12" PowerBook Buying Questions

[Nikko1965]

Morning/Afternoon/Evening all,

I'm picking up a new 12" PB in Malaysia while on holiday as it's €400 cheaper than here (at the current exchange rate). I considered the SuperDrive but then realised the DVD burner specs are a bit low and that I could probably pick up a better spec'ed third party external DVD burner for a similar price difference which I could also use with my PC. Does anyone out there have any opinions or experiences with a third party external burner? Is this a good idea or should I just dig deeper and go for the SD version?

Also I read in one of these mails about RevB PowerBooks. How can I tell if the one I'm picking up is the latest model?

I'm not likely to be passing Kuala Lumpur again very soon so what problems should I look out for build-wise while I'm in the shop?

Thanks for your help,

Nick

 

[einsteinium]

While I can't offer any advice on external drives. The machine will be the "Rev B" if it is a 1ghz Powerbook. The 12" Rev A's ran at 867mhz.

I have one of the Rev B and they are well worth any price

 

[punter]

I have a revb too. Another difference is that it has a mini DVI connection, not mini VGA. Hard to describe what that looks like, but other then that I think the laptop cases LOOK exactly the same.

Of course, as the last dude said, revb's are faaaaster! The graphics card supports higher resolution for additional monitors you plug in, including digital monitors.

If price is a real concern, and you don't intend to use an external monitor, consider a new ibook. I probably would have got one to save some bucks, but otherwise I'm still very very happy with my 12"PB.

As for external drives, yeah I made the same decision as you. DVD burners are just getting cheaper and cheaper. No doubt they'll continue to drop in price like cd burners.

So for me burning dvds wasn't an immediate necessity, and not something I needed to do on the road, so I'll be happy with an external one later.

Any other questions? because I love talking about my powerbook!

 

[punter]

oh, build problems to look out for:

Look at the joins to see if the laptop is splitting. Every one I've seen seems to split slightly somewhere.

They look like they are busting at the seems (jammed packed full of stuff). Of course, you wouldn't notice this if the rest of the machine wasn't so perfectly flush.

Mine is occuring near the battery, so maybe one day I'll take the battery off and see if I can do anything about it. But really it's so insignificant that I'm having no problem living with it.

 

[choppers5000]

hello nikko i've spent a fair bit of time in kuala lumper so while your there make sure to stop at "Imbi plaza" behind bukit bingtang (street) while your there.

go there and you'll see what i mean also worthwhile dropping in to see Low Yat plaza accross the street. <for computer related things

p.s- dont pay "Quilow" (chinese word for white man) price....