Apple 12-inch PowerBook a great on-the-go machine, offers firm punch in a little package

21 years ago

“At first sight, the smallest of Apple’s Powerbooks does look too small to get any real work done. However… that diminutive [12-inch] screen is no impediment to getting stuff out the chute,” Chris Oaten writes for The Advertiser. “There was just one thing I found frustrating. Window scrolling. The biggest drawback of a small screen is the frequency with which you need to see window contents that fall outside the frame of view.”

“So the first thing I tried with the review model was a feature new to all the Powerbooks – trackpad scrolling. No need to mouse to and click on the scroll bar arrows to move about your document or webpage. Now you can simply drag two fingertips together across the trackpad in the up, down or sideways scroll action you need,” Oaten writes. “It has a very shallow learning curve and, once you have the motion right, it is a snap to use. It is a very welcome addition. Combine trackpad scrolling with trackpad clicking, and the need to reach for the click button diminishes.”

“The result is far speedier navigation through Finder and application windows. You can take it one step further, too, by enabling fingertip click-dragging, but this feature takes a lot of practice, as double-tapping with the wrong action on, for instance, the top bar of a window, will minimise the window instead of priming it for dragging,” Oaten writes. “The review unit presented no problems at all with the two-finger scrolling feature.”

“Performance-wise, the review unit with its 1.5Ghz G4 processor, 512Mb RAM (standard), 512Kb L2 cache, Airport card, SuperDrive and 80Gb HD is marginally speedier than earlier models, offering a firm punch in a little package. It is very well suited to common tasks and, I expect, would make a great on-the-go machine for a web developer armed with Macromedia’s MX suite,” Oaten writes. “With an excellent software bundle, including the latest version of iLife, the 12in Powerbook is a tempting option for anyone looking for a highly portable computing solution.”

Full article here.