one step behind
I was about to make the switch today, but I had some problems. The 12" iBook was the intended tool because it was on sale for a deliciously low price at the MicroStore. I went in on Friday to check out the deal and picked up a flyer. The guy said there were a fair amount of 12 inchers, so I didn't worry too much about it. I checked on Monday night and they were sold out. That's some quick movement of merchandise. Criminals could've learned some techniques from the MicroStore. Now I wait for the next upgrade. Hope it comes soon. In short: fuck you iBook stealers, fuck you up your stupid asses.
posted by ed @ 6:06 PM
7 Comments:
At 10:29 PM, March 22, 2005,
Ryan said…
Mmmm.... Powerbook.....
Actually, I burnt my legs today after working on it for about 3 hours. Sonsabitches get hot.
On a related note, I'm thinking they may get a minor, unannounced upgrade when Tiger is released. This could have been reason for the whole March Madness sale especially since it looks like Tiger is coming sooner than later. Anyway, I'm thinking probably just 512MB PC2100 stock. Nothing else upgraded and the price will drop very little if not at all. Plus it will ship with Tiger. And if Dashboard doesn't give you a boner, then you are not a nerd. I've said too much.
At 8:29 AM, March 23, 2005,
ed said…
Nothing but a nerd post could break you guys out of the woodwork. I'm expecting the 512 ram upgrade. A video card update would be nice, but that might be asking too much. Battery life is pretty dominating already (up to 6hr claim) compared to the average 2-3hr pc laptop. I was thinking of getting a 14", but that thought died almost ameedeeatly. I've always wanted the 12", no substitutions. You had 8.8 gigs of the o.c.? You should just dish out and buy the DVDs you el cheapo.
At 4:18 PM, March 23, 2005,
Ryan said…
No battery upgrades. Nothing better exists for a reasonable amount of money. Apple doesn't do their own R&D for batteries but they are using pretty much the best price/performance as of right now. The iPod really isn't a good indicator because they are completely diff. batteries (Me thinks the 'pod runs off of Li-I and the portables run off of a Ni-Cad... me THINKS). And battery life on the mini's was only doubled, not quadruppled. It went from ~8 to ~18. Reports have shown it is only putting out about 14 on a good day. I can get about 16 hours off of my shuffle but that is with listening to the same music A LOT.
When I saw the March Madness sale, I almost went for the 14" iBook w/ SD. Two things stopped me. First, the resolution on that screen makes me want to tear my eyes out and send them to Steve Jobs. I guess they are trying to save money by using mediocre displays. The second is the subsystem is just too slow. I don't know why Apple is limiting the pipelines on the logic boards in the iBooks. They still won't outperform the PB's and the performance increase will attract more people. The SD almost clenched it though...
Video upgrade is a possibility. But if its anything, it will either stay a 9200 with 64MB of VRAM or a nVidia Go5200 Ultra with 64MB, same one as the 12" PB. I just think core image needs a boost in Tiger. It's pretty performance intense.
No name for the PB yet. I'm thinking it's an inanimate object and I'm a sane person so....
As I side note, Ed's cousin Matt and I came to the conclusion that The OC is a litmus test for how terrible society has become in terms of social bankruptcy. 8.8 Gigatrons? You acidic, acidic girl...
Shit, one more thing. You might want to show Rob this program http://www.ripdifferent.com/~mtr/.
Holy Christmas it is easy to use and easy to "backup" dvd's. WINK!
At 5:53 PM, March 23, 2005,
ames said…
Ryan, if your legs are burnt, just think about what that thing is doing to your testes! You could be infertile if you keep this up! (Not that the world wouldn't benefit from that...OH SNAP)
At 6:20 PM, March 23, 2005,
Ryan said…
Point taken. I have frozen some of my seed in case of future mishaps.
Also,
http://laptops.engadget.com/entry/1234000403023144/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/09/laptops.fertility/
etc.
It was quite a big story a few months ago.
At 2:20 AM, March 24, 2005,
ed said…
Ni-Cads? Are you sirius? I don't think anything uses ni-cads anymore. I use Nimh AAs for my flash (2500 mAh muthafuckas I bought from eBay, you can buy an extra set from me if you want, I bought two), but that's as far from Li-ion I'll go.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/canadastore?productLearnMore=M9337G/A
You thinks wrong.
The PBs are holding back the iBooks, in that there won't be a big iBook update prior to a big PB update.
If they have open up extended desktop with a video card update, I'll be on that iBook like white on an, well, iBook.
I'm so going to name mine Emma.
At 10:35 AM, March 24, 2005,
Ryan said…
Ya, sorry. I fucked up. I was reading on Mac History and I had looked away and then scrolled to a thing about the old school "Wall Street" Powerbooks. My bad.
I can't see iBooks getting Vid-Spanning. 3 reasons:
1) Not that easy to do.
The iBooks have a logic board that runs a bit hotter than the PB's because it is older tech and because the polymer case does not readiate heat as well as the Al-books. Therefore, to span video is a serious strain on the system both computationally and physically. That's why you shouldn't do the hack on the 12" iBook because it overheats so bad. Apple would need to do a bit of redesign to get it to work.
2)No support for spanning on the iMac G5.
iMac and iBook are there products aimed at consumers. If the iMac doesn't support it, the iBook 90% of the time won't. Simple as that.
3)Differentiate between the PB and the iBook.
Spanning is a big selling point on the PB's especially since it is via DVI out. (now D-DVI if you BTO a 15" or buy the 17") I can't see apple putting a DVI port on the iBooks and the current generic "Video Out" port on the iBooks will only display to VGA at best. (Low res's, too) If apple is going to offer spanning, they want people to be buying their monitors and not some crappy VGA monitor.
So, overall, I doubt apple will do that. Even when the PB's go to a new generation. But you never know.
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