With my 17" MBP arriving within an hour or two, I thought I'd take a minute to let everyone know why its replacing the greatest laptop ever manufactured.
Yes, I know my new machine will be much faster - but speed is here one minute, gone the next. In two years, the MBP will be average. So I'm not talking in terms of pure speed here. I got this PowerBook in 2003 and it was light years ahead of other laptops of its time.
1. It weighed about 7 pounds at a time when PC notebooks with 17' screens weighted at least 10 or 11 pounds.
2. It has almost every conceivable I/O option you could want. USB 2, FW400, FW800, Gigabit Ethernet, PC Card, Digital/Analog Audio in/out, Modem (still useful for the occasional fax I need to send), real DVI(!) with VGA converter cable in box, S-Video/Composite out(! - actually has been very useful 4 or 5 times when nothing else would have worked). A superdrive when dvd-burners were optional. Wireless networking when that was optional. Bluetooth when no PC in the store had the capability.
3. 1.33 GHz was screaming fast at the time.
4. People could not believe a laptop could be that thin. And then when I opened the screen they would just say, "wow..." Even the unibody MBs and MBPs are a great design - but they aren't visually much of a step forward from this laptop (minus the color change around the screen and keyboard). And this was six years ago. It was just way ahead of its time, IMO.
5. Great aluminum design when all PCs looked like plastic garbage.
6. Backlit keyboard was unheard of - like something out of star trek or something when teachers would turn off the lights in class for a presentation. Even PC geeks had to admit it was cool.
7. Even six years later, this machine is very capable. I edited a 3.5 minute video for youtube in HD earlier this week. Sure rendering is slow, but for a six year old machine, it holds its own.
Its been maxxed out on RAM and the hard drive upgraded from 80 to 120 to 250GB. But its never caused a problem. Never had a component fail. Only done one OS reinstall in 6 years (recent to get a printer driver working) with regular upgrade installs from 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5.
This new MBP has a tough act to follow. I'm almost sorry I won't be carrying this PB around anymore. Kind of feel like I'm betraying the many years of good service.
Yes, I know my new machine will be much faster - but speed is here one minute, gone the next. In two years, the MBP will be average. So I'm not talking in terms of pure speed here. I got this PowerBook in 2003 and it was light years ahead of other laptops of its time.
1. It weighed about 7 pounds at a time when PC notebooks with 17' screens weighted at least 10 or 11 pounds.
2. It has almost every conceivable I/O option you could want. USB 2, FW400, FW800, Gigabit Ethernet, PC Card, Digital/Analog Audio in/out, Modem (still useful for the occasional fax I need to send), real DVI(!) with VGA converter cable in box, S-Video/Composite out(! - actually has been very useful 4 or 5 times when nothing else would have worked). A superdrive when dvd-burners were optional. Wireless networking when that was optional. Bluetooth when no PC in the store had the capability.
3. 1.33 GHz was screaming fast at the time.
4. People could not believe a laptop could be that thin. And then when I opened the screen they would just say, "wow..." Even the unibody MBs and MBPs are a great design - but they aren't visually much of a step forward from this laptop (minus the color change around the screen and keyboard). And this was six years ago. It was just way ahead of its time, IMO.
5. Great aluminum design when all PCs looked like plastic garbage.
6. Backlit keyboard was unheard of - like something out of star trek or something when teachers would turn off the lights in class for a presentation. Even PC geeks had to admit it was cool.
7. Even six years later, this machine is very capable. I edited a 3.5 minute video for youtube in HD earlier this week. Sure rendering is slow, but for a six year old machine, it holds its own.
Its been maxxed out on RAM and the hard drive upgraded from 80 to 120 to 250GB. But its never caused a problem. Never had a component fail. Only done one OS reinstall in 6 years (recent to get a printer driver working) with regular upgrade installs from 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5.
This new MBP has a tough act to follow. I'm almost sorry I won't be carrying this PB around anymore. Kind of feel like I'm betraying the many years of good service.
