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one09jason · Oct 6, 2003, 09:25 PM

The good news: It's fantastic.

No dead/stick pixels (so far, knock on wood)
No white spots
Happy Man

Just thought I'd lighten up the mood a bit in here, what with so many negative reports on new powerbooks. I love the new 15". I'm upgrading from the 15" Ti and I love:

* the physical package - awesome. better hinge, ports on side, screen doesn't touch keyboard/trackpad, solid feel.

* rockin keyboard - way better than the spongy Ti keyboard

* better airport

* better trackpad - much more slippery

I can't speak for the battery life yet, partly because I haven't doen the test yet. I also haven't installed my RAM from ramjet yet either. I've been thinking - does RAM use enough power to account for people's varying battery life numbers? I'll chime in after I install RAM and 10.2.8.

Hmm, now where's that battery life poll? What about the white spots / bad pixels poll?

hazelnutcoffeeg · Oct 6, 2003, 09:42 PM

i am jealous.

i want mine yesterday!

Naz · Oct 6, 2003, 09:45 PM

I've lost hope on waiting for my 17"

Fellow2000 · Oct 6, 2003, 11:48 PM

Originally posted by one09jason:
The good news: It's fantastic.

No dead/stick pixels (so far, knock on wood)
No white spots
Happy Man

Just thought I'd lighten up the mood a bit in here, what with so many negative reports on new powerbooks. I love the new 15". I'm upgrading from the 15" Ti and I love:

* the physical package - awesome. better hinge, ports on side, screen doesn't touch keyboard/trackpad, solid feel.

* rockin keyboard - way better than the spongy Ti keyboard

* better airport

* better trackpad - much more slippery

I can't speak for the battery life yet, partly because I haven't doen the test yet. I also haven't installed my RAM from ramjet yet either. I've been thinking - does RAM use enough power to account for people's varying battery life numbers? I'll chime in after I install RAM and 10.2.8.

Hmm, now where's that battery life poll? What about the white spots / bad pixels poll?

More RAM should save you batterly life on account that your computer will not have to work as hard to perform tasks or just have multiple tasks open. The smoother and quicker your computer can do something and get it over with the better.

laserjock · Oct 15, 2003, 01:30 AM

Originally posted by Fellow2000:
More RAM should save you batterly life on account that your computer will not have to work as hard to perform tasks or just have multiple tasks open. The smoother and quicker your computer can do something and get it over with the better.

accessing RAM requires *way* less power than accessing the hard disk (esp if it has to spin it up...) That said, I'm not sure what a final result this will be on your battery life.

gif32 · Oct 15, 2003, 02:33 AM

Originally posted by one09jason:
Hmm, now where's that battery life poll? What about the white spots / bad pixels poll?

Don't count your chickens so soon on the white spots. Although my first Powerbook had the spots right out of the box, the replacement they sent took over a week to develop the same problem.

I'm happy your machine seems to be perfect, but keep your fingers crossed for at least another week on the spots...

neutrino23 · Oct 15, 2003, 04:02 AM

Overall I agree with you. This new Al PB is truly amazing. I have a small problem with the trackpad.

First, I think it is not quite as nice as that of the Pismo. That is the best.

More important, the location and size of the trackpad puts one corner of it under my right palm and I sometimes press my palm down while typing causing an accidental click.

Not a major problem, slightly annoying.

joe · Oct 15, 2003, 04:27 PM

Originally posted by one09jason:
The good news: It's fantastic.

No dead/stick pixels (so far, knock on wood)
No white spots
Happy Man

Ditto! After reading through the forums I was afraid it was going to be a total wreck. But I just received my new 15" BTO yesterday and it's flawless - a truly magnificent piece of hardware! No white spots, no latch problems, no hinge problems, and no obvious dead/stuck pixels. I can't get over how fast and quiet it runs. It zips through through Jaguar and I've yet to hear the fan despite crunching video for hours. I'm not entirely sure about battery life, but it was able to play the DVD "Ice Age" all the way through once and was well into the 2nd time through before it dropped back to sleep mode. I was trying to run down a fully charged battery at the time per Apple's calibration procedure. You can tell I've really put this thing through its paces since I opened the box yesterday at lunch time. It's probably run a good 16 hours out of 24! I've had plenty of PC notebooks over the years but none measure up to the build quality of this new 15" Al PowerBook IMHO. Way to go Apple - the new 15" Al PowerBook KICKS ASS!!!

One recommendation for any new Al PowerBook owner that is coming from a PC notebook - download SideTrack from versiontracker ASAP! It enables the vertical / horizontal scroll and right click features that just about all notebook TrackPads have. I'm not sure why Apple doesn't include that in their driver. But it's absolutely necessary for those times that you don't have enough room to use a mouse.....joe

agentmouthwash · Oct 15, 2003, 05:20 PM

My Powerbook is gonna be 2 weeks old tomorrow and so far no white spots. It's flawless!!

I am sure there are a lot of people with great flawless powerbooks.

bluesloth · Oct 15, 2003, 06:45 PM

I've had mine for a week now and so far no problems. The lid gap when closed is a little larger than I would like, but no big deal.

I love this thing!

Ports on the side are so convenient for the way I use my computer.

Screen is very bright.

When the fan comes on (so far only when playing games, but not for photoshop or imovie) it is quiet and has a really low pitch, like a pur. Much better than some of the high pitch squeals that some of my fellow students with PC have at school.

Keyboard feel is great.

Speakers are better than TiBook.

Best of all - no possibility of paint chipping! A problem I had a lot of with my Ti. It was starting to look like it had leprosy.

PeterKG · Oct 15, 2003, 07:17 PM

Apple sold 176,000 units this quarter. I would say that problems noted on this forum are small in comparision to units sold. It's too bad for anyone to get a PB with defects, but It is a minority.

"With refreshed PowerBook G4s across the line, including the long-awaited update to Apple's popular 15-inch PowerBook G4 model, the company saw 9 percent sequential growth and 203 percent year over year growth in PowerBook sales, totally 176,000 units for the quarter and $348 million in revenue."

korn · Oct 15, 2003, 09:38 PM

spotless PB here. No lines, dead pixels or white spots. No latch problems either. I love it!
The only design problem I have is that the screen doen't flip back that much, I sometimes need to be able to read the floor placed pb screen while standing. (or in bed with my knees up)

Manimac · Oct 15, 2003, 09:38 PM

Thanks for the good news posts. I'm still waiting for my 15". It's encouraging to hear some good stories too.

machem · Oct 15, 2003, 10:07 PM

Macbippy reports that PowerBooks manufactured the first two weeks are at issue. They are trying to collect s/n data to back this up:

http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu....2003-10-16#803

Hopefully the production line has been fixed and new machines won't have the problems mine has shown.

one09jason · Oct 15, 2003, 10:28 PM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gif32:
[B]Don't count your chickens so soon on the white spots. Although my first Powerbook had the spots right out of the box, the replacement they sent took over a week to develop the same problem./QUOTE]

I'm sad to report that you were right here. I have developed a very faint but definitely visible white spot in the upper-center-left position. This corresponds to the #1 position according to the desktop image whitespots.jpg image posted today on Macfixit.com

I urge everyone with white spots to download this image and report their results. See this post:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=182534

s0litude · Oct 16, 2003, 05:41 PM

You know what is so great about my powerbook? I can be studying all day in the Depaul University library, get ooohs and aaaahs from people walking by, and then when i take a study break, can either check out the music in the imusic store, watch matrix reloaded on my dvd player, or fire up warcraft 3 TFT and play online against people around the world. All from the confines of my library desk. And people wonder why I have huge grin on my face during midterms.