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My 17” G4 PowerBook At 30 Months - New Road Warrior on MacOpinion

The Apple Certified Refurbished 17" PowerBook G4 1.33 MHz I bought in February, 2006 is now 30 months old (in its service life); elderly for the average computer as a front-line machine, and historically, I've rarely lasted much beyond this point before the itch to upgrade systems overcomes me.

I decided back in '06 buy one more PowerPC 'Book rather than taking the plunge with a then just-introduced MacBook Pro, consistent with my "never buy Version 1/Revision A of anything conviction, and I ended up ordering a refurbished 1.33 GHz 17-inch PowerBook from TechRestore.

Over the past 30 months, the 17" PowerBook has been a reliable performer, with zero hardware problems to report. If a computer ever epitomized the old Apple "It just works!" slogan, this machine is it. Upgrading through several versions of OS 10.4 Tiger to OS 10.4.11 was painless with no issues or problems encountered. However, OS 10.5 Leopard, which I installed last November, has been a somewhat different story - not a disaster, and I've continued to use it, almost immediotely hooked by two features in particular - Spaces and Time Machine - as well as smaller improvements like the smarter spellchecker, QuickLook, and somewhat improved Spotlight performance - but there have been frustrations as well, which have not entirely been addressed by the three updates so far. POP 3 email performance in particular remains dismal, and the old, 1.33 GHz G4 processor really works for a living trying to keep up with Leopard's demands. I also miss not having Classic Mode suooirt, although not nearly as much as I thought I would.

On the other hand, version 10.5.4 is quite admirably stable, allowing me to go 2-3 weeks between restarts if I so choose (as I type this it's actually been 25 days since my last restart, and things are stil proceeding smoothly), and if I really need Classic Mode for something I can always boot into OS 10.4.11, which I stilll have installed and ready to go on another partition of the hard drive.

Speaking of which, I am also, after 30 months, testing the limits of the 80 GB Toshiba hard drive in this machine, although it's been otherwise flawlessly satisfactory, and is still nice and quiet. However, I only have, at this writing, less than five GB of free space on my main hard drive boot partition and precious little room for expansion left on the other two partiitions, making the bother of repartitoning not worth the effort. I could of course upgrade to a larger capacity drive, but that's not a trivial project on the 17" PowerBook, and it's really time for me to get serious about upgrading my system to an Intel 'Book.


So, any regrets that I didn't go with an Intel 'Book in early 2006? Not at all. My next system upgrade will of course be MacIntel, but the early-production issues many early-adopters experienced with the first generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros would've driven me nuts. Using this machine for two and a half years (and counting) has been a privelege and a delight, and one of the things that has held me back from upgradimg before this is that I can't really justify the cost of going to a 17" MacBook Pro, even refurbished (that's excluding the early revisions, which don't really interest me), but I'm going to miss this big display.

I had admired the 17-inch PowerBook from the day Steve Jobs unveiled it at MacWorld Expo, 2003, and idefinitely the Intel 'Book that tempts me the most is the 17" MacBook Pro, but this 1.33 MHz PPC machine has not disappointed, and has been a more satisfactory ride than I had dared hope when I bought it.

At the time, another factor tipping the scales in favor of the 17-incher was Daystar's announcement of 1.92 and 2.0 GHz G4 processor upgrades for most 17-inch and 15-inch aluminum PowerBook models, which would provide a fallback if the stock, 1.33 GHz processor proved too lazy for my needs, but in service it hasn't (and Daystar has subsequently discontinued offering PowerBook upgrades). It's of course partly relative to what you're used to, and even a 1.33 GHz G4 represented a quantum leap forward in performance from the 700 MHz G3 iBook that preceded the BigAl as my production workhorse, My main computing speed bottleneck is not processor speed but my Internet connection, - which provides 26,400 bps connections on good days. The latest word is that broadband should reach us here by sometime in 2009.

Actually, the PowerBook's internal modem was another reason I chose it instead of a modemless MacBook Pro. While a USB modem dongle is available for the MBP, it adds another CAN$70 to the purchase price and hogs a precious USB port, as well as being much less elegant than a built-in modem for folks like me who remain stuck in the dial-up slow lane of the information highway.

The still impressive roster of standard features on the 1.33 GHz Big Al has proved more than adequate for my needs, and then some, although I did get TechRestore to install a 1 GB RAM expansion stick, bringing the total memory up to 1.5 gigabytes, and if I were doing it today, I think I would go for the full 2 GB that is supported. I still find the 'Book slowing down somewhat due to pageouts after two or three days of uptime (although this has improved with Leopard). I wish OS X had some provision for flushing the swapfile cache and clearing the memory without having to logout or reboot.

Aside from the modest 512 megabytes of RAM soldered to its motherboard, the 1.33 GHz Big Al came pretty sumptuously equipped, with a RADEON 9600 graphics processor and 64 megabytes of video RAM, an 80 gigabyte hard drive, a SuperDrive, gigabit Ethernet, built-in Bluetooth, 802.11g wireless, FireWire 400 and 800, and USB 2.0. And of course there is that glorious, 1440-by-900 display. That resolution is nothing to get up in the night and write home about these days, and is now standard on the 15" MacBook Pro, but I've found it luxuriously expansive after years of working with 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600 Apple laptop displays.

This computer that I got from TechRestore in '06 was an Apple Certified Refurbished unit in Apple's excellent ACR packaging (note: not all TechRestore refurbs are ACR units), complete with a new serial number, and it looked like a brand new machine, with no evident wear or cosmetic flaws. Indeed when I ran a battery check, it only showed a couple of charge cycles logged, so I guess it was essentially unused.

I liked the feel of the glossy-finished anodized aluminum Palm rests better than I thought I would, and this 'Book looks spectacular. As I noteed above, I've gotten used to having the extra display space, but I have to say that it's the need for less scrolling rather than the width that appeals to me most. All that extra screen real-estate requires a fair bit of body English to navigate around. On any Mac laptop I routinely turn the trackpad tracking speed up to the maximum, and I've installed the third-party MouseZoom utility up to about 3x OS X's maximum mouse tracking speed, which helps.

The keyboard is very nice, although not quite as good as the superb one in my old PowerBook G3 Series WallStreet and Pismos. I was pleased that the trackpad button has a fairly light and positive action, compared with the heavy-effort ones in the WallStreet and Pismo , but the trackpad itself is not that great. Again, the WallStreet's is the best, and the Pismo is better than the Big Als in this department as well.

I like having all of the I/0 ports on the sides of the computer, which I had already gotten used to with my iBook. The Big Al has them split up between opposite sides of the machine, and having a USB port on the right-hand side makes connecting short-corded mice less of a problem for right-handers. I do prefer a side-loading optical drives, and the front-loader in 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks gets obstructed by some laptop stands, such as my beloved Laptop Laidback, but in practice that hasn't been really much of an issue. I don't use optical disks that much, and myh two old PowerBook Pismos have an 8x and 4x SuperDrive expansion bay modules respectively, so I do most of my disk-burning on them anyway.

The 17-inch PowerBook's size is both a strength and a shortcoming. It of course facilitates the big display, but also makes the package a bit bulky and heavy for serious road warrioring duty. I prefer the 12-inch iBook or PowerBook form factor in that context. The one inch thick dimension does make the 17-incher less cumbersome than it might otherwise be, and since this one is mostly used in desktop substitute mode, the scale tips toward having the extra screen real estate and less cramped confines for the Internal bits which theoretically at least should let them run cooler. I have been able to use the BigAl reasonably comfortably in the car or truck with it perched on the Waterfield Racer X case I carry it in, but the iBook is much better suited to literal on-the-road road warrioring.

My main, and virtually only complaint about this machine is heat, which of course is not a unique issue to this computer model. The Big Al runs a lot hotter than I was used to with the Pismo and iBook, and the cooling fan cuts in fairly frequently, especially after a couple of days or more of uptime without a restart, although Leopard is better in this regard than the last several builds of Tiger were. I noticed the fan cutting in more frequently from about version 10.4.9, but with Leopard it runs less. The swapfile activity seems to heat up the internals. Objectively, at least in comparison with temperatures in the Intel 'Books, this 1.33 GHz G4 unit doesn't run all that hot - usually in the low-mid 50s Celsius. The cooling fan cuts in at 58.5° and switches back off at about 54°. The temperature comes down quite quickly once the fan is blowing, but it's a cycling routine that I find annoying. I hate fan noise. I keep the AlBook on a Road Tools Podium CoolPad most of the time, which I assume helps. A Targus Chillmat, which has its own (much quieter) cooling fans definitely makes the PowerBook run cooler, but I can't usually spare a USB port to plug it in (yes, I have a powered hub).

This BigAl has convinced me that refurbished computers can be an excellent value for the money, and I will definitely consider another refurb when I move up.

My advice 30 months on? There are some very attractive deals available on refurbished PPC 'Books, and I've seen Apple Certified Refurbished 1.67 GHz 17" PowerBooks offered for under $1,000.

On the other hand, for someone contemplating the purchase of their first Apple laptop and have no substantial investment in Power PC software, my recommendation would be to go MacIntel. Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard will not, as far as we can tell, support Power PC Macs - something that has to be balanced against being shut out of cool older software that hasn't been taken universal binary or Intel-native. It will definitely be a dynamic of diminishing compatibility for Power PC from here on out.

Meanwhile, I am now convinced that the 17-inch PowerBook is unquestionably one of the greatest Apple portables ever. I was skeptical that anything could top the dependable, trouble-free performance I've had from my Pismo PowerBooks and the G3 iBook over the past seven years, but this big AlBook os definitly vying with my beloved Pismos for "best ever" Mac status. It's everything I had dared hope for and more.

I can only hope that may next Mac is as good as this PowerBook.


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cmoore@macopinion.com

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