[jfdonahue]

Has anyone recently purchased a G4 Cube? If so, has Apple worked out the sleep and power button issues? How about the "mold line" issues? I am thinking about grabbing one if these problems have been solved. Thanks.

[davidmd]

I have actually had my Cube problem-free since late November. I use it heavily everyday, and have 9 and X on it now. It's a great, quiet, little machine! Go for it!

davidmd

[sailor41]

Had mine since early December. The on off and sleep have worked flawlessly ( and to me is still unique to use). All the other great things this machine does far out weighes the very slight "mold Lines" I have.
I have no complaints.
Have Fun

[murbot]

I still love my Cube I bought in November. I did have a problem with the power button sometimes acting up, but I cut 2 small pieces of post-it note, 1/2 " square, opened up the computer, and placed them over the sensor. Now I have a colored power light!

Other than that small thing, the computer is rock solid and fast. Get one!

[till]

Well mine had the bug that rquired a trip to apple for the fix, the sleep bug where they replace the switch housing.

But I was pretty shocked with the repair scheduale - i was disgusted that they wanted to ship it from perth to sydney to fix it (5000km?) But they took it on Thursday nite at 5:30pm and had it back by 10am on Monday morning.

Really as much as I and other have bitched about apple service - thats damned impressive and the machine has been great ever since.

till

[GRAFF]

Just got mine for X-mas. No problems with sleep mode. The machine is very clean too - no mold.

I just discovered by accident the other button on the 15" display which brings up the "monitors" control panel when you touch it. Cool

Installed 9.1 (French) without any problem. Very solid and *gorgeous* machine. Verdict: Get one.


[This message has been edited by GRAFF (edited 01-15-2001).]

[NeoMac]

I definitely plan on buying a Cube, but I am waiting for OS X.
The Cube is too amazing and absolutely requires OS X to make it 'perfect'.

I like the fact that the Cube has become cheaper. $2300USD is not so bad, with the 15"LCD. If they can make it $2000, it would be the best selling computer on the market.

[babble]

They've fixed all the little introduction bugs you always find with a new release.
I'm also getting one soon... I'm just cheking to see if by next month (Macwold tokyo) they will upgrade the Cube.

Hi--

I'm still playing around with the thought of buying a new G4...Today I walked into a store and asked for the cube and the G4/466. Unfortunately, they hadn't any standing around to show me. Now my question, has anyone of you had the possibility to see both together and more specifically listen to them? The guy at the store told me the G4 was 10 times! as loud as the Cube...
If the Cube had more RAM for the same price and perhaps the nVidia graphic card, i would go for it. Now!

Thanks
Matthew

[evil_gremlin]

I've used a G4 Tower, and own a Cube. The difference in noise level is almost unexplainable. You can barely hear the cube, unless the DVD is spinning up, the Tower sounds like a jet plane comparatively

That makes the choice much more difficult now... my current PM7300/166 with two HD's is not very silent either but it's reasonable. As a student, I often write works till late into the morning and having a jet under my desk is not what i'm dreaming of for the future.

So, thank you for your advice, has anyone else made the same experience?

Matthew

[chris v]

I've had a Cube since Oct. and love it. It's not silent, the hard drive makes a slight whine, but compared to the G4 at work, it's hardly noticeable. We've got a G4 tower and an old power center 150 in the art room, and you can hear them from the hall.

No problems with the lighted switches here, 1 tiny mold line that you have to lean forward to see, loaded up os9.1 flawlessly, not much to complain about except that the Cube doesn't ship with enough ram. You really need 128 mb at least, and I reccommend 256 if you want a browser and Photoshop to run all day.

Also love my 15" lcd. pretty easy to calibrate, and not as hard on the eyes as a CRT.

I'm working on reasons why I'll need a power book in the sumer....

cv

[MacBook]

You say that the 15" LCD is not as hard on the eyes as a CRT. I'm torn between the two Apple Studio Displays: the 15" LCD and the 17" CRT. I went to CompUSA this weekend to see them both, and my impression was that the 17" CRT was clearer and richer in color saturation. The LCD seemed to have a bit of vertical lining. Obviously, a CompUSA store is not the perfect laboratory for testing this out.

From your experience, would you say that the LCD probably simply needed adjustment? Or is the LCD screen just a different type of lighting system (without pulsing) and so easier on the eyes, whether it's sharper or not? These 50 year old eyes with strong nearsightedness, astygmatism, and presbyopia (requiring progressive lenses), can use the sharpest screen possible.

[clifhirtle]

Originally posted by MacBook:
From your experience, would you say that the LCD probably simply needed adjustment? Or is the LCD screen just a different type of lighting system (without pulsing) and so easier on the eyes, whether it's sharper or not? These 50 year old eyes with strong nearsightedness, astygmatism, and presbyopia (requiring progressive lenses), can use the sharpest screen possible.

Macbook -

The difference in the experience of a LCD vs. a CRT display is a lot less apparent than it was a few years ago, but there are still significant differences that you should be aware of.

1) LCD's have a set resolution.
LCD's by their very design cannot technically scale down to lower resolutions (ie: 640x480 or 800x600) as a traditional CRT display. LCD's ship with a set standard resolution and in order to handle tasks which require lower resolutions, they merely "mimic" (there's a more technical term just can't think of it right now) such lower resolutions by combining, say, 4 of it's 1024x768 pixels into 1 at 640x480. Thus you have the less-than-sharp appearance of a 15" LCD at any resolutions other than its it's standard resolution (1024x768). For this reason, LCDs are traditionally avoided by graphic artists, gamers, and or anyone to whom pixel precision and sharpness across ALL scan resolutions is required.

2) CRT's need high refresh rates to match ease-on-eyes of LCDs
Have you ever watched a movie/video of a CRT computer screen? If so, you probably noticed the repeated bars rolling up and down it's screen. Such bars are indicative of a CRT's refresh rate (ie: the number of times it's display and/or pixels is/are being refreshed per sec/min). The higher the refresh rate (in Hz), the better for one's eyes. If you've ever taken a gander at your Monitors Control Panel you'll notice the Hz rating next to each resolution. Generally speaking, the higher the resolution, the less capable your computer's graphics card is of refreshing the contents of your screen and, thus, the lower the refresh rate, thus, the worse the display is on your eyes.

The advantage of a LCD display is that (by virtue of their design as liquid crystal displays vs. cathode ray tubes) they do not need to "refresh" their displays - they have a "static" pixel display at all times and are, therefore, much better on your eyes than any CRT could hope to be.

Now personally, i can tell you from using both the 17" CRT and the 15" LCD that BOTH are excellent displays. The 15" is NOT the same as the display used in the Powerbook line, has a brightness and clarity that puts most LCDs on the market to shame, and rivals (if not beats) many traditional CRTs for clarity at its standard resolution. While the 17" CRT has a very wide range of scan resolutions, very high refresh rates across all of its resolutions, and features automatic Apple ColorSync color matching technology preconfigured.

In Sum:

Go for the CRT if you're an artist and/or have a sharp eye for clarity and want no-compromise precision at across ALL resolutions, depend on ColorSync color matching technology for home/business, don't want to spend $500+ on a display, and/or have plenty of desktop space to spare.

Go for the CRT if you want a space-saving, lightweight, ultimate style, energy-saving, and very easy-on-the-eyes display that rivals most CRTs at its default 1024x768 resolution.

The choice is yours.

PS: Sorry for the off-topic post. See below for on-topic post.

- C


[This message has been edited by clifhirtle (edited 01-16-2001).]

[clifhirtle]

Originally posted by jfdonahue:
Has anyone recently purchased a G4 Cube? If so, has Apple worked out the sleep and power button issues? How about the "mold line" issues? I am thinking about grabbing one if these problems have been solved. Thanks.

Much like a great many of Apple's 1.0 releases, the power switch issues affected predominantly the first several production runs of the Cube. The mold lines are another story and (depending on who you ask) you'll most likely get vastly different takes on the story (ie: some say their inherent in plastic molding, some say a flaw of early production runs). From what i've seen even on store demo units they're virtually unnoticeable even only 1" away.

But in any case, the Cube remains just as solid and quality machine as any Macintosh even if the naysayers continually hold its initial growing pains against it today.

Personally i'm just waiting for a CDRW-equipped Cube to emerge to take the plunge as the lack of an internal writeable medium (much like the iMacs) would otherwise require the purchase of an external CDRW, Zip, etc for backups and/or archives.

- C

[chris v]

My comments on the monitors were purely subjective, and my feeling is that the constant glow of an LCD is not as hard to look at for long periods as the flickering of a CRT.

As far as adjusting the monitor, my main job is to adjust 4 color process files for film output, so color accuracy is critical. I don't have any preference there, except that an LCD gets brighter or dimmer in relation to where you view it from. I used Adobe gamma to make my LCD match my old Sony Trinitron, since it has been performing fine for years.


The reason I bought a Cube for home use was size. The 17" studio display is a huge piece of equipment, which takes up more space by itself than an imac. The combination of a the 15" LCD with the cube really leaves a small footprint- I hid my somewhat unsightly Que CD-R behind the monitor on my desk, and I have more room now than I did with my performa.

CV

[MacBook]

Thanks to clifhirtle and chris v for the information about the LCD and CRT screens. I have a graphite CRT at work (1024 x 768 at 85Hz) and an older Viewsonic at home running on my Cube. It's my home monitor that I want to replace. The space issue is a real one at home, so I would prefer the LCD if the resolution is close to the Studio Display CRT, especially in terms of text, which is what I work on a majority of the time. I do some photo work and video work, too, but I principally work on word documents, e-mail, and the web.

BTW, clifhirtle, I lived in Amherst, MA, for four years (graduate school) before moving here to Florida in 1983. And, Chris, you know that our governor Jeb had a brother who, I guess effective today, used to live in Austin.