“When money is no object, buy the Apple.”
“Take the new miniature G4 PowerBook … for $1,799. Looks to die for. Sleek aluminum casing. Powerful chip. nVidia graphics to drive a screen that’s delicious to look at. Ports everywhere. I’d sleep with one under my pillow if it was a little bit softer.”
“You could say that the newer-than-new 12-inch PowerBook has plenty of competition at that price … or you could say it has none.”
“For nearly two grand, there’s scads of (Windows-based) options on the selling floor, some with faster processors, or larger color displays, or more memory or a bigger hard drive, or all of those specs. A few of those machines – I’m thinking of Sony’s lightweight Vaio micro notebooks and similar offerings from Sharp and Toshiba – are as elegant as the PowerBook too.”
“These competitive factors, however, aren’t relevant when we’re dealing with PowerBooks; Apple’s notebooks have transcended the idea of Computer as Utility – even though they are indeed useful – and ascended to the plateau of Computer as Icon. And at that level, there is no competition,” writes Stephen Williams for Newsday.com. Full article here.
Well, I lust after the new 12″ PowerBook too, I think it is the most well balanced computer in the market now. I want a computer on the road, I want to bring my work and play to a coffee shop, the beach, the bigger PowerBooks are just not cut out for that! At the same time, all I need is plug in a monitor when I get home, I will have a powerful enough “desk top” computer. Totally fulfills my needs …
BUT, then we are greedy, if I have seen what are offered on the bigger PowerBooks, I will buy the 12″ PowerBook like 4 weeks ago, now I wait … although I don’t need them, I want monitor support as in the bigger PowerBooks, I want a PCcard slot, I want more memory, I want more than anything else: the glow in the dark keyboard (pure lust) etc etc … it is not that the 12″ PowerBook is not good enough for me, but since I see what I can get in the 17″ PowerBook, I get a tad greedy, and I am sure Apple will work those in in the next release …
I have a 12″ PowerBook and it is almost everything the author says. However (a) the lack of a level 2 cache noticeably slows even common tasks e.g. simple typing in Entourage! and (b) the screen resolution is terrible! Really fuzzy at all font sizes and no amount of tweaking helps.
I like the unit and would probably buy it again, but there is ample room for improvement — especially in the display quality.