Powerbook/iBook Specs Roundup

I thought I had heard of a dvd-r that was slot loading capable.. i thought new a05 pioneer drive was such. Hopefully this will be the drive used in the new powerbooks.


I would love to go portable, but with all the desktops with dual processors.. I can't justify paying so much more for less!

I would be very tempted by a dual powerbook.. hopefully it will happen with the IBM 970 since it was built for SMP.

It's sad that Bluetooth is not considered a slam dunk. With iSync out there, I think it ought to be standard as of now on all Macs.

Well all I can say is I'll be the first in line to buy an Ibook and make the switch the day they come out.

iBook up to 800 Ghz? Hope not...

Hmm, what the hell. I wonder why they are saying "Uncertain
" about the ATI 9000. I thought this was a done deal? I mean come, you gotta update that 7500 in the powerbook.

Personally, the Bluetooth would be very useful but the real win for me would have been some mention of integrated 802.11a/g networking. Having the external antenna and larger power drain from a PC card really conflicts with some of the reasons that I'm looking to pick up a Powerbook, but the 11mb transfer rate just doesn't cut it in my office.

Ah, well.

The Superdrive is a good plus, and may push me over the edge (assuming that a faster internal wireless card will be forthcoming and available as an upgrade, I can probably live with an external antenna while at work). I guess we'll see what happens when they're officially released.

The real win for me would be a better resolution (the Dell I'm typing this on does 1600x1200 for crying out loud), but I think that I'm just out of luck there. I guess its a tribute to the quality of the hardware/OS that I'm even buying one considering the 50% real estate reduction (and 30-40% DPI decrease) though.

-Richard

I wonder if Apple is killing the ability to boot into OS 9 in these laptops?

The Pioneer A05 DVDR is a 4x burner which is nice, but it ain't slot loading yet. There was a report a couple months ago about a demo of a slot load DVDR in Tokyo, but I can' tremember if it was Pioneer's (I'm thinking not). There is a slot load DVDR drive out there right now, (Panasonic? Sony?) but it's not a slam dunk that it will be in the powerbook, since it's not the standard vendor that Apple's been using. I know that's a minor detail, but don't underestimate Apple's commitment to Pioneer.

Originally posted by rjstanford
The real win for me would be a better resolution (the Dell I'm typing this on does 1600x1200 for crying out loud), but I think that I'm just out of luck there. I guess its a tribute to the quality of the hardware/OS that I'm even buying one considering the 50% real estate reduction (and 30-40% DPI decrease) though.

-Richard

Ahh.. 1600x1200 is just inanse on a small laptop screen. If the option was there, then fine. But like on PC machines, if that is the optimal res, then anything lower looks like ****. SO, it is not acceptable to force everyone to look at something as small as 1600x1200 if everything below it is ****.

Native resolution sucks on LCD's. I hate not being able to change it. I want the maximum resolution that will fit, but Mr. Joe might want something a little less for his own eyes, but then Mr. Joe has to look at a horrible screen when it's not running in native. This is the LCD's one downfall. The ability to adjust the resolution to a lower one should be improved so it looks nicer. THEN sell a 1600x1200 laptop display.

What about the possibility of an LCD display being able to scale higher than its native resolution? Right now it would require pixels to act as multiple pixels, but maybe new hardware would allow this somehow, or maybe its just impossible with LCDs all together.