It's not quite perfect, but the PowerBook G4 is good enough.
It will be the second new Mac I've ever purchased (the first was a
Centris 610 in mid-1993).
Why am I buying a PowerBook G4 instead of a Cube or Power Mac G4? In a word:
portability. WallStreet, Lombard, and
Pismo were
all attractive, but the screens were too small for the way I work (see
Living Large). The titanium
PowerBook is Apple's first with a large enough screen (1152 x 768) to
replace the 19" (1152 x 768) I'm used to at home and nearly replace the
21" (1280 x 1024) I'm used to at work.
If Apple hadn't introduced a wide-screen PowerBook, I would have
seriously considered the Cube. I'm tired of big, loud computers; I want
something that simply works and works simply. Speed is not an issue -
I've been happy ever since I reached the 300 MHz mark. Expandability is
not an issue - I've had enough of adding PCI cards and drives.
Compromises
But Apple did introduce the PowerBook G4, which I believe is worth
every cent of the $2,599 price for the 400 MHz model. Of course, there
are some drawbacks compared with earlier models.
No expansion bays. That's fine. I've never owned a PowerBook,
so I never became used to them. Besides, there are two USB ports and a
FireWire port. Also, there's probably no way to put expansion bays in
such a thin computer.
CD-RW. Yeah, that would have been nice, especially for backup
in the field. For a lot of users, DVD isn't a big deal. I'm guessing
there are no sufficiently slim slot-loading CD-RW drives. If there
were, I suspect Apple would have made them available.
Only one battery. Again, it's something I'm not used to. The
six-hour (rated) battery life on my wife's iBook is impressive; a bit
less here shouldn't be a problem at all.
Choices
As I've said many times, it's not an issue of speed, so the 400 MHz
model will be fine for me. It comes with a 10 GB hard drive and 128 MB
of memory. Is it enough?
Enough memory? Definitely not. I'm checking ramseeker regularly for the
best value, but I know I'll put in at least a 256 MB upgrade (currently
as low as $117 shipped). The 512 MB are too expensive to consider these
days, but 384 MB total RAM will be plenty of memory (I have "only" 208
MB at home and 320 MB at work).
Enough drive space? Ten gigabytes is luxurious! I have a 6 GB drive
at work. My main partition has over 3 GB free. I have a 15.2 GB drive
at home, the vast majority of which is free space (it was about the
smallest available when I bought it - I certainly didn't need that much
drive space).
I won't be buying memory from Apple. There are much better deals on
the open market. I've looked into the 20 GB hard drive option, but for
$200 extra it's almost as expensive as some 40 GB FireWire drives I've
seen. If I end up needing more than 10 GB, I'll get an external
FireWire drive.
I'll move my AirPort card from my wife's iBook, use the Contour
MiniPro optical mouse I picked up at the Expo last week, and buy an
AirPort hub, giving me the ability to work anywhere in the house or on
the back deck.
Unless a better deal shows up by Friday (always check PowerBook
Central's week's best
PowerBook, iBook deals before buying), I'll be ordering from
Outpost.com for the free overnight shipping.
Then it's just a matter of waiting for Apple to release the
PowerBook G4.
