Customer Reviews

Apple PowerBook Laptop M8362LL/A (550-MHz PowerPC G4, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a mistake that would have been! First off this computer is absolutly beautiful and completely functional in its design. I don't feel confined to a desk in the least. My PowerBook fits comfortly in my lap, the keyboard is large and the keys have a solid springy resistantance. The display is amazing! It doesn't look like anything else I have seen out there. Widesceen, clear, sharp and easy on the eyes. I don't feel any eyestrain in the least. OS X (10) is so fluid, beautiful, sparklely and truely easy to use. iTunes and iMovie 2 do not disappoint. Voice control that will make you want to name your computer Hal. The new lower price and the free double RAM really makes this hard to pass up. Did I mention the DVD player? Apple has out done themselves with this machine. I cannot recomend this notebook highly enough.

I've had my Powerbook since mid March. It wasn't a few days ago that I realized that I made the switch from a PC user to Apple user when booted up my PC for the first time in a couple of weeks for the purpose of moving all my personal files from big clunky PC to the Powerbook.

I'm not even going to get into how cool this thing looks, you can see in the picture that this an extremely handsome piece of hardware ... I'll delve right into the reason why you'd should buy this thing. Lets face it, these things cost an awful lot of money and it would be quite foolish to buy this thing on its good looks alone.

As a lot of you know, Apple has completely redone the operating system that they ship with this thing (OS X). To cut to the point, its a flavor of the BSD operating system with a Mac GUI called Aqua running on top of it.

What does that mean you ask?

Its running on a flavor of the UNIX operating system which will rarely crash, if ever. So if you're into tinkering around with GNU/Linux or the like, you'll love this thing. If you always hear about all the cool things that computer hacker types can do with computers but have no idea in where to start with these things you'll love this thing too. Apple has a GUI called that runs on top of it that has all the cool stuff that can take hours setting up yourself as simple as (literally) clicking on a button that says start.

For instance, if you have a connection to the internet (dialup, cable modem, dsl, etc.) you can set this laptop up to be a full fledged Unix server that can host your web pages and that you can telnet into in a matter of seconds (go into System Preferences and click start). So you won't have to spend hours trying to set this up if its not your thing. If it is your thing, you can still get into the guts of the computer and do it at the command prompt as you would in Linux.

The one thing that I was very weary about in buying this thing was can you find software for this thing and will the stuff I use on Windows work on this. To quickly answer it, yes Microsoft Office, Photoshop files, mp3s, etc. all work perfectly fine once you transfer them over. If your into that sort of thing, there's just as many Peer to Peer sharing programs for Apple as there are for Windows, the Mac ones might even be better.

As for the downsides of this thing ... there are a few but none that should stop anyone from thinking of checking out the Powerbook from not buying it.

The battery life is not as good as advertised - if you plan on using this for extended amounts of time before recharging it (over three hours) you should strongly consider getting the extra battery. Also rumor has it that since its so thin that the dust and grease from your fingers that get on the keys can damage the LCD when its closed (that hasn't happened to me but I believe it ... putting a piece of paper between the keyboard on LCD when you store it solves this problem).

Software wise my only complaint is dialup connections are painfully slow. A 52K connection seems like it may as well be a 14.4 connection. If you have any type of a high speed internet access this will not effect you one bit.

That's my take on this machine. I think its the greatest thing in computing since the Internet explosion and I just wanted to put in my two cents on it.

Dan

Apple has updated its already sucessful potable line. This is the new revision for the Powerbook G4, or TiBook as the mac fans call it. Let's see what this baby got for us:

A very speed 550 mhz G4 processor, which let's you take advantage of MacOs X ( already preinstalled) the best Operative System in the world. Also, if you use graphic or video editing software like adobe Photoshop or Final Cut, this computer will allow you to work on the road as good and fast as you would work on a regular desktop.

128 Mb SRAM. To be perfectly honest it would be better if it would have been 256 mb of RAM on this model.

The Radeon Mobility chip its a nice upgrade on this model, with 16mb video memory allows gamers to experience great and fluid graphics on 3D and also helps when watching DVD, which by the way is AMAZING in this computer because of the 15.2 inch Display.

In conclusion, this machine is as stunning in performance as it is in looks and now it has a FANTASTIC price which has made it more atractive than ever. This is a laptop for connoisseurs, dont worry if you are not you can always get a Dell or some other toy like that.

This is my first Mac, and while its two new operating systems present a serious challenge for a long, long-time PC user, I can say without reservation that it's the most beautiful piece of hardware I've ever used. The screen is bigger than my TV's and, because of the width, sharpness, and proportions, it doesn't _feel_ any smaller than my 17" desktop PC monitor. The keyboard has a nice feel. The power adapter is well designed. It rocks.

Now, if I could just (a) learn how to stop messing up the software, and (b) find a cool, sub-C-note padded bag to carry it in, I'd be in heaven . . .

Update, 15 months later: I still love my TiBook, my friends still envy it, and I hate having to use any other computer. I'll never go back.

Software:

I haven't had any problems with the OS since about a year ago. I now find it intuitive and fun to use. I work in OS 10.2.4 exclusively; the only application I run in Classic mode is Quark--and I've recently started working with Adobe InDesign, so I'm hoping eventually to be able to give up both Classic and Quark.

Font management has been a problem, because I have a lot of fonts and some are kind of [messed] up. I tried using Font Reserve for a little while but it kept crashing and wouldn't recognize some of my fonts, so I had to switch back to ATM for Quark and manual management (dragging fonts in and out of folders) for OS X. It's not a big deal, but I wish there were a better solution.

MS Word X is slow and poorly designed, and the implementation of styling is particularly lousy--definitely inferior to earlier versions of Word, and positively painful compared to Word XP. It's probably adequate for most users but frustrating for editors or designers who rely heavily on paragraph and character styles, as well as search-and-replace.

Hardware:

Yes, the silver paint on my computer's bezel has blistered or worn away in the places where my hands rest. It's disappointing, but it doesn't reduce my affection for the machine.

My CD drive has gotten to be quite quirky; this will be what ultimately drives me to send the laptop in for service (DO get AppleCare). I bought my TiBook refurbished and have always guessed that the CD drive was the source of the original problem. No way to know, of course.

I use an iSkin keyboard protector, which significantly dampens the notoriously loud cooling fan (though it also raises the temperature in the case).

In an attempt to avoid the notorious wifi reception problems of this model, instead of an Airport card I got an EnGenius wifi card with a built-in antenna, and I installed the free open source driver from wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net. While it worked beautifully for a while, lately I haven't been able to connect to anything. I suspect this is the fault of the driver, which is extremely beta.

Summary:

The most fun thing about the Mac for me is trying all the gorgeous new software that's being developed for OS X. There are fewer programs than are available for PCs or pre-OS X Macs, sure, but so many of the new ones are really innovative and well thought-out. I've found carbonized software (e.g., Word) to be a disappointment, but I expect that eventually those programs will be fully cocoa-ized and will improve.

Computing on my PC was never fun; it was just a tool--an awkward one. My laptop, however, is both an awesome, powerful tool and a beautiful, versatile toy. I recommend Macs to everyone now and am helping my mom make the switch . . . from DOS!

I have had various laptops and desktop computers during the course of five years. I have compared their compatibility and overall performance. It always brings me back to the Apple Powerbook, especially now that its high-quality performance outdoes your typical Windows PC.

The Powerbook now features a more user-friendly system that allows you to use it for business, personal and entertainment purposes almost simultaneously. It has high-quality DVD, sound system (which includes various local radio stations), games, and an office software that beats Windows Office 2000 to a tee. And what could be said about the speed? You cannot go wrong with 550 MHz and 256 MB of RAM! Granted, there are faster systems out there, but the Powerbook has the endless quality that will always make the Mac my computer of choice!

After reading reviews about the powerbook getting hot, I had almost given up on buying powerbook and was thinking of buying a wintel machine. Saw it perform at my friends place. This thing is really cool, I could play DVDs for like 3 hours before the battery warning came up. If you want to buy a computer forget about buying a desktop, this machine roars, 30 GB hard disk with 1 GB RAM this is better than any laptop available in the market. Kudos to Steve and Apple. Unix is back and windows is out. I ran 11 apps at one time and this OS X did not crash, this stuff is amazing. If you are a programmer, or a gamer OSX is the best thing that could happen.