PowerBook G4: A Review

**Ashcrow** · 04-27-2003, 06:10 PM

At 9:00am, it finally arrived! I recieved my very own Apple PowerBook G4! I had to work that day so the suspense was killing me but when I got home it was well worth my wait.

Specs
PPC G4 @ 867MHz
256 MB SDRAM
40 gig HD
24x CD-Burner/DVD Drive
15.x Display
5 Hour Battery
802.11g Airport Card (52MBits/sec)

First Boot
After plugging in the power adapter and touching the classic circle/line start I was greated with a sound: A fancy post. After about 20 seconds of start up/sys-setup I was greated and asked a few questions about myself and the area connections. It was a breeze! I have never had a network configuration work so simply and quickly. After anwsering the questions I was in the OS itself.

OS X
Beautiful and ingenius. My mail, network settings, user and some prefrences were allready gathered from the simple questions asked on first boot. The interface feels almost perfect. Unlike Windows and some DE/WM's in *nix, OS X has a fully integrated feel: It works as if it is one unit instead of many who sometimes forget to talk. Of course, there are a few things that are a bit diffrent. For instance, I am use to the bottom bar being a menu for programs, but instead it is a smart launcher. Not a bad thing, just diffrent than what I am use to. Another diffrence is the install/uninstall that is used im OS X. If you download a program and it gets verified it automatically starts the install processes, asking for permission of course. To uninstall a program you just place it in the trash and thats that.

Screen Shots
Warning: These are large pictures!
OS X 1
OS X 2
OS X 3

Browser
OS X comes with IE 5.2 so I uninstalled it in favor of Safari Beta 2, a Konq fork. Though still in Beta, Safari has not crashed or given me problems yet, In fact I am using it right now to write this! Like KDE's Konq, Safari is extreamly configurable and allows you to fine tune security controls.

Developer Tools
OS X comes with optional dev tools not unlike tools used to create QT programs. Interface builder resembles QT Designer, and Project Builder seems similar to KDevelop (though I assume it is code warior since I saw that name appear many times in the manual). The development tools support creating applications in many diffrent languages via gcc 3.x and has GUI support for Carbon, Cocoa, Classic, Quartz, OpenGL, Java Swing, and Java Cocoa.

What I Like
It's fast!
Pretty Interface.
Long battery life.
Fast wireless.
Rendevous Networking!
Unix-Like.
Open Source Tools Availiable.
Voice Activation and Usage.
Fast Java execution.

What I Don't Like
Start up takes a bit of time.
Still get confused with menubar on top of screen.
One mouse button.

Conclusion
So is iy worth it? Yes! It's the best notebook I have ever used. Compared to the GHz Laptop I use at work this baby is awsome!

**sarah31** · 09-01-2003, 04:57 AM

One mouse button.

um...so buy a three button mouse. i never use the "mouse button" myself except for dragging. i have the trackpad set for highlighting and doubleclicking.

as an aside ashcrow there is a gcc 3.3 upgrade available from the developers site. you will have to register though.