New 15" Powerbook - One Week's Impressions

[puckhead193]

i had my powerbook for 5 days now and I love it! i was concerned about the extra size compared to the 12" but no regrets. It worth it. The screen is amazing compared to my brothers 12"ibook. i like the backlit keyboard, i wish you could make it bright or darker. I agree with the ports being on both sides, kinda annoying, but if all the ports were on one side and they were on the wrong side (for you) that would kinda suck. I can't wait to get my airport (common UPS) I would recommand this computer in a heart beat to any one looking at a new computer. Its great for college. It a nice size. Not to big or to small just right! i like having safari and AIM open at the same time.
My only trouble was getting my old files from my old windoze computer to the new one. If your going to go from a pc to a mac, use your ipod! and put your mp3's on the hard drive so when u plug it in to your mac it just drag and drop.
The only negative about the computer is the mouse. the button is sreally small (I think) I enable the tap option on the track pad which helps, i'm gong to get an external mouse.

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

This really isn't about the 15", but I've had this question for a while and haven't run across it much in the forums:

How does the 12" PB do at driving an external display in say, 1280 x 1024? I have a G3 800Mhz iBook with the desktop spanning hack and expose is very jerky and things feel a bit slow when resizing at huge resolutions. Was your Rev A (how fast?) PB just as bad even though it was built to have desktop spanning? I was thinking about a 12" iBook as a cheap alternative to a 12" PB since I'm in college, but I'd be using it as my main system and have a monitor and keyboard hooked up, so I want to make sure it can drive the external display.

Any comments anybody has about this issue would be appreciated

Thanks.

I use a 12" PB (Rev C) to drive my 17" LCD (1280x1024). It runs perfectly, no flaws or "choppiness" when using even demanding tasks (full screen visuals, dvd in a window while chatting/browsing, full screen dvds, warcraft 3, etc). I'd prefer an ATi9700 with 128mb of ram, but I'd rather have the small form factor and better design (imo).

The 12" ibook and pbook with edu. pricing were only like $50 different when I priced them out, making the pbook the clear winner in value.

 

[Demon Hunter]

WoW Beta Reqs are:

1.0 GHz or higher, G4 or G5 processor.
512 Megabytes RAM or higher. DDR RAM recommended.
ATI or NVIDIA video hardware with 64 MB VRAM or more.
3 Gigabytes or more of available hard drive space.
MacOS X 10.3 ("Panther") or better

I'd personally be more concerned about running Doom 3... I'm betting my G5 won't be able to run it well at all, even with my Rad 9800 Pro SE 256 -_-

Also, after having had so many laptops... mobile gaming is a joke. No FSAA and AA really sucks!

Give me a break. If you really want to enable FSAA/AA you can using an override. And I really don't notice much of a difference anyway, maybe that's just me.

That G5 shouldn't have any issues at all running Doom 3. Unless you run it at some insane resolution with extra high settings, you may lose a few frames, hardly "not well at all." If you're a framerates junkie, why don't you overclock a PC?

As for mobile gaming, it is hardly a joke. My friend's 12" Rev. C PowerBook can run Warcraft 3:TFT, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Call of Duty without any problems whatsoever (on normal settings). Sure, if you want to be the "king of the hill" with the most frags at a LAN party, it's probably not your best choice. But for anything else, it's perfect, quick and dirty gaming that weighs less than five pounds.

I'm soon going to purchase a 15" with the extra vram and I can't wait to see how it performs. It should be a veritable LAN monster, being portable with Gigabit Ethernet, widescreen, backlit keys and great GPU... can't wait.

 

[vraxtus]

Give me a break. If you really want to enable FSAA/AA you can using an override. And I really don't notice much of a difference anyway, maybe that's just me.

You can, however the effects are often buggy (so I've heard) and most of the OEM cards are clocked at lower speeds and tend to not be as powerful as the retail versions. Furthermore, you WILL notice this difference on high resolution displays, especially ones that aren't serving below-average sized pixels.

As for mobile gaming, it is hardly a joke. My friend's 12" Rev. C PowerBook can run Warcraft 3:TFT, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Call of Duty without any problems whatsoever (on normal settings). Sure, if you want to be the "king of the hill" with the most frags at a LAN party, it's probably not your best choice. But for anything else, it's perfect, quick and dirty gaming that weighs less than five pounds.

You're right, except "without any problems whatsoever" to you is not the same to me. Running it at 640x480 res is definitely a problem. Game resolutions and detail are constantly increasing. With the exception of Doom3, running a game at 640 res in today's market is very much unacceptable... furthermore most gaming consumers don't want "normal" detail, even if it increases playability.

I'm soon going to purchase a 15" with the extra vram and I can't wait to see how it performs. It should be a veritable LAN monster, being portable with Gigabit Ethernet, widescreen, backlit keys and great GPU... can't wait.

Think what you like, but benchmarks prove it all. The current 15" PB still underperforms to nearly any desktop offered, and furthermore is creamed by other PC laptops. I love Macs but they are clearly NOT the way to go gaming wise. Don't believe me? Check the benches at barefeats, especially the ones on the DP 2Ghz G5 against the similarly clocked and configured Athlon, that showed a 50 FPS gain over the G5 performance. While OpenGL and bad drivers may be able to account for this, the gap in performance is STILL clearly there.

Maybe I'm just too much of a hardcore gamer/FPS/visual detail buff but honestly, man, truly powerful gaming on a Powerbook is a pipe dream.