17" powerbook
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- 31 Responses
- CX
Is this good enough to be your main work computer? As in speed, screen size, resolution, etc?
- sauerbraten0
had mine since May, love it. it's perfect, could use a little more processing power every once in a while, but for portability, style, it kills.
- sauerbraten0
oh. i have a 1ghz, 1gb RAM machine, screen size every once in a while is annoying (palettes & such), wish i could get 1600res, but i'm cool.
i'd maybe get a new 15" and a flat display tho, cause that'd rock.
- Meeklo0
yeah, 17 is not the best for portability..
for my personal taste is too big.
a 15 will do the job, when at home
or office ad another monitor to go dual screen. that's all you need, also get a portable firewire hardrive, lots of ram, and ready!
- CX0
So did you guys get extra ram installed when you bought it?
- CX0
I like the portability but for the same price the G5 is about twice as advanced.
- sauerbraten0
well yeah, same price. but then you have to buy a display. + it's like 10x larger to boot.
don't get me wrong, i want both. once i got on a laptop tho, especially the powerbooks, i'm pretty much done with desktops. i'm not doing any crazy motion pieces, rendering etc. so it works for me.
- unknown0
buddy of mine has as 17"
its a little too big for me... i skate a lot with a backpack and shoot on location and such...
15 is perfect. the 12 doesnt have enough room for me to type.. my hands go off the edges.
15 hooked up to a 20" is great...
(external keyboard and mouse)but, im looking to get a G5 for more rendering horsepower at home...
- scarabin0
can you have a desktop pc and a mac powerbook hooked up to one external hard drive at the same time?
- cerberoleso0
ahah c'mon please stop buying apple, you pay just for the name of the brand and the design. you'll get a better pc laptop for half the price.
- ********0
here we go again
- scarabin0
i personally dislike macs, but employers expect you to be proficient with them because the design industry is too stubborn to move on already.
proficiency comes with experience, so unfortunately i must get a mac.
- ribit0
I'd like to be able to take my 15" Powerbook (which I dont have) to work an dhook it up to my G5 (which I also dont have), and tap into its power. Is this possible somehow. If not why not?!
Perhaps a way to remove the drive and slide it into the desktop machine? Has anyone ever heard of such a system? Seems such an obvious thing, but...
- JohnR0
I know people with the 17" powerbook and it is a sturdy and reliable machine. Love the macs.
- CyBrainX0
This is one area where the platform dabate is moot. 17" and a 1440x900 display is tops anywhere. You can never have enough screen size. I don't care what anyone says. I love my MiniMe Powerbook. It's only crashed once since April. I do a lot of After Effects and am getting into Maya now and it's fast enough so far.
- sauerbraten0
yes, they're more expensive. if you're a designer however, you should care because Apple puts alot of thought into both designing and developing systems for their machines. let's wait and see all the "cool" things the next Windows OS can do and how similar they are to what OS X has been doing for years..
- jrust0
I bought my 17" at the beginning of May, and I absolutely love it. I've never found the portability to be much of an issue. I carry mine in a small messenger bag. It's only 15.2" across - larger than most laptops, sure, but go measure the bag you have now and see if it would fit. Judge it for comparative purposes.
I'm a design student at DAAP in Cincinnati. I carry it with me when I'm walking about 25 minutes to class. It was a little different to get used to at first, but I hardly notice it anymore.As far as what it can do - if you use it as your main computer, I would suggest adding more RAM to it. I didn't, and occasionally I think it would be nice to have the additional power. I agree with with someone else said about occasionally wanting more processor speed, but they've been upgraded to 1.33. I'm still running the original 1 GB. I've crashed it once, and that was because I was trying to. Tell me you haven't tried to run as much as possible just to see if you can crash your new machine!
I would seriously suggest it to anyone. I chose the 17" as a desktop replacement - I've never been a laptop person, and I needed the screen space so I could be comfortable. After using mine, I can't imagine going with anything else. It's more expensive, but I personally am glad I made the investment.
I did have a small problem with mine in July. Certain settings randomly restored to default. I wasn't working much at the time, so I just decided to let it sit on my desk for a few days, and when I turned it back on, all of my settings were changed back to what I had put them as. No documents were damaged or anything, but it's the only quirk I've found with the machine.
And seriously, could we not start a Mac/PC flame war? We're on a forum of people who are well established in what they choose to work in, for the most part, and we've all made choices for reasons. The "<insert computer here" sucks" debate never solves anything.
/pre-req peacemaking speech
Hope this helped. :)
- jrust0
Ha! That should have been "The 'insert computer here' sucks debate never helps anyone."
Hooray for using actual brackets and not expecting NT to treat it as code. Comment validity -2.
- scarabin0
how is a 17" notebook 15.2" across?
- jrust0
17" refers to the diagonal size of the screen. It's 15.2" long by 10", if I remember correctly.
- sauerbraten0
haha, classic!