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The Road Warrior Mailbag - November 26, 2007

Powerbook G3 AC Adapter Cord Polarity

Flawed Flash Drive Research

From The Road Warrior Archive - How The Dual USB iBook Stacks Up Alongside Its PowerBook Forbears And Cousins [Originally Published May 14, 2001]

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Powerbook G3 AC Adapter Cord Polarity

From Robert Morgan

Hi Charles, my dad just picked up a semi-dead powerbook - the charger is dead, and he'd like to try a temporary power supply to find out if the rest of the laptop is also dead. Can you tell me whether the center pin of the charger is positive or negative?

Thanks - Robert

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Hi Robert;

I thought this would be a simple one to answer.

I tried checking one of my adapters with a multimeter, but with inconclusive results; not sure why.

Google was no help either, so I have to say that I don't know the polarity specs. of the Apple AC adapter cord.

Perhaps a reader will be able to help.

I can tell you that any Apple power adapter from the one that shipped with the PowerBook 1400 to the "flying saucer" adapter that shipped with the original clamshell iBook and the Pismo PowerBook will work with any G3 PowerBook, if that's any help.

Charles

Flawed Flash Drive Research

From Dan Knight

Charles,

What's most interesting about Robin Harris' article is what he didn't do: Run his MacBook with a flash drive installed. Instead he had the MacBook busy sending data over the USB 2.0 port to an external hard drive. Since virtual memory is always on in Mac OS X, that probably meant a higher toll in power usage than a flash drive would have.

His methodology is further flawed by the use of a Kill-a-watt meter between the wall outlet and the MacBook's AC adapter. He's not measuring power draw by the MacBook, but power draw by the MacBook plus the overhead of the AC adapter.

I wouldn't give this "research" a whole lot of weight. Why didn't he simply pick up a flash drive and run until the battery ran out of juice?

Based on reports I've read of people actually running older PowerBooks and iBooks from flash memory (most often Compact Flash cards in some sort of adapter), battery life increases a whole lot more than 10%.

Dan

--
Dan Knight, president, Cobweb Publishing, Inc.
http://cobwebpublishing.com
http://lowendmac.com
http://reformed.net

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Hi Dan;

I thought it was too bad he didn't use an actual flash drive as well. Probably didn't have access to one, and they are pretty expensive to buy for an experiment.

I hope your surmise is correct and he's mistaken. Until someone actually does install a flash drive in a MacBook or Apple releases a subcompact 'Book with a flash drive, we won't know for sure.

Charles

From The Road Warrior Archive - How The Dual USB iBook Stacks Up Alongside Its PowerBook Forbears And Cousins [Originally Published May 14, 2001]

Two weeks after Apple introduced the Dual USB iBook on may Day 2001, I posted the following commentary comparing the new, white critter to its PowerBook 5300, 1400, 2400, PowerBook G3 and clamshell iBook forbears.

I was pretty smitten with the new iBook, and indeed some 19 months later bought a 700 MHz 12" unit, which I still have, and which proved to be everything I had hoped it would be and more. It hasn't been used a lot lately due to the fact I have two G4-upgraded Pismo PowerBooks and I prefer them these days for a variety of reasons, including larger hard drives, SuperDrive disk burners, WiFi support (my iBook has no Airport card and no PC Card slot), the 20 GB hard drive is too limited for my needs these days, and the iBook's keyboard is mediocre. However, for three years the little iBook served as my front line production machine (with an external keyboard and mouse mostly), and it never missed a beat. I still find it an impressive performer running OS 10.4.9.

I still love the little iBook's looks, I love small computers, and I'm a particular sucker for white computers. It's interesting that Apple really didn't find any reason to alter the essential styling motif when they replaced the iBook with the MacBook. For what it's worth, I think the proportions of the 12" iBook are still more graceful and "right" than either the MacBook or the 14" iBook.

One thing that revisiting this article drives home is how far we've come engineering-wise in six and a half years. In 2001, the iBook's specification - 500 MHz G3, 66 MHz system bus, RAGE Mobility 128 GPU with 8 MB of VRAM, and a 649 MB RAM ceiling - were considered more than respectable. Today they seem a bit quaint, although you can still run OS 10,4 Tiger on one of those 500 MHz original whiteBooks if you have one with a DVD drive (or just install from a machine that does using FireWire Target Disk Mode as I did with my CD-ROM only iBook.

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How The Dual USB iBook Stacks Up Alongside Its PowerBook Forbears And Cousins

Sometimes if you wait long enough, you get what you want. A while back, somewhat disappointed by the bulk, weight, and peculiar styling of the original iBook I suggested in this column that Apple still needed a light, compact, more conservatively styled machine for serious road warriors, and that they could do a lot worse than to take the old PowerBook 5300 form factor, upgrade it with a G3 processor and a bigger screen, somehow shoehorn in a CD-ROM drive, and voila! -- they would have exactly what an awful lot of portable computer users want and need.

Well, with the new iBook, Apple has pretty much done what I suggested. While in the first flurry of, commentary on the new iBook, I've seen it compared to the PowerBook 2400c and the TiBook, as well as the Pismo, no one else seems to have noted that in terms of footprint and styling, the new iBook most closely resembles the 5300 and its successor, the PowerBook 1400.

Here is a dimensional comparison with several PowerBooks:

New iBook :
11.2" x 9.1" x 1.35"

PowerBook 5300
11.5 " x 8.5" x 2"

PowerBook 1400
11.5" x 9.0" x 2"

PowerBook 2400c
1.9 x 10.5 x 10.5

PowerBook G3 Pismo:
1.7 x 10.4 x 12.7

Titanium PowerBook G4:
1.0 x 13.4 x 9.5

The squared off styling of the 5300, 1400, and new iBook is from the same school. A major distinction of course is that the new iBook is .65 inches thinner than the old PowerBooks, but in terms of footprint, it is nearly as wide, and actually deeper than either of them. It is also a lot lighter, at 4.8 pounds, versus the 5300 'Book's 6.2 pound weight and the 1400's road hugging 7.0 pounds.

The PowerBook 2400, interestingly enough, was deeper in chord than any of the above three machines, being an unusual, perfectly square, 10.5' x 10.5" x 1.9", but it was also a full inch narrower than the PowerBooks and .7 inches narrower than the iBook, which necessitated an undersized, 87 percent keyboard, which some users found just too small. The new iBook has a full-size keyboard like its PowerBook predecessors -- essentially the same one used on the titanium PowerBook. The 2400 also had no internal removable media drives at all, making it somewhat less than a full - featured PowerBook. That also helped to make it the lightest Mac laptop ever, at 4.4 pounds.

The new iBook, by contrast, is very nearly a full-featured PowerBook, lacking only a PC Card slot and an infrared port, neither of which a great many users will miss a whole lot. On the other hand, you can even get an optional DVD or CD RW drive. Amazing!

Of course, the new iBook and the PowerBook 5300/1400 are in different galaxies performance-wise. The PowerBook most closely corresponding to the new iBook in speed and features (as well as price, albeit used vs new), is the Pismo, with the 500 MHz iBook slotting somewhere between the 400 MHz and 500 MHz Pismo units in speed.

Consequently, a potential choice someone shopping for an Apple laptop has right now in the same general price range is between a new iBook and a used or refurbished Pismo. Which is the best choice? As they say, that depends.

Both iBook and Pismo have 1024 x 768 displays (12.1 in. vs 14.1 in), Rage 128 video cards with 8 MB VRAM, USB, FireWire and video-out ports. However, Pismo does have some advantages -- a PC Card slot, a modular expansion bay, infrared, a second FireWire port, analog sound in, two upgradable RAM slots up to a maximum of 1 GB of RAM (vs. 1 slot/640 MB max.),a 100 MHz system bus (vs. 66 MHz, 1024k of cache (vs 512k, and a larger (although same resolution) display.

On the other hand, the iBook offers an optional internal CD-RW drive, and reportedly has better stereo speakers than the Pismo.

Let's take a closer look at some of these differences.

• Display: The Pismo's two inch larger display it will of course be desirable to many users. Since the resolutions are the same you can't display more content on the Pismo's screen but what is displayed will appear larger. This could be particularly important for text. On the other hand a smaller screen at the same resolution will present a sharper, more brilliant image, and reportedly the 12.1 incher in the iBook is a real little jewel. OS X is said to look especially good on it. I Another issue pertaining to displays is that the iBook only supports video mirroring on an external monitor, while Pismo supports monitor spanning -- possibly a clincher point if that capacity is important to you.

• Processor Speed: probably pretty much a wash for real world use. The 500 MHz Pismo will be the best performer thanks to its faster system bus and larger cache, but the difference shouldn't be deal-breaker dramatic.

• PC Card and Infrared: If you need 'em, you need 'em. Most people don't. but if you do, go for the Pismo. The only thing I have ever used the PC Card slots in my WallStreet for is to add USB and FireWire adaptor cards, and the new iBook has both USB and FireWire support built in.

I have used the infrared port on my PowerBook exactly once, basically to see if it worked. It did, and could be convenient in certain instances but Ethernet is nearly as easy and much more widely supported by other machines.

• Expansion Bay: the only device that has ever been in the expansion bay of my WallStreet is the stock CD-ROM drive. On the other hand, my daughter has VST auxiliary hard drive and Zip drive expansion bay modules for my old PowerBook 5300, and they can be very handy. However, FireWire external peripherals are really handier and slicker. Even the TiBook has no expansion bay (yes I know a PC Card slot is technically an expansion bay, but that's splitting hairs).

• Second FireWire Slot: Virtually all FireWire devices can be daisy chained so one less slot on the iBook (similar to the TiBook) is no big deal. The Pismo's second slot addresses the same internal bus as the first one so it really is just a second port to plug into.

• RAM expandablity: Probably not a big issue for most users. How many PowerBook owners have more than 640 MB of RAM installed?

• Analog Sound In: This is the Pismo advantage I personally find most compelling. I think Apple is being perverse and stupid for not including a real sound-in jack on its current generation machines for the piddling amount extra it would cost. USB audio simply isn't a satisfactory alternative yet. For instance, I have one of Griffin's cool little iMic analog to USB audio adapters, but it doesn't support my collection of PlainTalk spec. microphones.

Nevertheless as wonderful as a machine as the Pismo is, I find the coolness factor of the iBook tremendously seductive. Much as I love my WallStreet, I've never really liked the styling of the PowerBook G3 Series machines and I LOVE the new iBook's looks. A full year of warranty is also in the iBook's favor over a used or refurb. Pismo. But as always, it's a matter of personal preference and requirements.



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cmoore@macopinion.com


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