I just bought a
Powerbook 17" and the first thing that struck me was the
packaging. A cardboard box lined with plastic on the
inside containing a shiny black box with the laptop in
it's styrofoam padding. Great first
impression.
The laptop itself was
very sleek, I had seen them in the shop of course, but
holding my own it looked fantastic. When it is used by
someone else or it is just sitting on a coffee table, I
simply cannot look away from it! All the ports are on
the sides of the laptop, none on the back, which means
they are all within easy reach. There is a single USB2
port on each side.
The first
differences I noticed were the lack of page
up/down, home/end and delete key
(there is a backspace key). Yes, the
"FN" key together with arrows and
backspace keys give the same results, but
it would have been nice to have the actual keys. The
lack of these keys may be an issue to programmers and
other heavy keyboard users. The keyboard itself is quite
nice to type on.
I like the keyboard backlighting
very much, that coupled with the smooth backlight fading
on the screen in dark situations is very slick, a much
better method of lighting the keyboard in dark rooms
than IBM's LED light at the top of the Thinkpad's
LCD bezel, which on the T40p has a tendency to
shine in the user's eyes.
On the Powerbook 17"
the single mouse button is very big so thank God for the
Logitech mouse. The trackpad itself, however, is quite
good. It's easier to use than any other trackpad I've
experienced simply because it's twice the
size.
Some other things that are
frustrating are:
- There is no hard drive activity LED. This is such
a basic part of every other computer I've ever used,
why is this not there? It would be good to be able to
see whether the drive is busy
- Scrolling in applications can be slow.
- Blank screen for first part of boot process, this
does not induce confidence. At least some sort of
signal here is needed.
- Resizing Finder window is slow.
When the machine
was first turned on it took about 5 minutes to go
through some sort of installation process and we were
ready to play!
After the machine had
completed it's self-installation I tried to connect to
the internet. Airport detected myBelkin wireless access point and
connected to the internet through it without issue.
Importing mail from Windows
Netscape 7 into MacOSX Mail was not a big problem,
just copy the files across and import them in Mail, all
very easy.
The screen, even with
the lower resolution (the A31 it replaces has 1400x1050
on 15") is amazing. Colours are much better than
any Windows laptop I've used (T40p, A31, T20) and the
screen can be seen from all angles, even from some
distance! The Thinkpad screens are dull compared to the
17" Powerbook, even though I was very happy with
the Thinkpad screens, especially the A31's brightness
and the T40p's contrast.
My Olympus C3000Zoom
camera (over 3 years old, 3MP, does not follow
USB storage spec.) was recognised by iPhoto. Just
plug the camera in and download the photos! Under
Windows I had to install all sorts of software from
Olympus to download photos and in the end it was simpler
to take the storage card and plug it into a
USB reader.
iMovie obviously recognised a firewire equipped video
camera, but then there is no issue with this under
Windows either.
Expose was supposed to
be a killer feature but it's keyboard shortcuts are
confusing, they interfere with keyboard backlight
shortcuts and a few preference panel shortcuts when
combined with Apple, Option or Control keys. This can
probably be easily fixed in the preferences
panels.
