This thread was inspired by some of the other very helpful folks around these forums who have graciously reviewed and described their new Mac products.
I just recently purchased a New 15" Powerbook, the 1.33Ghz model with 256 MB of RAM, plus another 512 Stick from Crucial. The machine was basically stock, except that I opted for the 5400 RPM 80GB Hard Drive.
I have in the past owned a Rev A 12" Powerbook (867mhz) and a 15" 1Ghz iMac, and I use a 1.8Ghz G5 at work daily. I'll try to draw comparisons to these machines as appropriate.
My first impression, pulling it out of the box, was wow - this thing is big. Not nearly as small as the little 12" guy that I has not too long ago. Then I unpacked it and fired it up. Yeah, big screen... I was worried I'd have regrets about the size of the machine, as I use it in at least 3 different places every day.
Then I started using it, and I was impressed -- the Screen really is huge, and the extra resolution makes a HUGE difference in my general productivity in that I can open all of my Photoshop and Dreamweaver Pallettes, and I can open a web browser and only take up half of the screen, leaving the other half for my buddy list, finder windows, or widgets. The bigger speakers were also nice; they sound a good bit nicer than the ones on the 12".
The general design of the machine is kind of a mixed bag. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this machine runs MUCH, MUCH cooler than my Rev A powerbook, or any other modern laptop I've used lately outside of a G3 iBook. It never gets uncomfortably warm, and the palm rests rarely heat up at all (except when using the optical drive).
I was and still am a little disappointed about how the ports are layed out on the laptop, however. I loved how the 12" had all of its ports on the left side, so that nothing got in the way of one's mousing, even when attached to an external display, a wired network, and an external Hard Drive. The 15" is a nightmare in this respect -- when I hook all these devices up to it I have a DVI port, a Network cable, and a Firewire cable all hanging out of the right side of the laptop, where my mouse is supposed to be. I've basically resorted to simply using another keyboard and mouse when I have the machine "Docked." It's probably for the best anyway, it's good to save the wear and tear on the keyboard, and I like my MX500 mouse better than the Apple Bluetooth mouse I carry with the laptop while I travel.
Now on to performance. Given that I ordered the slower 15" configuration, I was a little worried that I would be wishing I had bought the faster configuration, but I'm glad now that I didn't waste the money. The machine is VERY fast with GUI operations, has plenty of video memory to drive the built-in display and an external 1280x1024 monitor (I might want the 128MB option if I was driving a 23" cinema display, however). The Mobility Radeon 9700 is MUCH faster than the GeForce4 Go and GeForce4MX chips that were in my other two Macs, and it really shows in games. The 12" really had no gaming capabilities at all -- Warcraft III was choppy and unsatisfactory on all but the lowest detail settings, and Medal of Honor and Ghost Recon were both pretty poor, as well. The iMac fared a little better, but It still wasn't good enough to play Warcraft without chopping at Medium detail settings, and its FPS performance was also mediocre at best. I have been very pleasantly surprised at how well the new laptop games. I've played several games of Warcraft III at the full 1280x854 resolution and high detail with no chop to speak of, I've played a lot of Multiplayer Call of Duty at > 90FPS at full detail and resolution, and I've even played Halo with all of the Pixel Shader effects with satisfactory results (Halo wasn't perfect at the very high resolutions, but still ran at > 20 FPS. Running at 800x600 it was silky smooth). I'm planning on playing World of Warcraft when it's released this fall, and while I still plan to do most of my playing on my 3ghz/Radeon 9800 Pro PC, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that my Powerbook will be a perfectly usable machine to play it on the road.
In terms of general system performance, I'm also quite impressed. The 5400 RPM Hard drive really helps bootup and (more importantly) App launch times. Safari, Mail, iChat, iTunes, and System Prefs all open with one bounce, and between the fast HD and the Gigabit Ethernet I was able to copy a lot of files off of my PC very, very quickly. The machine certainly speeded up noticibly after I added the extra stick of memory, but it was surprisingly usable with only 256MB. I'm very pleased with how much Apple has managed to Trim down OSX so that it's now very usable with only 256MB of RAM, and makes me see the G4 iBook and eMac as even better bargains.
A couple other lingering issues; first is the wireless reception. It's very comparable to my old powerbook, perhaps a little better. The battery life is still largely a question mark in my book. I haven't had it away from power for more than an hour or so, so I can't report back one way or another about the battery life with much accuracy. For what it's worth, the battery meter tells me I have about 2:30 when I unplug it and I've got the screen brightness on full, music playing in iTunes, and I'm browsing the 'net. This is about standard -- Not great, but not bad either. My 12" was very similar, it ran about 2:30 when blasting on it, and I could squeeze about 4:00 out of it if I ran the brightness on low, played no tunes, and turned the bluetooth off (maybe a little more yet if I turned the Airport off -- but I always use network).
After using the machine for a week now, I can say I've gotten a lot more comfortable with the size, as well. It still fits fine in my backpack, and doesn't take up any more room than the 12" did, really, and doesn't weigh significantly more. I've come to find that I really, REALLY love having the big screen on the road, and the slightly larger size to be a pretty minor inconvenience given the benefits. It's certainly nowhere near as painful as dragging around a Dell Laptop, since it's so thin, light, and durable.
All things said, I can recommend the 15" powerbook to users as a main machine with very few qualms, and even fewer qualms to people who don't plan to connect an external monitor. It's become my main machine very quickly, something my 12" powerbook never really did due to its small screen and poor performance driving an external display. It's fast, it's portable, and it's lap-friendly. I'd push power users considering the 12" as a main machine toward the 15".
I just recently purchased a New 15" Powerbook, the 1.33Ghz model with 256 MB of RAM, plus another 512 Stick from Crucial. The machine was basically stock, except that I opted for the 5400 RPM 80GB Hard Drive.
I have in the past owned a Rev A 12" Powerbook (867mhz) and a 15" 1Ghz iMac, and I use a 1.8Ghz G5 at work daily. I'll try to draw comparisons to these machines as appropriate.
My first impression, pulling it out of the box, was wow - this thing is big. Not nearly as small as the little 12" guy that I has not too long ago. Then I unpacked it and fired it up. Yeah, big screen... I was worried I'd have regrets about the size of the machine, as I use it in at least 3 different places every day.
Then I started using it, and I was impressed -- the Screen really is huge, and the extra resolution makes a HUGE difference in my general productivity in that I can open all of my Photoshop and Dreamweaver Pallettes, and I can open a web browser and only take up half of the screen, leaving the other half for my buddy list, finder windows, or widgets. The bigger speakers were also nice; they sound a good bit nicer than the ones on the 12".
The general design of the machine is kind of a mixed bag. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this machine runs MUCH, MUCH cooler than my Rev A powerbook, or any other modern laptop I've used lately outside of a G3 iBook. It never gets uncomfortably warm, and the palm rests rarely heat up at all (except when using the optical drive).
I was and still am a little disappointed about how the ports are layed out on the laptop, however. I loved how the 12" had all of its ports on the left side, so that nothing got in the way of one's mousing, even when attached to an external display, a wired network, and an external Hard Drive. The 15" is a nightmare in this respect -- when I hook all these devices up to it I have a DVI port, a Network cable, and a Firewire cable all hanging out of the right side of the laptop, where my mouse is supposed to be. I've basically resorted to simply using another keyboard and mouse when I have the machine "Docked." It's probably for the best anyway, it's good to save the wear and tear on the keyboard, and I like my MX500 mouse better than the Apple Bluetooth mouse I carry with the laptop while I travel.
Now on to performance. Given that I ordered the slower 15" configuration, I was a little worried that I would be wishing I had bought the faster configuration, but I'm glad now that I didn't waste the money. The machine is VERY fast with GUI operations, has plenty of video memory to drive the built-in display and an external 1280x1024 monitor (I might want the 128MB option if I was driving a 23" cinema display, however). The Mobility Radeon 9700 is MUCH faster than the GeForce4 Go and GeForce4MX chips that were in my other two Macs, and it really shows in games. The 12" really had no gaming capabilities at all -- Warcraft III was choppy and unsatisfactory on all but the lowest detail settings, and Medal of Honor and Ghost Recon were both pretty poor, as well. The iMac fared a little better, but It still wasn't good enough to play Warcraft without chopping at Medium detail settings, and its FPS performance was also mediocre at best. I have been very pleasantly surprised at how well the new laptop games. I've played several games of Warcraft III at the full 1280x854 resolution and high detail with no chop to speak of, I've played a lot of Multiplayer Call of Duty at > 90FPS at full detail and resolution, and I've even played Halo with all of the Pixel Shader effects with satisfactory results (Halo wasn't perfect at the very high resolutions, but still ran at > 20 FPS. Running at 800x600 it was silky smooth). I'm planning on playing World of Warcraft when it's released this fall, and while I still plan to do most of my playing on my 3ghz/Radeon 9800 Pro PC, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that my Powerbook will be a perfectly usable machine to play it on the road.
In terms of general system performance, I'm also quite impressed. The 5400 RPM Hard drive really helps bootup and (more importantly) App launch times. Safari, Mail, iChat, iTunes, and System Prefs all open with one bounce, and between the fast HD and the Gigabit Ethernet I was able to copy a lot of files off of my PC very, very quickly. The machine certainly speeded up noticibly after I added the extra stick of memory, but it was surprisingly usable with only 256MB. I'm very pleased with how much Apple has managed to Trim down OSX so that it's now very usable with only 256MB of RAM, and makes me see the G4 iBook and eMac as even better bargains.
A couple other lingering issues; first is the wireless reception. It's very comparable to my old powerbook, perhaps a little better. The battery life is still largely a question mark in my book. I haven't had it away from power for more than an hour or so, so I can't report back one way or another about the battery life with much accuracy. For what it's worth, the battery meter tells me I have about 2:30 when I unplug it and I've got the screen brightness on full, music playing in iTunes, and I'm browsing the 'net. This is about standard -- Not great, but not bad either. My 12" was very similar, it ran about 2:30 when blasting on it, and I could squeeze about 4:00 out of it if I ran the brightness on low, played no tunes, and turned the bluetooth off (maybe a little more yet if I turned the Airport off -- but I always use network).
After using the machine for a week now, I can say I've gotten a lot more comfortable with the size, as well. It still fits fine in my backpack, and doesn't take up any more room than the 12" did, really, and doesn't weigh significantly more. I've come to find that I really, REALLY love having the big screen on the road, and the slightly larger size to be a pretty minor inconvenience given the benefits. It's certainly nowhere near as painful as dragging around a Dell Laptop, since it's so thin, light, and durable.
All things said, I can recommend the 15" powerbook to users as a main machine with very few qualms, and even fewer qualms to people who don't plan to connect an external monitor. It's become my main machine very quickly, something my 12" powerbook never really did due to its small screen and poor performance driving an external display. It's fast, it's portable, and it's lap-friendly. I'd push power users considering the 12" as a main machine toward the 15".
