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PowerBook 12"

R

reachsky

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 14, 2009
4
0
hi, I currently have a macbook that's about two years old.

i'll soon (after wwdc) have a new macbook pro 15"

once i have the macbook pro i will not have the macbook

i'm considering buying the latest iteration of a powerbook 12"
the RAM is maxed out and the harddrive is 150GB @ 7200 rpm

The powerbook would be my mobile machine, not my primary computer. I'll be doing school related tasks (word, excel, pages), maybe a bit of iphoto on it, and that's about it

Is this a smart choice? it would be around $300.

I appreciate any input!

My concerns of the PowerBook: screen brightness and speed
 
Hands down I'd buy the last revision 12" PB before I'd buy a netbook. If your use is as you stated then I find this to be a great idea and a great buy. It'd be hard to find another 12" PB last rev that is presumably in good condition.

Aside from spending $400 ish on a Dell Mini and loading OSX onto it (with some time/effort), the 12" is most desirable. Some may argue that the MB Air would be the wiser choice but considering that's upwards of $1500 more ... plus, you can't go wrong here.
 
For $300 that is a great machine.

I use it as my mobile workstation for everything you mentioned+sound record+programming. Runs pretty well. I don't have the RAM maxed out or a 7200RPM drive, so I think you will get even better results.
 
I have one and use it in a similar capacity..but honestly you'd be better off with a netbook. Not only are they faster, but smaller too. I mean..it's fine for light internet, email, or word..but that's the extent of its capacities. I can't even watch hulu on this thing and youtube stutters and maxes out the fans. This is with the last gen pb 1.5 ghz, 1.25 gig ram, 80 gig hd 5200rpm, 10.5 OS
 
Freyqq said:
I have one and use it in a similar capacity..but honestly you'd be better off with a netbook. Not only are they faster, but smaller too. I mean..it's fine for light internet, email, or word..but that's the extent of its capacities. I can't even watch hulu on this thing and youtube stutters and maxes out the fans. This is with the last gen pb 1.5 ghz, 1.25 gig ram, 80 gig hd 5200rpm, 10.5 OS
Click to expand...

With a netbook not only are you not running OSX, you are still limited to what you can do with it as well. Neither machine will do hulu HD for example.
 
iShater said:
With a netbook not only are you not running OSX, you are still limited to what you can do with it as well. Neither machine will do hulu HD for example.
Click to expand...

True, but i read those Dell Minis(the Mini 9 and Mini 10v actually) make a sweet little hacked netbook with OS X on it!
 
can anyone else confirm that the powerbook cannot load youtube or hulu videos
 
i'm holding out for nehalem mbp and currently use my now 5-year old rev C. 12" powerbook (1.33 ghz) w/ the memory at capacity of 1.25 gb. it's my daily computer for basic tasks like web, email, word processing; the intensive stuff i leave for a self-made C2D windows desktop. flash content in general is very slow on this powerbook and firefox is a huge memory and cpu drain. these days the fans always seems to be running at high speeds due to high cpu utilization. i should i also note that i'm running leopard; you may get best performance w/ either tiger or even panther. you should also consider the battery life--i have one battery that will shutdown w/o warning w/i 20 minutes and another that'll last <2.5 hrs. if you have to invest in another battery (if they're even still made or available) and depending on its cost, you may want to look elsewhere for a mobile computer (perhaps an nvidia ion-based netbook?).

as an aside, i read somewhere that there is no apple netbook using intel's atom processors as the computing power would be comparable to that of a G4 cpu.
 
Flash runs horribly slow on my 1.33ghz/1.25gb machine with Tiger. But as a work machine, it's still great. It's got the best keyboard I've ever used.
 
I have the Rev C (1.33GHz) 12" PB with 768MB RAM, running Tiger. No problems with youtube, but I use that rarely. I use it everyday at work - Mail, iWork 08, Safari and some biology specific software. Illustrator 10 and Photoshop 7 occasionally, it's fine in handling <5MB images.

The screen isn't as bright as my last revision blackbook, but it's still very useful.
 
The screen...

drove me crazy - just too dark. Loved my 12" powerbook with everything else about it, but the screen which is why I bought my black book (and I needed to go to intel to run VM ware). If Apple made a Macbook that was 12" I would buy that in replace of the 13.3".
 
jessica. said:
Hands down I'd buy the last revision 12" PB before I'd buy a netbook. If your use is as you stated then I find this to be a great idea and a great buy. It'd be hard to find another 12" PB last rev that is presumably in good condition.

Aside from spending $400 ish on a Dell Mini and loading OSX onto it (with some time/effort), the 12" is most desirable. Some may argue that the MB Air would be the wiser choice but considering that's upwards of $1500 more ... plus, you can't go wrong here.
Click to expand...

Aside from the Dell Mini, you'd pick a 12" PB over other netbooks? Your wording is just a little confusing.

I don't see 12" PB having much of edge at all. The newest gen netbooks can handle HD vids and official PPC support will end soon. The 12" PBs are one of the finest products Apple ever made, but there's a little too much nostalgia in your calculus if you're recommending it over modern hardware.
 
reachsky said:
can anyone else confirm that the powerbook cannot load youtube or hulu videos
Click to expand...
I have noticed that with a dead or no battery, hulu and YouTube will not perform well at all. But because the way macs are designed, get a decent battery in it, and regular YouTube (not HQ or HD) and hulu would load just fine.
 
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