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| 12-inch PowerBook G4 | |
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While lacking the undeniable “wow” factor of its 17-inch sibling, Apple’s much smaller surprise laptop introduced at Macworld San Francisco might prove to be its biggest winner. I am speaking of Apple’s new 12-inch G4 laptop — an immensely useable laptop featuring a powerful 867MHz G4 processor housed in a sturdy aluminum frame. After extended use on a six-day business trip to Las Vegas, I am convinced Apple will sell a ton of these. This 12-inch laptop is Apple’s smallest, lightest laptop ever. Gone is the titanium case and with it, the problems associated with chipped and flaking paint. The new laptop is now housed in an anodized aluminum frame, and feels very solid and sturdy. It sports two universal serial bus 1.1 ports, a 400Mbps FireWire port, modem, audio in/out and Ethernet connectivity. It also includes a mini-Video Graphics Adapter video slot that accepts supplied connectors for access to external monitors, projectors and other video displays. By moving the access slots for RAM and the AirPort card to the underside of the laptop, Apple was able to provide a much better feeling, and responsive full-sized keyboard. The keys are larger than other models, and have good range. It’s one of the best feeling laptop keyboards I have used. Soldered on the motherboard is 128MB 2100 DDR RAM and 128MB in SO-DIMM slot, leaving one slot available for additional RAM. It will accept a 512MB module, which limits expansion to 640MB. While this amount is acceptable for mainstream law office use, it’s needlessly limiting for other more RAM-intensive applications that law offices now use. At the least, Apple should offer options up to 512MB of soldered-on RAM, and leave the remaining slot open. The screen is a bright, 12-inch thin film transistor with a maximum resolution of 1,024-by-768 pixels that hinges backward. A NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go graphics processor with 32MB video RAM is supplied, and the computer supports dual display or video mirroring when connected to an external monitor. The AirPort antenna has been moved to the side of the screen to improve its range over previous models. It has audio-in and headphone-out ports and a built-in microphone. Two stereo and one mid-range enhancing speaker is included. The AC adapter is typical of Apple engineering. It provides recessed plugs that pull out when plugging the unit into an outlet. Flip-out hinges can wind up the cord, and the AC plug can be removed to attach the AC extension cord. With built-in Bluetooth and support for AirPort Extreme WiFi, this machine is ready-made for business or law computing where wireless networks are available. The AirPort card is a $99 option that is easily installed in the battery slot underneath the computer. I ran a full complement of business and law applications while out of town. They included office suites such as Microsoft Word Office X, Now Up-to-Date & Contact and AppleWorks. I also checked my e-mail, accessed the Web and tested Apple’s new presentation package, Keynote. For these mainstream law office applications, the 12-inch PowerBook was nearly as fast and responsive as my desktop dual processor 1GHz office machine. I also watched a DVD on the flight to Las Vegas and was able to obtain about 2.5 hours of continuous battery use. With energy saving options on, expect about 3 hours of use. I also ran Adobe Photoshop and two video editing packages with the computer, and found it more than acceptable when running these graphic-intensive applications. Unfortunately, the machine doesn’t have a L3 cache, which limits CPU-intensive tasks. My model included a combination slot loading DVD-R/CD-RW drive that burns CDs at 10x the speed. I was able to easily back up data to either CD or DVD, and create an interactive DVD with video and sound presentation with Apple’s free iLife application, iDVD3 while on the road. Although the 12-inch PowerBook is an attractive package, it’s not without shortcomings. Besides limited RAM expansion and the missing L3 cache, the PowerBook has design compromises. It doesn’t have a digital video interface video out, so you are limited to VGA displays. In addition, its aluminum case conducts heat so the left side palm rest warms considerably with extended use. Minor gripes include the absence of a backlit keyboard such as provided in its 17-inch sibling, the absence of a PC card slot, and relatively slow CD and DVD burn speeds. But these are, as I said, minor gripes. All currently shipping Apple computers boot only to Mac OS X. This means that OS 9 applications will only launch in Classic mode under OS X. However, this is a minor concern for most attorneys because mainstream law office applications run either in Classic or are OS X compatible. You can build-to-order versions with more RAM, DVD-R capability, larger hard drives and an internal DVD-R/CD-RW drive. |
Apple Computer Inc. Price: $1,799 with Combo Drive; $1,999 with SuperDrive Reviewed by David A. Saraceno, a practicing attorney and owner of Pixelcraft Studios, a presentation graphics consulting firm in Spokane, Wash. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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