Apple finally releases new 15 inch Powerbooks.

$1999 for 1 ghz, 256 megs RAM, 60 gig hard drive, CD burner / DVD player

$2599 for 1.25 ghz, 512 megs RAM, 80 gig hard drive, CD/DVD burner
- jim 9-17-2003 9:55 pm

are you back, how was LV
- Skinny 9-18-2003 1:52 am


The rest of the country is a giant mall. I am slightly disturbed. And happy to be home. Thanks.
- jim 9-18-2003 4:50 am


Typical, I just got the 17 inch.
- alex 9-18-2003 5:30 am


and vegas??
- Skinny 9-18-2003 4:04 pm


what do you think of these two new 15" offerings. how would your recomendations change regarding configuring the memory and harddrive. (thanks in advance).
- bill 9-18-2003 9:43 pm


These upgrades are incremental. Nothing revolutionary here.

They are a little faster. But for most tasks the Mac CPUs have been plenty fast for years. It is other aspects of the design (frontside bus speeds in particular) that are the bottleneck, and this upgrade doesn't address those problems. So it's really more like they are "technically" faster.

Built in bluetooth (that's a short distance wireless technology) is cool, but only really useful if you have a bluetooth equipped cell phone. (And you can add bluetooth in the PC card slot of older powerbooks, so it's only having it built in that is new.)

802.11g ready (meaning you can buy an 802.11g card from apple and this machine will accept it - older machines won't.) Apple calls this Airport Extreme (worst name ever.) It is faster than the regular Airport (802.11b,) but not that much faster. Probably doesn't matter too much.

Firewire 800 replaces the older and slower Firewire 400, but it's largely a matter bragging rights as most users will never max out the speed of the older version (this is for adding external hard drives, or hooking up DV cameras, or iPods.)

Video card is better, but unless you are playing games or doing 3d work you won't notice. For 2d work (photoshop, illustrator, etc...) video cards have been fast enough for some time now, so having more speed doesn't matter at this point. (Again, it does matter for playing Quake and other 3d games.)

Back lit keyboard. Coolest thing ever. Make older powerbook owners green with envy.

Still recommending 512 megs RAM (the cheap model only comes with 256.) Cheap ($100) upgrade from Apple or even cheaper from an independent merchant like crucial.com.

More storage is always good. But like I said last time, if the smaller drive (60 gigs) isn't enough for you, then the bigger one won't be either (80 gigs.) So you'll be looking at an external in either case. Also, with an external drive you can have your stuff backed up safe at home when you take your machine on the road. (One of the 80 gig drives offered is faster - the 5400 rpm one - and this actually does make a difference in the overall speed of the machine. Probably at least as much of a difference as the 1.25 ghz over the 1.0 ghz CPU. So if you are really looking to max out performance you might want to consider that - but we're talking pretty small differences here.)

The external construction is better. The older (Titanium) models scratch. These (aluminum) are supposedly much better. Just cosmetic, but it might make a difference to you.
- jim 9-18-2003 10:28 pm


thanks a mill / prob will order one this week
- bill 9-22-2003 5:08 am


No extra charge for the mites.
- tom moody 9-22-2003 5:29 am


tom refers to the fact that the 12" laptop i had been using was infested w/ bird mites. A mother pidgeon and two younguns which had been nesting on the window ledge outside my landlords bedroom window abandoned their nest (read pile o poop). the co-habitant mites migrated inside the house through the airconditioner and hunkered into the closest available warm body host, the laptop on the side table. a quarentine inside of a garbage bag was sufficient to starve 'em to death, we're back up now. scratch, scratch, scratch.
- bill 9-24-2003 8:36 pm





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