[Ti] Happy 1 Ghz Powerbook users! - I am

[alan kastner]

Some (many?) will disagree, but I think the two new siblings round out the PowerBook lineup quite well, and still leave me happy with my purchase of a 15.2" 1GHz PBG4. The new machines aim at specific markets while to me the 15.2" titanium achieves the best all-round balance of the lot.

Let's look at these siblings using the 15.2" Titanium as the base against which the others are measured...

(1) 12" - a blessing for the true road warrior
* doesn't have the 1MB level 3 cache - major limitation in performance,
  especially in apps that utilize the cache heavily. One example is VPC.
* 1024 x 768 display - that's 256 pixels less width and 86 less height
* 4.6 pounds is a mere 0.8 pounds less than the Titanium
* Marginally thicker than Titanium - thickness counts more than breadth
  when shoving a 'Book in your bag and carrying it around
* No booting in OS9 for emergencies, handy firmware patches, etc.

(2) 17" - a blessing for the video editor and musician
          and item worthy of p*nis envy for sure
* Same 1GHz G4 CPU (granted, DDR RAM may add marginal speed boost)
  = almost same speed
* 1440 x 900 - that's only 46 pixels in height gained. Sure, 
  the 160 pixels of added width would be nice
* 6.8 pounds - that's 1.4 pounds extra weight, enough to be quite
  noticeable when lugging it around
* shorter stated battery power per charge (by 30 minutes)
* $300 more expensive than top-end TiBook
* No booting in OS9 for emergencies, handy firmware patches, etc.
* won't start shipping for another 6 weeks or so

The one thing I truly envy on the 17" is the backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor. But I can live with that. (I'm pretty sure this feature is not on the 12" model.)

As an example of irony, I wasn't able to get a connection to the keynote in OS X 10.2.3 on my ADSL line and running a registered copy of QT 6.0.2. Others on the forum I was logged into were getting connected, so, thinking it odd and dying not to miss much, I booted into OS 9. Sure enough, it worked in OS 9 first try. Tried the same thing on my Rev.A TiBook while Steve was still rambling along about sales results and had the same experience. It wouldn't connect in OS X, but did without problem in OS 9. That alone combined with booting into 9 to apply the region-free firmware on both TiBooks still makes having the extra OS boot option appealing for now!

There's lots more, but it's 05:30 here in Tokyo and I've been up all night watching the keynote and then checking out Safari. All in all, this keynote brought lots of great news to start the year with. Unsurpassed by any group of announcements I recall hearing at a previous Expo.

FWIW, alan