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Keyboard in Powerbook better than Macbook Pro?

r6mile

r6mile

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 3, 2010
1,004
505
London, UK
Hello friends,

This is just a remark, more than a question. Last week I had an incident of water spillage to my much beloved 2010 Macbook Pro. I am planning to buy a new one, as soon as Apple releases the MBP refresh. In the mean time, I have decided to have some fun with older Apple computers.

I was able to grab a 15" Powerbook G4 1.25Ghz, with 1GB of RAM and a 80GB hard drive, for £51. From 2003 I believe. It came installed with 10.5.8, and have been using it for the last few days. I have to say, I am genuinely impressed with the machine. Aside from the battery holding very little charge, it is working perfectly and I am finding it much faster than expected - though it struggles with flash videos, for light usage, word processing and web browsing, it actually feels snappier than my flatmate's PC with a C2D 2.33 and 2GB RAM.

However, what I am most impressed with is the keyboard. It types like a dream, and I am even wondering whether it feels better than my (deceased) MBP's keyboard! Anybody else feel this way?

(I have also picked up a 12" Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz 12" with a missing hard drive for £21.50. Plan is to get hard drive, and resell.)
 
I have a 2005 Powerbook G4 1.67, works well on Leopard, the only problem with this machine is it has the dreaded Lower slot problem so I use it with 1 GB RAM which is too little.
Flash on PPC never worked well, html5 works better, it's a shame this PB has limited GPU power otherwise it is one of Apple's best machines, the other one is a Pismo, which I had before this one.
I am now controlling my 2012 Mini with the Powerbook, works well.
 
I have one 17" PowerBook G4, 1.67GHZ DLSD-HD and one 17" PowerBook G4 1.0GHZ. I love both of these PowerBooks and feel very lucky that I have both the first 17" PowerBook G4 and the last 17" PowerBook G4.

My wife has a 12" PowerBook G4 1.0GHZ that I bought her and my son has a 15" Titanium PowerBook G4 1.0GHZ.

As to the keyboards, the Aluminum PowerBooks have it all over the MBPs. Ever since those black chicklet keyboards came out I have hated the look. Having used one of them for some time while doing a design job for someone I can say there really isn't a comparison. They are ugly and just don't feel right.

My Albooks keyboards are thin, light, backlight and look great. And most important they work right and feel right.

Welcome to PowerBook/PowerMac ownership. You are now seeing the difference in design and build quality between the two eras.
 
I agree too. Comparing it to the Apple Mac Bluetooth keyboard. It'd be nice if you could just take out the PB keyboard, make some sort of case and use it on it's own.
 
haha this reminds me of a time when we were doing a web project, and we were looking at it on my ibook, my friend grabbed to enter some data, and he was like 'I love this keyboard!'
 
eyoungren said:
I have one 17" PowerBook G4, 1.67GHZ DLSD-HD and one 17" PowerBook G4 1.0GHZ. I love both of these PowerBooks and feel very lucky that I have both the first 17" PowerBook G4 and the last 17" PowerBook G4.

My wife has a 12" PowerBook G4 1.0GHZ that I bought her and my son has a 15" Titanium PowerBook G4 1.0GHZ.

As to the keyboards, the Aluminum PowerBooks have it all over the MBPs. Ever since those black chicklet keyboards came out I have hated the look. Having used one of them for some time while doing a design job for someone I can say there really isn't a comparison. They are ugly and just don't feel right.

My Albooks keyboards are thin, light, backlight and look great. And most important they work right and feel right.

Welcome to PowerBook/PowerMac ownership. You are now seeing the difference in design and build quality between the two eras.
Click to expand...

It really is amazing. I have owned PPC's before - my purchase of a 2010 MBP followed the unexplicable death of my 2008 MB's logic board, 6 months out of warranty. In between, I owned an eMac for a few months and was quite happy with it, but I have to say this Powerbook is really something else.

I am now basically scouting eBay for local 'collection only' deals on old PPCs, and will try to fix them up and sell on. Some of them were working and were just badly sold for very cheap, others are missing things like hard drives, optical drives, etc. My room now looks like a G4 museum. In the last few days I have bought (hold your breath):

eMac G4 1.0
eMac G4 1.25
PowerMac G4 733
PowerMac G4 450
iMac G4 800
Powerbook G4 1.25 15"
Powerbook G4 1.33 12"

I am also due to collect an undescribed (but working) Powermac G4 QS, a Powermac G4 733 DA (no hard drive), a Powermac G4 QS 1.25 (no power supply), an undescribed Powermac G4 (not working), and a Powermac G5 (not working).

Excluding the 15" Powerbook (which was £51), all other purchases have been around £5-£25.

But I think I may have gone overboard.
 
LOL! People sell these Macs because they don't understand them.

My first 17" PowerBook was advertised as being on it's last legs. I got it from eBay for $152. That was in late 2009. It's still functioning, I use it every day. It's had two DC In Boards, a sound board, a sound ribbon cable and the big one, the LCD replaced. I got it without screws! But scored some screws on eBay later on and it's all been put back now. It has a failed cache and is a bit slower, but it is NOT on it's last legs!

My son's PowerBook I bought for $25 on eBay as office suply surplus. The LCD hinges were broken so I swapped LCDs with one from my old TiBook 400. Works just fine.

My wife's PowerBook I bought for $58 on eBay, plus a $25 replacement LCD. The previous owner let the little 12" Mac roll down a flight of stairs. Once LCD replacement later and she's been good ever since.

Lastly, my second 17" PowerBook got dropped on a corner. Cosmetic damage which I repaired. I paid $258 for it in early 2010. Fortunately for me the seller didn't know what he had. Had he advertised that it was a DLSD-HD model the price would have gone way up. Perfectly working Mac (which I am typing this on right now).

I find it hiliarious that when you contact the sellers of these "dead" or "for parts only" Macs to let them know that their Mac is alive and well - there's usually no response! :D
 
Yep. The PowerBook G4/pre-unibody MBP's are by far the best keyboard I've ever had the pleasure to type on. If only Apple released a desktop variant. I'm even currently rocking the bondi-blue keyboard from '97 over my wired aluminium. They just don't make 'em like they used to!

...Even my avatar agrees.
 
My friends got a matte screen 2009 macbook pro, and I like his keyboard better than my powerbooks I think i've got an idea of the next laptop i'm buying thou
 
I love the powerbooks keyboard !!! Just something about it ,I've got two powerbooks and one was used a lot less than the other and the one with little use feels amazing.

Ebay is an amazing place to buy "broke" laptops LITTLE STORY HERE
Ok I paid $250 for a 2008 macbook and I got it on a saturday and by monday it was having backlight problems which got worse and worse by the minute so the guy was a cool guy and he let me send it back and sent me a MINT condition 2008 macbook.The power button all of a sudden quit working so I messaged him that i wanted to keep it but asked if he would send a keyboard or refund some money so I could buy one ,he refunded $80 YEAH..I was looking for a keyboard and decided to check his listings and there she was the exact one with the backlight issue for parts he said it didnt power on it was listed for $75 so I swooped her up and changed the inverter board and she works great ....Sad part of the story is I got my ol ibook up there for sale to offset cost I kinda hope it dont sell,my powerbooks arent going nowhere though.
 
r6mile said:
Hello friends,

This is just a remark, more than a question. Last week I had an incident of water spillage to my much beloved 2010 Macbook Pro. I am planning to buy a new one, as soon as Apple releases the MBP refresh. In the mean time, I have decided to have some fun with older Apple computers.

I was able to grab a 15" Powerbook G4 1.25Ghz, with 1GB of RAM and a 80GB hard drive, for £51. From 2003 I believe. It came installed with 10.5.8, and have been using it for the last few days. I have to say, I am genuinely impressed with the machine. Aside from the battery holding very little charge, it is working perfectly and I am finding it much faster than expected - though it struggles with flash videos, for light usage, word processing and web browsing, it actually feels snappier than my flatmate's PC with a C2D 2.33 and 2GB RAM.

However, what I am most impressed with is the keyboard. It types like a dream, and I am even wondering whether it feels better than my (deceased) MBP's keyboard! Anybody else feel this way?

(I have also picked up a 12" Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz 12" with a missing hard drive for £21.50. Plan is to get hard drive, and resell.)
Click to expand...

I've never used the aluminium G4 but have a non unibody MacBook Pro. I must say the keyboard is the best I've ever used. Much better than the newer unibody ones.
 
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