Battery life for 1yr old iBook

[Charles Martin]

> From: Small Moose Ltd <small_moose_ltd at mac.com>
> Seeing as you own a Tangerine, Graphite and an Icebook, I was 
> wondering if
> you could tell me of the difference between the Icebooks and the 
> Clamshells
> from your experience. This is just for my own interest, not for 
> anything
> hugely technical.
>
In what sense do you mean "difference"?

When it comes to battery life (per the subject header), all three 
perform roughly the same.

The Icebook is easier to scratch and gets warmer IMHO (this is the 
500MHz combo drive Icebook BTW).

As far as speed, well, for such light use there's not really a 
noticeable speed gap between the clamshells and the Icebook when 
running OS 9, everthing just seems to be fast. Fast enough, I guess 
you'd say.

The chip speed becomes clear (along with the better, higher-rez screen) 
when you switch to OS X, though. The clamshells CAN run it, but IMHO 
not well. The Icebook runs it just fine.

> See, I wonder about the latest revision of iBooks now, and I wonder 
> whether
> it is really a massive leap from the machine I use now (Clamshell 466).
> Would I really be blown away by the performance increase? Or would it 
> feel
> more like a subtle improvement.
>
Depends on your use. I tend to use laptops pretty lightly, I use my 
desktop machines for the real work around here. I take my laptops on 
trips to check mail, revise documents (mostly Word), and play simple 
games. Frankly, even a 300MHz clamshell is overkill for what I do with 
em.

One year I had to work on a full-page, full colour ad in Photoshop and 
Quark Express while on vacation. Without even thinking about it I chose 
the Icebook and man I'm glad I did.

> I use my iBook for word processing, a little graphics work a 'la 
> Photoshop,
> illustrator, a little music, bit of gaming and it all seems fine. The 
> only
> thing I really hate is the weight of the machine and the crappy 
> speaker. Oh
> yes, and I have always wondered about the difference in screen 
> brightness
> between the clamshell and Icebook. Does the newer model really sport a 
> much
> brighter, clearer screen?
>
Oh my god yes. That plus the increased resolution (a must for OS X 
IMHO) make it a vastly better choice, particularly for Photoshop, than 
a clamshell.

> I use OS9, and tend to feel the biggest improvements would come from
> installing Jaguar, a 512Mb module, and fitting a 5400rpm internal hard
> drive. Not that I have the money for any of this right now, but that 
> is the
> route I feel I would take rather than move onto an entirely new 
> machine.
>
There are plenty of people here who run Jag on their clamshells, but 
personally it drove me crazy. Too cramped at 800x600. Too slow on the 
300MHz iBook (to be fair, adding a lot more RAM would have helped that 
a lot I'll wager).

> When I say to ask you of your experience, I'm really rather referring 
> to
> whether it feels that much more pleasant and natural in your lap, 
> whether
> the screen is perfectly bright even if you are sitting under a lamp, 
> blah
> blah etc.
>
Oh yeah, the Icebook gets a bit warmer (don't know if the newest models 
still do, but mine does), but the better screen and more "real estate" 
more than make up for that.

_Chas_
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