[Troll]

I'm wondering what the first Mactel PowerBook might look like. Since the PC world is already using Intel processors, they must have already explored what's possible with Intel chips and the heat they produce etc. So, with a view to getting an idea of what might be possible for the Mactel PowerBooks, how about posting some pics of cool PC laptops or cool features on PC laptops?

[Link]

I don't see why apple can't design whatever the heck they want. Changing the CPU isn't going to change anything, apple still makes the board designs anyway.

[Troll]

Originally Posted by Link

I don't see why apple can't design whatever the heck they want. Changing the CPU isn't going to change anything, apple still makes the board designs anyway.

Isn't it? Don't these new processors have different heat characterists for one? Also, they include bluetooth and wi-fi on the chip now don't they? So that would presumably free up space. I thought the new Intel chips were behind PC laptops suddenly getting remarkably thin of late.

[Randman]

This should be in the lounge not the PowerBook thread.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Link

I don't see why apple can't design whatever the heck they want. Changing the CPU isn't going to change anything, apple still makes the board designs anyway.

Link, what makes you think Apple's PCs will not use Intel boards as the developer boxes do?

[jasonsRX7]

[Troll]

Originally Posted by jasonsRX7

That's funny. Someone just walked into my office with one of those and I thought, "Man, I wish my PowerBook felt as sturdy as this one."

[Steve]

Thinkpad's are one of the the only non-Apple laptops I would own.

Thread moved to the Lounge.

[turtle777]

+1

-t

[wdlove]

Sorry, but not impressed.

[Hawkeye_a]

You guys want PowerBooks to look like thinkpads ? have you guys gone completely mad ?

[budster101]

My Aluminum Powerbook is nicer than that thing.

[Troll]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

You guys want PowerBooks to look like thinkpads ? have you guys gone completely mad ?

Nope, I don't. I just thought it felt sturdier than my Titanium.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

You guys want PowerBooks to look like thinkpads ? have you guys gone completely mad ?

Look? Well as much as I love the looks of the PowerBooks, the looks have to take a second place to portable functionality. The T series Thinkpads are thin, light, durable, have excellent battery life, and run fast and cool. The are portable perfection, not necessarily art.

A desktop sits in one place, usually on or under a desk and stays pretty well protected. A laptop is subjected to many environments. An easily scratched and dented aluminum PowerBook isn't well suited for a lot of chores that laptops are need for.

I had a Thinkpad T40p before the PowerBook that I have now. The ONLY reason I have a PowerBook is because of OS X. If I could run OS X on a T43, the PowerBook would be adios.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by budster101

My Aluminum Powerbook is nicer than that thing.

Your 17" PowerBook serves a completely different purpose. It's for creative designers (A/V, graphics) and that's fine, it's a great laptop for them. It is not a great laptop for someone like me, who needs to crawl inside a dusty wiring closet, with the laptop propped on one knee, bumping into things. I have to be extra careful with my 15" PowerBook because I'm so worried about scratching and denting it. Fortunately, I buy a lot of T43s at work so I use one of them when I need to use a laptop somewhere other than a nice clean desk.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by wdlove

Sorry, but not impressed.

You know that there's something seriously wrong with the concept when WD gives it a thumbs-down.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Doofy

You know that there's something seriously wrong with the concept when WD gives it a thumbs-down.

-t

[The Godfather]

Small Compaq Armada M300. CD-less, but really for the meat and potatoes kinda people.

pics later

[Hawkeye_a]

So basically, if Apple had a smaller, quieter, cooler lighter powerbook in the same design they have now, ud prefer it to look like a thinkpad ? (with all the same features and power of course).

I'll take a slightly heavier Powerbook to a lighter Thinkpad any day. Styling counts for something in my book anyway.

And now that you can have a hack of OSX on intel boxes, ud rather buy a thinkbad over a Powerbook. yuck. No Thankyou.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

So basically, if Apple had a smaller, quieter, cooler lighter powerbook in the same design they have now, ud prefer it to look like a thinkpad ?

I'd prefer it to be made of the same durable composite material the Thinkpads are made of. The fact that the Thinkpads run cooler are due in large part to the Pentium M.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

And now that you can have a hack of OSX on intel boxes, ud rather buy a thinkbad over a Powerbook. yuck. No Thankyou.

No, I wouldn't run some hacked copy of OS X on a Thinkpad, but the temptation would be there. I've owned 3 Thinkpads (X series, A series, T series) prior to my PowerBook and they are just incredibly well built laptops.

[DeathMan]

A powerbook should never have tray loading cd drive. Now that's just ridiculous. Thinkpads are nice, but they're not *that* nice. I agree with WD:

[Hash]

The Panasonic T4 is an all-day ultralight. The 2.77 pound notebook has a 12-hour standard battery life (real world estimate of 6-9 hours). It is built to withstand 50kg (110 pounds) of weight, as well as a 30cm (11.8 inch) drop. (Although it reaches this threshold in the lab, it is not guaranteed to withstand that and physical damage is not covered under warranty.)

The chassis measures 10.55 x 8.27 x 1.03-1.53 inches, just enough for the keyboard to reach its outstanding 19mm keypitch. The Intel Pentium-M 1.2ghz Dolan processor (with 2mb of on-chip cache) is complemented by 1gb RAM (max). The 80gb HDD is shock-mounted, to reduce the risk of physical data loss.

[powerbook867]

check out this site for the latest and greatest from Japan...

http://www.dynamism.com/index.shtml

[jasonsRX7]

How many of you would do this with a PowerBook (or any other laptop)?

Holding it by the top of the screen


Holding it by one corner


All weight on the screen hinges


Any one of those things would bend a PowerBook all to hell. Thinkpads are damn durable workhorses.

[Hawkeye_a]

A better question would be, WHY would anyone want to hold their laptop in any of those positions ? If IBM made a conscious decision to make their portables out of that material so that consumers could hold them in those positions, and compromized style in doing so.... well...thats a shame.

Now if you plan on holding your laptop in those position for a significant amount of time, thats a different story.

[Cubeoid]

This thread is failing.

[budster101]

What keys to I press quick? I need to reboot this thread...

Is it CTRL-ALT-DEL? or is it OPT-CMND-ESC?

Quick? I cannot hold on much longer? <James Doohan / Scotty> GRHSTS

[Cubeoid]

I think it's right click on the recycle panel twice while consulting a c# reference pamphlet.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

A better question would be, WHY would anyone want to hold their laptop in any of those positions ?

You're really missing the point there. I'm just demonstrating how strong the Thinkpad's construction is.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Link, what makes you think Apple's PCs will not use Intel boards as the developer boxes do?

What makes you think they will??

Seriously, they are NOT going to use generic Intel motherboards. They may use a few Intel chipsets, but the motherboards will be sufficiently different enough that the hackers currently running OS X on other generic hardware will have a harder time getting the production version to run.

Apple is using Intel boards in the developer boxes because they had to get something to the developers QUICKLY, so that the software conversion can take place.

When Apple ships a Mac with Intel chips, it will NOT be a generic PC, nor will it be a generic motherboard.

[budster101]

Great, I'll use it as a bookshelf.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

If IBM made a conscious decision to make their portables out of that material so that consumers could hold them in those positions, and compromized style in doing so.... well...thats a shame.

Yeah, you're right. After all, Apple's 90% dominance of the laptop market clearly indicates that consumers and businesses only want durable laptops if it doesn't sacrifice the styling. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the current PowerBooks are a little TOO durable. Hopefully the next ones will be made of marble. I think marble would be much more decorative.

IBM is just trying to pick up the scraps with their Thinkpad. I don't know anyone that uses them, they're too ugly!

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by jasonsRX7

You're really missing the point there. I'm just demonstrating how strong the Thinkpad's construction is.

Oh i agree, the thinkpads are really sturdy. credit to material and the frame, right ? If Apple were to employ that material to manufacture the powerbooks, while retaining the current stylings of the powerbook, im cool with that.

I just dont want my OSX coming on a machine that looks like a thinkpad(location of ports, tray for optical drive, black, missing trackpad, etc).

[Hash]

While Thinkpads are really sturdy, I never thought of them as design marvels (maybe they're good as industrial design notebooks), cause of the red nipple, always black plastic and generally conservative look. But they work great. Vaio is stylish, but expensive, and performances is so so

[jasonsRX7]

If Apple makes it, I don't think you have to worry about it being ugly. But a business line of pro laptops made out something other than aluminum would really make my day.

[budster101]

Ever open an IBM up and look inside? It's modular and quite organized. It's a brick, solid, and well organized inside. If you have to have a peecee laptop, you couldn't do better for quality. If you have to fight the OS, why fight the hardware too?

- - -

[thunderous_funker]

Originally Posted by jasonsRX7

If Apple makes it, I don't think you have to worry about it being ugly. But a business line of pro laptops made out something other than aluminum would really make my day.

Bingo!

I'd be really shocked if Apple teams aren't already playing with some ideas along those lines.

OS X has really earned Apple a long hard look from biz buyers that they never got before. Exotic hardware and price remain the major barriers. If Macintel can address those concerns (yes, Intel inside is a MAJOR selling point to a biz) Apple stands to gain significant market share in the biz sector. Which, after all, is where the money is.

P.S. Thinkpads are *tanks* and I'd love to see Apple offer something with that in mind.

[Hawkeye_a]

Hehe...i dont think style or elegance is high up on your average IT administrators list of priorities. I mean come on...they choose a machine that can run Windows or Linux. lol.

I think(my opinion here), that the people who think the thinkpad is an attractive computer actually beleive Windows/linux to be the best OS out there, and IBM caters to them. nothing wrong with that.

After all, i like my Quartz graphics despite the performance hit. But yeah as far as materials go, they should try something sturdier (ala thinkpad material), just dont make it look like one thats all.

[thunderous_funker]

[thunderous_funker]

[pman68]

Originally Posted by thunderous_funker

We have a winner!

Wow.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by pman68

We have a winner!
Wow.

Eeeww, I prefer the current Powerbooks over THAT thing...

-t

[thunderous_funker]

I might prefer the PowerBook, but that samsung is a great looking laptop, IMO. Just goes to show there is really no reason that PC makers can't make nice stuff when they want to.

[jasonsRX7]

The silver one is ok. They should do away with the roundness on the back, and make the edges a little straighter. I'm wondering how it latches.

[loki74]

I sure as hell hope they don't change the PowerBook look. Even that Samsung we have in this thread does not look as nice.

Also a thing i'm big on is those CD trays? having the computer suck the CD in is much nicer (thats how its done now, right?) So I hope they do not mimic this. ...but why would they?

Seriously guys, if the Intel processors are that much better, more efficient, etc, that will just give Apple more room to improve the already superior design. Why would they make it all weird like those PCs? I mean, whats the point of having a rounded top bezel? (ie that Samsung, and many other PC laptops)

just my $0.02

[thunderous_funker]

I highly doubt the PowerBook will undergo radical changes. Its a great looking laptop. I expect the Centrino version to be the thinnest, lightest one yet. Something, indeed, to look forward to.

IMO, the Intel stable offers Apple so much more room for differentiation of the lineup than we're used to. Apple could offer portables from teeny-tiney PDA-like devices, the usual thin and lights, all the way up to workstation monsters with ThinkPad-like durability/construction.

The biggest thorn in Apple's notebook side is the fact that iBook and PowerBook are so close to identical specs wise. I was in an Apple store the other day and actually heard a salesperson downsell a customer looking at a PowerBook. "iBook really is a better deal. And do you really need a portable? Have you seen the Mini?"

With Intel parts, Apple can really make those product distinctions mean something more than aesthetics.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by loki74

Also a thing i'm big on is those CD trays? having the computer suck the CD in is much nicer (thats how its done now, right?) So I hope they do not mimic this. ...but why would they?

Slot loading looks cooler. Many of the tray loading drives are easily removable, allowing you to insert a second battery or something, so they can be rather functional. They're cheaper, too.

[loki74]

Thats true. And they support use of those mini disc thingies. But I still much prefer the slot load myself. Its just so much, well... cleaner.

[waxcrash]

I wish Apple would make a Ferrari laptop like Acer did.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by waxcrash

I wish Apple would make a Ferrari laptop like Acer did.

You are kiddin'. right ? Otherwise:

WTF? Are you guys blind ?

Just look at all the bottons on the front sides, the ports, the lid locks. FUGLY!

-