My first hours with Big AL...
Well, its been a long wait. I was one of the people that placed an order on Apple's website within hours of the Keynote Address on January 7th. I knew the wait time was to be 7-10 weeks, but for a machine that was THAT cool...no problem right?
Wrong. When I checked back on my shipping status two weeks later, I found that Apple had cancelled my order. I recently moved, and my credit card address could not be verified. Apple did not send me and email or give me a call, but simply cancelled my order. So I called around and got on waiting lists at two different stores. One was at Unitek in Santa Monica, and the other was at the UC San Diego Campus store. (A close friend of mine is a teacher.) The next few months included many sleepless nights and an increased heartrate every time the phone rang. Was the new Powerbook soon to be mine?
It was not. I simply got worked up into a frenzy for nothing. As I checked back here in this forum over the past few days, and read reports of others getting their babies, I only wanted mine more. Then a funny thing happened...
On the way to Unitek, I got a call from my buddy in San Diego. My computer was in stock and ready for delivery. All I had to do was drive across the state to pick it up. And with his education discount, I would save about $160. I was not looking forward to driving that far to save a few bucks. (I live in L.A.) So I get to Unitek and the sales guy tells me that I am 8th on the list and they have already gotten a few 'books in. But the next shipment date is unknown. Then he went into this long winded speech (kina like this post) about how Apple was favoring its own retail stores above all third party resellers. So bottom line- No powerbook.
San Diego, here I come.
As I get in my car I get a call from a salesman from the Apple Store in Pasadena. (This past weekend I went in and said that I was traumatized at the fact that I did not have a 17" powerbook- so they put me on a list.) He tells me that I am free to pick up the powerbook at me leisure. Forget about the $160 savings- gas will probably cost about half of that anyway! Twenty seven minutes later I pull up to the front of the Apple store, park in the loading zone and rush in to get my baby.
I rush home and power up.
Then I see it. The one small dead pixel in the lower right corner of the screen. It's stuck in the on position, eminating a subtle green glow that seems to get bigger by the second. I do a couple of simple checks and find that on white backgrounds it is unnoticable. However- on dark backgrounds it sticks out like a big black facial mole that has a large renegade chinaman hair growing out of its core. This is my 5th Apple Powerbook and the dead pixel has only shown up on one other laptop. In this case it's off to the right and kinda outta sight, so I will try to live with it. (If you never read another post by me it's probably because I have proceeded to gouge my eyes out.)
Okay- so I finally get past the dead pixel thing. My next step is to install a few things and do some simple work to see how the new powerbook will work for me. The first thing I notice is that there are actually two command keys- a vast improvement over my Titanium. Then I remembered...Oh yeah, my keyboard lights up now. Or does it? I turned off the lights and was surprised to see that the brightness of the keys was not what I expected. I thought that the keys were going to be like POW! CHECK US OUT! But the brightness was more akin to a soft glow than anything else. Not too happy about that. What's funny is that in low light, the letters light up, and the illumination from the screen shines on the actual keys, so that happens is that you end up with a white on white glow from the keys that makes the letters almost invisible. The messed up keyboard lighting aside, the keys themselves have a very nice repsonse- a nice improvement over the Ti.
Next test- watch a DVD. Sticking a DVD into the drive for the first time is a shocking experience. It seems that you have to push it almost all the way in until the drive takes it. And when the drive finally sucks it in, it does it so quickly that I jerked my hand back and was worried that I broke something. I swear that it is the fastest loading cd or dvd drive that I have ever seen!. DVD playback is okay. Nothing spectacular. I was expecting crystal clear quality but for some reason the shadows and darker areas of the picture seemed to be cloudy and have some type of mosaic thing going on. If anyone knows what's up with that I would like to know.
Overall, I am like- whatever. It's an extremely cool machine- a technological marvel, really. And I will enjoy using it much more than I enjoy my Ti Book. The size of the screen is tremendous- It allows me much more freedom with my palettes in Photoshop and Illustrator, and the and brightness is incredible. I would say it's twice as bright as my Ti Book- very happy about that!
Last note- the trackpad is very large, built to facilitate the use with the large screen. But it's so big that my palms rub on it when I type. My dock keeps appearing and disappearing as I type.
That's it. My fingers hurt from typing so much. I think I'm getting a migrain from my dead pixel. I need to rest.
Thanks for reading.
