On Thursday 15-07-2004 I picked up my Powerbook 15" from the Maccentric Apple Shop in Chatswood.
This 15" Powerbook is the 1.5GHz with 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 and 80GB 5400RPM harddrive upgrades.
The RAM is standard for the moment, but will be upgraded to 1GB soon
(The existing 2x256 will be swapped with the existing 1x512 in the Powerbook 17" and another 512MB
will be purchased from www.digitalguru.com.au).
First the differences between the new 15" and the 17". Obviously it's smaller and lighter.
The trackpad is smaller and combined with the smaller palmrest area now doesn't get in the way when typing, the trackpad's button is less "stiff" than the 17"'s.
The screen seems even brighter than the 17", the keyboard feels the same (I can bash it nice and hard without a problem). The battery is mounted differently,
instead of the 2 sliding locks there is a twist lock (used with a coin) that pushes the battery out. The battery also has the button with LEDs that show how much charge is in the battery.
The hinge on the 15" is much (much much) stronger than on the 17" Powerbook where it collapses shut if the keyboard base is held at more than 45 degrees!
The difference between the 15" Powerbook and the Thinkpad T40p it replaces is more interesting.
The Thinkpad T40p is a thin and light desktop replacement with great battery life. The Powerbook is sold as a desktop replacement (in my opinion).
The Powerbook is just as thick as the T40p (or as thin, they are each an inch thick), about an inch wider and half an inch less deep
(or an inch if you take the extended battery into account).
The T40p runs a Pentium M at 1.6GHz, the Powerbook a G4 at 1.5GHz.
The T40p has a 14" screen with a resolution of 1400x1050, higher than the 1280x854 of the Powerbook but less bright.
The battery life for the T40p is amazing, I've seen it run around 7 hours on a single charge (ok, it wasn't doing much),
and so far, running the Powerbook on battery in one of my favourite coffee haunts, the Powerbook isn't behind
(Ok, it's not doing too much either: creating this blog entry and occasional wireless use).
The amount of time left after about an hour is about an two and a half hours, which is the same the Thinkpad gave me in the same situation.
I do think that the Powerbook uses more battery power while it is asleep than the Thinkpad. I see almost no movement in battery charge
with the Thinkpad when it is asleep since after it's been asleep for a while it goes into hibernation mode. The Powerbook shows noticable movement,
after 40 minutes of walking around the city with the Powerbook asleep in my backpack I lose about 10 minutes of charge. Perhaps the Powerbooks do not have a "deep sleep" or hibernation mode?
I played Unreal Tournament 2004 and it was playable. I played the Deathmatch demo level and it didn't miss a beat at 1024x768
in 32bit colour with all the settings either turned on or turned to "normal".
The timedemo I used in the past showed a different result: it took 345 seconds to complete, but it looked very smooth.
Strange result, it definitely looked smoother on the new PB15 than on my Thinkpad T40p but the result was not as good as the
'Thinkpad (Radeon FireGL9000/64 which is just a Radeon 9000 with certified OpenGL drivers).
Jedi Knight 2 played to perfection. I'll put all the numbers on the comparison page later.
The important thing here is that games of the UT2004 technology level will play very well on this Powerbook.
Most of my software has now been installed, most of my data has been moved across, so finally my work can begin on a Mac now.
The first thing I'll now do is to port my circular menus over to OpenGL from DirectX, I've promised this to people for a while now, so...
The code will be available from happymakinggames.
Calculator problem continues...
The calculator on bnoth Powerbooks still show the same problem: currency rates are not being updated.
I did find a website (MacFixIt)
that may have a possible solution:
delete the preferrences and cache for the calculator.
The page says this may have to be done a few times before it will work (strange) and it hasn't worked for me yet!
