12'' Rev. B Powerbook = Poor 2D Output

[Celeron]

I have a rev. B 12'' powerbook and I must say that the 2D video output is just horrible. I plugged it into my 19'' Sony Trinitron montior today using the mini-dvi to vga adapter and video quality was horrible. The picture was blurry, colors were washed out, and it was just generally poor overall.

My PC has a Nvidia Geforce 6800GT card in it and the quality is FAR AND ABOVE the quality of my Powerbook. I was going to try using the Powerbook for my everyday use by connecting it to my monitor and keyboard/mouse but the poor video quality has put an end to that. Maybe its the mini-dvi to vga adapter. Too bad I don't have a monitor with a VGA connection on it, maybe the quality would be better using that.

In sum, this is very disappointing. I have a 15'' rev. C Powerbook that I use for work and it has the 128meg Radeon 9700 Mobility in it and the 2D output is miles above my 12'' Powerbook. Maybe I should sell this rev. B and get one of the new ones?

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

Have you tried the 17" PowerBook on that monitor?

It could just be that the Any Mac hardware doesn't like that monitor. Also have you adjusted the settings in the appearance section of system prefrences?

 

[mcgarry]

I don't know what exactly is causing your problem-- malfunctioning hardware vs. inadequate hardware-- and I couldn't tell from your post if you knew this already, so sorry for stating the potentially obvious, but the Rev. B, C, and D 12" PBs all have the same GeForce FX Go5200. True, the Cs and Ds have twice the VRAM, and that might help you, depending on what's going on. But I don't think there are other GPU differences B-to-D ... others here may know better ...

 

[Celeron]

The output of my 15'' Powerbook with the Radeon card looks far superior. I guess the output I am seeing on the 12'' Powerbook is the poor quality of the FX5200. The output is just grainy and poor.

And with regard to the Apple hardware not liking my monitor, well, that's just silly. Its a Sony Trinitron monitor and it has quite possibly one of the best picutres I've ever seen.