but the 32MB VRAM will get split in half to run the two displays so it's not likely to be too much above 1024x768...I'm not sure.

I heared Apple has problems with some of the new Powerbook touchpads and that the ibooks still have the old one. Does the old one have basic scrolling functionality?

No...they're the last-generation trackpads. You could try Sidetrack to add some extra trackpad functionality but it's not exactly the same as the two-finger scrolling of the new trackpads.