well, my PowerBook got here yesterday and i've been glued to the screen since... well, i'm usually glued to the screen but not a laptop one

so, here are a few pictures, desktop screenshots and some info i thought you all might find useful. and please, if you have any tips, advice, suggestions, or even flames for buying a mac, let me have them! (=




desktop

excuse my foot in the one pic ;D

so here are the essential numbers (i'll be adding this system to my sig soon):
PowerPC G4 CPU, 1ghz w/ 512K L2 cache, 133mhz FSB (hehe, almost the same CPU as my Athlon was )
256mb DDR266 (PC2100)
40gb HDD (4,200rpm... you have to pay well over $2k to get a system with 5,400rpm because it only comes with the bigger screen models and such)
12" screen (kawaii model =) )
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM and 24x CD-RW)
BlueTooth built-in
2 USB 2.0 ports
1 FireWire400 port
ADC (Apple Display... C-something. with a ADC to VGA and ADC to DVI adaptor)
10/100 Ethernet card
56k V.92 modem, hehehe like i'll ever use that
and of course the Apple Logo on the back that lights up thanks to the LCD ;D

as for software it comes with OS X (10.3, Panther) on the wonderful Darwin (BSD!!! w00r!) core

i have been able to EASILY do file sharing between this system and my XP box because Samba is built in to OS X. (you should be seeing my XP box's C drive in the desktop shot above)

all the LCD and audio controls are easily accessed through the F keys.
surprisingly the speakers have quite a bit of power and then of course my Sennheiser headphones go along with it nicely (=

by default the click-function of the trackpad mouse is disabled, yay for me! but you can turn it on if you like it.

the aluminium enclosure keeps it very cool in places with good air circulation and nice ambient temps. so far i've only felt mild heat from this system and of course you have to expect that in a notebook

the standard applications that come with OS X are great. even Safari, the browser, is very good... though not as good as FireBird.

iChatAV takes AIM to a nicer level with much more easy to use IM windows and easy to set away mode options and you can at a glance QUICKLY see what mode your buddies are in (red and green icons instead of "note paper" for away mode)

i downloaded X-Chat Aqua, a wonderful IRC client based on XChat, my favourite client to use in *nix environments. it's quite nice and works just as well, if not better, than standard Xchat (and of course X-Chat > mIRC )

the whole OS is nicely customisable. i've set the date up to ALWAYS be displayed in Day-Month-Year rather than Month-Day-Year and any measurements the system gives are in Metric
the keyboard has all sorts of nifty functions like alt+3 is £ and alt+Y is ¥ so it's already an international system.

one thing i did very soon after booting up is re-size the dock
you can also place it on the left or right of the screen and turn on the magnification feature that everyone hated when OS X first came out, hehe.

the 12" model is only capable of 1024x768 and lower resolutions but that's more than enough. i was worried about all my windows overlapping each other but that's not really a problem with all the ways you can pull up another app.

ok, questions? comment? flames? (=

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i thought about this being the anti-sig... or the sig virus... or the sig of your nightmares... but i decided that some painful rhetoric might work instead...
just kidding.

The power of Macintosh

Wish I was you

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"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
-Robert Jastrow

Now go get yourself an iPod!!

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Happy "Diseased" dud: You said I'd be like this guy. Boycotting everything..
Happy "Diseased" dud: ted kazcnisky. That's who it was.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wait, That's the unibomer.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wrong guy.

hehe, i hope to very soon, fish ;D
$269 with my discount

Mano: well, you could be me... but then i'd be you... and that'd be painful.

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i thought about this being the anti-sig... or the sig virus... or the sig of your nightmares... but i decided that some painful rhetoric might work instead...
just kidding.

Swheat! (Swheat, Wheat, get it? Ehheh...)

How much does it weigh?

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<A HREF="http://www.rot13.com" TARGET=_blank>Wnav "Xebxb" Ghbzvara
w_ghbzvara@yhhxxh.pbz</A>

4.6lbs... that's around 2kgs, hehe
i'm going to do some benchmarking over the weekend and let you all know how it performs under pressure.

oh btw, the battery gets around 4.5-5hours (=

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i thought about this being the anti-sig... or the sig virus... or the sig of your nightmares... but i decided that some painful rhetoric might work instead...
just kidding.

waffle iron

I second that, had the 20gb model for the past 4ish months....brillant! and don't worry about those battery stories, its a load of bull...


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I heard someone say once that the world is a fine place and that it was worth fighting for....I agree with the last part.

People of our generation should not be subjected to mornings.

Rbots website

No, no its not. My battery died, 2 weeks ago or so.. Its gonna cost me $100 to replace it...

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Happy "Diseased" dud: You said I'd be like this guy. Boycotting everything..
Happy "Diseased" dud: ted kazcnisky. That's who it was.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wait, That's the unibomer.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wrong guy.

Very nice.

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"Honey, you got real ugly."

how long have you had it?

the battery is only good for around 500-600 rechanges....just like any other li-ion battery, if you re-charging it everyday...or adding new songs daily thats what could have done it...

personally i think the problem lies with the charging when connected to the pc, people connect it up to the pc, it begins charging, add few songs, then take it off and the battery has had a partial "boost" in charge....

I've got a friend at uni, had his 30gb model nearly 8 months now, maybe longer, he still gets 7hrs out of it....and is of the same opinion as i am.

[This message has been edited by James Bond (edited January 24, 2004).]

Ive had it about.. a year.. And I charge it every night.. so Charging it 500-600 times will kill the battery.. gah

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Happy "Diseased" dud: You said I'd be like this guy. Boycotting everything..
Happy "Diseased" dud: ted kazcnisky. That's who it was.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wait, That's the unibomer.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wrong guy.

uumm, yeh bit of a pain in the arse....apple should have mention something about this in the manual imo, lots of people have just been changing it everyday, even if its still at 3/4 charge, it made the newspapers over here (UK) and even the BBC, its silly really....think they should also release a patch to itunes or something to enable you to NOT charge it when connected to your pc, because really, who is going to leave their PC on 4+ hours just to charge the ipod...not me...

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I heard someone say once that the world is a fine place and that it was worth fighting for....I agree with the last part.

People of our generation should not be subjected to mornings.

Rbots website

If you had it for a year and charge it every night, that's a mere 365 charges. Not near the 600 you -should- get.

Meh, sometimes I'd plug it into the computer, sometimes into the charger.. sometimes more than once a day.. meh.. I just think its stupid that they'd put a battery in it that they knew wouldnt last, and then make it IMPOSSIBlE to remove

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Happy "Diseased" dud: You said I'd be like this guy. Boycotting everything..
Happy "Diseased" dud: ted kazcnisky. That's who it was.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wait, That's the unibomer.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wrong guy.

ya... at least it's not NiCd though.

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please

it is actually possible to remove, i've opened my ipod up to see whats inside once, can see the battery is replaceable...although only if your willing to do a bit of work...which in all honest we shouldn't have to!

so i do agree they should have made the battery replaceable, but thats what we get for the silm design and the look...plus some of the new players coming out (eg dell) are built the same way.

have a look here for some general info on ipod "stuff" including battery related material..

here

http://ipodbatteryfaq.com/

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I heard someone say once that the world is a fine place and that it was worth fighting for....I agree with the last part.

People of our generation should not be subjected to mornings.

Rbots website

[This message has been edited by James Bond (edited January 24, 2004).]

It's very clever, in the money-making clever way

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Of war, we don't speak anymore

[Insert mildy funny, anti-mac, pro-linux quip here...]




Why? Are you . . . are you gonna give it to me?

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

haha, sure GBK ;P
actually i thought about getting a PC-notebook and putting Debian or Gentoo on it... but i like the ease of setup this thing has (=

as for the iPods i'll probably store my entire collection on it and just charge when it needs power.
i don't get new mp3s all that often so i'd only end up adding music maybe once every other week or so. (and most of the time I listen to music i'm at the computer


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i thought about this being the anti-sig... or the sig virus... or the sig of your nightmares... but i decided that some painful rhetoric might work instead...
just kidding.

Congrats. I'd love to have one, and I'd KILL to have Panther on my iMac.

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Frogblast the Vent Core!

--End of Line--

The iPod G3 model has longer battery life than the G2 model.

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"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
-Robert Jastrow

And he's putting his toes into it.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

My Rio Karma has 15 hours of battery life and is a hell of a lot cheaper than an iPod. Also switches to AC after the battery is charged, so there is no harm in leaving it in the dock for prolonged periods of time.

How much did you pay for the iBook? I've always like OSX, but the proprietary, expensive hardware required has prevented me from actually getting to use it.

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[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]

Malus: It's a PowerBook, not an iBook

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"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
-Robert Jastrow

yeah, it's a PowerBook not iBook ;D
it's got a 512K cache where as the iBook is only 256K

this was $1,399... however it's normally $1,599.
http://store.apple.com

i got an educational discount because i'm a homechool student (= (got $200 off but then tax was $87)

i'm not sure about what it does to the warranty but stuff like memory and hard drives are easily available...

of course it's a bit difficult to upgrade any laptop system yourself (except doing RAM upgrades because it's just a panel on the back

i'm actually going to look into my warranty to see if I can do RAM upgrades because Crucial.com has 128mb for $20.99 and i think 256mb was just $43 ;D


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i thought about this being the anti-sig... or the sig virus... or the sig of your nightmares... but i decided that some painful rhetoric might work instead...
just kidding.