arkitrave :: log

I am the proud owner of a new 17″ PowerBook G4. Not as much an impulse buy as Shaun’s, I decided that I really needed mobility if I was going to be spending a lot of time building websites. That left the PC laptop option (decidedly uninspiring), the cheaper Mac option (nice, but…) or going all out and buying the best darn laptop on the market. Not one for mediocrity, I chose the latter.

In the end, it was the screen that sold me. You just can’t argue with a 17″ widescreen on a laptop. Apple has always made great displays, and this one is no exception. I have been doing Photoshop and web work on a 15″ CRT for years, and the widescreen is really revolutionary. I have never worked without windows maximized before - having two documents side-by-side on the screen is a new experience for me. It’s interesting - good photos look really good, and bad photos actually look worse.

The speed isn’t bad either. I caught the latest rev, up to 1.5 from 1.33 GHz, though I do wish they had bumped the really slow front side bus up a little bit. Still, it’s a pretty fast machine, and with 1.5 gig of RAM, I will be able to handle some pretty large files.

The household specs:

PC: AMD Athlon 1800, 512M, 15″ Sony Trinitron, Lian Li aluminum case, 20GB Maxtor ATA100 drive.

Apple: G4 1.5GHz, 1.5GB RAM, 17″ flat panel, aluminum case, 80GB drive

Wireless Apple AirPort networking for the PowerBook (too bad batteries can’t charge over the airwaves…)

(oh yeah, there’s an old Compaq laptop too…maybe 100Mhz.)

I’m having problems with the AirPort - I have a strange hanging thing happening on websites - it will begin to load and freeze. If I stop loading and hit reload, the page loads immediately. This happened with Apple software update too. The tech support boys don’t know what is going on. It’s starting to become annoying, and has been responsible for a couple double posted comments, so I hope it will get resolved soon. At least I have an Apple store 5 minutes away.

And I second, or third, all the comments on the shopping bags people have made recently. It’s nice to have the smallest details taken care of. They are really elegant, and one can be used as a backpack.

Now I have to get used to OSX from Windows. That’s going to be an ordeal, I think. I haven’t used a Mac OS since OS7 on the LCII in 1991. Things are different now.