Aluminum powerbook g4 specs portable#
Aluminum powerbook g4 specs pro#
Aluminum powerbook g4 specs plus#
Aluminum powerbook g4 specs series#

Aluminum powerbook g4 specs plus#

The 17-inch PowerBook has all of the features that its new counterpart, the 12-inch PowerBook, lacks, plus a few more. A set of speakers flank the keyboard, providing decent sound for music and movies.

Aluminum powerbook g4 specs pro#

In addition, the keyboard and trackpad both look tiny and awkward on such a large palette (maybe Apple could enlarge the keyboard to Pro size or throw in a numerical keypad to even things out a bit), and the trackpad is a bit too far from the keyboard for quick navigation. With so much extra space, we wish Apple would relent and toss in a second mouse button. The trackpad is huge-about four inches wide-with a single, enlarged mouse button. The keyboard itself sports the same brushed-metal style-though it's actually plastic-as the 12-inch model, with full-sized, logically placed keys and comfortable, extremely quiet typing. In daylight, the keyboard is fancy, but it's dwarfed by design. The main attraction: the keyboard lights up all by itself. Apple says that the backlighting won't eat battery life, as the PowerBook automatically dims its screen to compensate. We found, however, that a room has to be quite dark for the backlighting to come on we'd like to see a light-sensitivity setting in the System Preferences. In a darkened room, the letters and spaces between keys glow with a soft, purplish light.

A few other notebooks, such as the IBM ThinkPad T40, feature some keyboard lighting-usually as a single light at the top of the screen-but the PowerBook uses an ambient sensor to detect low light and automatically illuminate the keyboard. This marquee PowerBook's hottest feature, however, is its backlit keyboard. You can zoom in on or enlarge text to counteract the problem, but lowering the screen resolution from the native setting significantly deteriorates the image. Text, however, appears slightly small at 1,440x900, a slight detraction. The 17-inch screen, viewable at 1,440x900 pixels and a 16:10 aspect ratio, makes watching DVDs in letterbox format a full-screen dream, and you can comfortably fit two open documents side by side. There's one benefit to this notebook's strangely wide size, however. The 17-inch-wide screen makes DVD viewing a pleasure. The PowerBook's size, not just its looks, turns heads.

Aluminum powerbook g4 specs series#

At 6.8 pounds (plus another 0.5 pounds for the power adapter), the PowerBook is more than 1 pound heavier than the 15-inch Titanium PowerBook, comparable to the Dell Inspiron 8500, and quite a bit lighter than desktop replacements such as the 8.1-pound Compaq Presario 3000 series and the 8.65-pound Gateway 600XL. The notebook simply won't fit in most standard-sized laptop bags, and it's so long that when tucked under an arm, the end of the notebook bashes into passersby, turnstiles, and door frames. In everyday use, the PowerBook's extremely rectangular shape-15.4 by 10.2 by 1.0 inches-is a barrier to free motion. The 17-inch PowerBook G4, made of brushed aluminum alloy (like its new, 12-inch counterpart, rather than the titanium-built models of old), is almost ridiculously large it's definitely a desktop replacement, and it's difficult to tote around.

Aluminum powerbook g4 specs portable#

As Apple's new PowerBooks go, we think that the 12-inch model is the better, more portable deal if you're after a G4-based desktop replacement, however, the high-end Titanium PowerBook is still our top choice. If you want an attractive, not-very-portable Mac with a 17-inch LCD and a DVD burner, an iMac is more than $1,000 cheaper. But the $3,299 17-inch PowerBook performs about the same as its 15-inch predecessor, and it's extremely awkward to carry. We can't deny that this is a rock star's notebook, what with its hot, new design standard, built-in DVD burning and wireless networking and awesome backlit keyboard. Apple's high-profile 17-inch PowerBook took on legendary status as would-be owners waited for this portable giant to start shipping.