Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

KevinV916 · Feb 4, 2005, 09:34 PM

What a suprise!! I had ordered my PB on 1/31 and it was shipped out 2/1 with an estimated delivery date of 2/7/05. To my suprise, this AM, fedex says that it was out for delivery!

I got a 15" 1.67 with 128 VRAM 80g 5400 SD.

This is my first Apple, besides the IIc I had when I was younger, so I don't really have much to go by. But here is a quick review of what I think about it so far from a switcher perspective.

This thing is beautiful. I'm sure everyone already knows that, but it is so solidly built and elegant. The screen is awesome with no dead pixels. The backlight on the keyboard is definately bright. I'll be able to compare it to a Rev. B 15" on monday. The keyboard is definately better feeling than the iBook I played with at the apple store. The touchpad scrolling feature is very nice. I just hold one finger down to control the mouse and when I want to scroll, just walk another finger while holding the other finger still. Or you can just move both fingers together if you wanted.

Usage.. OSX is very intuitive. I've only used it recently on a friend's new G5 so I'm not the most experienced with it. I turned it on, set it up, and everything just works. I opened an email with a pic in it, drug the pic to the iphoto icon, and boom.. it's there. Take that pic and drag it into adium as my avatar.. and there it is. Everything just seems nice and integrated.

I'm not sure what everyone would like to see, but i'm downloading xbench right now to try it out and post results.

Thanks for all the info you guys have here. It helped a lot in my decision to get the Powerbook. Let me know if I can run any tests or anything for you guys.

KevinV916 · Feb 4, 2005, 09:48 PM

Here's the xbench results

Xbench results

ddma · Feb 4, 2005, 10:08 PM

Hi, thank you for sharing! I have ordered the Powerbook with edu discount on 1 Feb but the est ship time is on or before 16 Feb... I am in Hong Kong and there will be 3 public holiday next week. I guess I have to wait longer.

Anyway, did you run that xBench with the processor speed set to Automatic? Would you mind to set it to highest and re-run the test for me?

Thank you!

Agent69 · Feb 4, 2005, 10:42 PM

Yeah, something is up with that score. I could understand the low score for disk access but otherwise, the Powerbook should be faster than my MDD PowerMac G4, which has a single G4 processor.

claughery · Feb 4, 2005, 11:22 PM

yeah man... That xbench score aint right. Go the the system prefs and then to power savings and change processor performance to highest.

KevinV916 · Feb 5, 2005, 12:00 AM

Sorry about that.. I was doing the battery calibration thing and it was running off battery and must have bumped itself down some.

Here's the xbench with high performance.

xbench results high performance

MrForgetable · Feb 5, 2005, 12:09 AM

something still is a little fishy about that.

KevinV916 · Feb 5, 2005, 01:36 AM

Just rebooted and ran it again with pretty much the same score.

xbench again..

Any tips for tuning the system for best performance? I'll be dropping a stick of 1G RAM into it tomorrow to see what difference that might make.

Thanks.

gator · Feb 5, 2005, 02:01 AM

Score seems reasonable to me. Scores above yours I'm guessing are using some ramdisk to help out the Disk subscore. Thanks for the retest Kevin.

sideus · Feb 5, 2005, 02:28 AM

Originally posted by KevinV916:
Just rebooted and ran it again with pretty much the same score.

xbench again..

Any tips for tuning the system for best performance? I'll be dropping a stick of 1G RAM into it tomorrow to see what difference that might make.

Thanks.

Tip: Don't use xbench. It is flaky.

MrForgetable · Feb 5, 2005, 02:43 AM

i have a 1.33ghz 15 inch powerbook, fully stock (with bklit keyboard) bwith 256mb RAM and the stock 60gb harddrive, and I got a 133. :shrug:

Brownjer · Feb 5, 2005, 04:34 AM

My own 15" 128 MB VRAM 80 GB HD 512 MB RAM order is behaving very oddly on the apple order status page. I ordered it at 8 am PST the day of the release, and it had a scheduled ship date of 2/7. Now the status page shows the PB as cancelled, and down at the bottom, a new order, exactly the same, with a ship date of 7/22. Considering that I've been waiting anxiously for the thing all week, I'm more than a little annoyed with this. Has anyone else seen Apple orders behave this way and have some input into what's going on? Thanks in advance.

"In reality, it's an atom disguising itself as a warthog."

Simon · Feb 5, 2005, 04:52 AM

Originally posted by KevinV916:
Let me know if I can run any tests or anything for you guys.

Congrats on your new PowerBook!

I'd be very interested in some information about heat and fan noise. I started a new thread on the topic and I'd appreciate if you could maybe run one or the other test and report back. Thanks.

TailsToo · Feb 5, 2005, 08:12 AM

Originally posted by Brownjer:
My own 15" 128 MB VRAM 80 GB HD 512 MB RAM order is behaving very oddly on the apple order status page. I ordered it at 8 am PST the day of the release, and it had a scheduled ship date of 2/7. Now the status page shows the PB as cancelled, and down at the bottom, a new order, exactly the same, with a ship date of 7/22. Considering that I've been waiting anxiously for the thing all week, I'm more than a little annoyed with this. Has anyone else seen Apple orders behave this way and have some input into what's going on? Thanks in advance.

"In reality, it's an atom disguising itself as a warthog."

I think it knows you're trying to replace it, and it's trying to stop you.