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The Road Warrior Mailbag September 29, 2008

Cheap Windows Notebooks

From: Dan Knight

Charles,

A few years ago I bought a cheap Windows notebook so I could test design issues being reported by Windows users. The $700 15" Acer Aspire notebook had a 1280 x 800 display, 512 MB of RAM, a 1.4 GHz Celeron CPU, Windows XP, and about 45 minutes of battery life.

This beastly thing was ugly, made of cheap plastic, and seemed to run slower than my 400 MHz PowerBook G4. Installing Linux didn't speed things up, so Windows was not to blame. This was an example of a computer being built down to a price rather than up to a quality.

I'll stick with my Macs, thank you very much!

Dan Knight, LowEndMac.com

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

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Hi Dan;

Yeah; a friend of mine bought an Acer laptop about three years ago - actually two. The first one died just within the 30 day over-the-counter replacement period at Circuit City/The Source. The replacament has been dependable, albeit mediocre.

She's a middle-aged lady who learned on a PC and of a sort who would never consider a Mac.

Of course there are high-performance PC laptops, but they're not necessarily cheaper than equivalent-performing Macs and you tend to get what you pay for. Apple doesn't build strippers, and I think even specification mediocrities like the Combo drive in the base MAcBook are often market-placement driven rather then building to a price with Apple.

Charles

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From The Road Warrior Archive

This year is The Road Warrior column's 10th Anniversary. When I began writing The Road Warrior my workhorse 'Book was a then two-year-old PowerBook 5300, but at the time I was also the sales agent for eastern mainland Nova Scotia representing one of the larger Mac resellers in the province, and I was supplied with a PowerBook G3 Series "Mainstreet" - the one with a cacheless 233 MHz processor and a 12.1" passive matrix display as a demo machine. The MainStreet PowerBook has been widely dismissed as a dog and a "Road Apple," but compared to my 100 MHz Power PC 603e PowerBook 5300, it was a ball of forw speed-wise. The following "Frome The Archive" selection, originally published December 21, 1998, documented my early impressions of the MainStreet. Indeed, I liked it so much that I bought the MainStreet's replacement model, the WallStreet LE, which had a 233 MHz G3 processor with 512k of L2 cache and an active matrix TFT 12" display, which is still going strong currently on laon to Applelinks Tech Web Reader daughter.

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Road (Warrior) Testing A PowerBook G3 [Originally Published Dec. 21, 1998]

I'm typing this week's "The Road Warrior" on a PowerBook G3 Series instead of my faithful PowerBook 5300. No, I haven't taken the plunge, but unforeseen circumstances provided me with an opportunity to try out a G3 demo as my workstation. This is a lot more useful than just sampling a machine for a few minutes.

It's not a high-end G3, just a Series I 233 MHz with no cache or floppy drive, and a 12.1" dual scan STN display. However it does have an internal 56k modem and a RAM upgrade to 64 MB.

First impression: with the G3 sitting on my desk in the 5300's usual spot, I realize how huge it is. Not necessarily a bad thing for desktop use, but it does take some getting used to. The 5300 is tiny by comparison.

I didn't think I would like the G3's expansive palm rests, but I find that they're perfectly fine - maybe even more comfortable than the 5300's. The keyboard is definitely better - a lot better- than the one in the 5300. The scissors-action keys are quiet and smooth, and have a lovely tactile feel. The noisy, stiff keyboard on the 5300 is not one of its most endearing features. I'm not crazy about the shrunken Command key that makes room for the new "fn" key and a second Option key to the right of the space bar and Enter key. A second Command key would have been a better idea. I'm also not enchanted by the minuscule, "inverted tee," page navigation keys that some people seem to think are an improvement over the old full size ones, or the dainty function keys which are smaller than the 5300's none-too-large ones.

While it's keyboard is generally superior, despite those annoyances, I really dislike the G3's trackpad button, finding it stiff and noisy. It's not just this machine either; every G3 Series 'Book I've tried is the same. I like the 5300's trackpad button much better, even though I'm not an intensive trackpad user - I much prefer a mouse for use at my desk.

Which brings me to another point of aggravation. My MacAlly two-button mouse driver conflicts with the Epson 740 printer software that is installed on this particular machine. The Epson stuff has to be disabled if I want to use the mouse driver, or other programs crash. The MacAlly mouse works fine with the stock Apple driver, but the right button is disabled. I guess I should blame this on Epson rather than the PowerBook.

The 12.1" STN display is actually pretty decent. I rather like the gentle, subdued appearance of passive matrix LCD displays - colour or grayscale - and this is the nicest one I've seen. Without question TFT screens are brighter, sharper and faster, and the cursor doesn't "submarine" on them like it does on passive matrix displays. There is a 12.1" TFT PowerBook G3 in our family, and placing it side by side with this machine really highlights the STN/TFT difference. The STN is nice -- the TFT is beautiful. However, I would have no trouble living with this STN display. I like it.

Thing is, at current prices, you only save $150 -$200 by going with the passive matrix, and indeed some resellers quote the same price for the 233 Series I with 12.1" STN and no modem, L2 cache, or floppy, and the 233 Series II 12.1" TFT with modem and 512k L2 cache. Rather bizarre. If the price spread was, say $400 -$500, there would be a strong case for going with the Series I STN machine, but a difference of $200 or less makes choosing the later, faster, better-equipped model a no-brainer.

This machine is about 50 percent faster than a PowerBook 3400/240, which was "the fastest laptop ever built" up to a little over a year ago, so even a cacheless 233 G3 'Book is no slouch speed-wise. However, in a direct comparison, that Level 2 cache makes a significant difference in speed.

So far, so good. I really like this PowerBook. However, I have some more gripes too. The hard drive is noisy. After more than two years of intensive of use, my 5300's HD is getting noisier than it used to be, but it's still not as noisy as the 2 gig jobbie in this G3. However, I've noticed that other G3 Series 'Book's HDs are substantially quieter, so this one's loudness may be an anomaly. [Note: It wasn't; the 2 GB IBM drive that came in my subsequent Series II LE PowerBook got noisy very quickly as well, although it neve gave any trouble]

The little mono speaker in my 5300 is horrible - tinny and scratchy-sounding, so I had high hopes for the stereo speakers in this G3. They are indeed better than the one in the 5300, but still not up to much. Poor bass and plenty of distortion when the level is turned up above a whisper.

Having an internal modem is convenient - I use either a PC card or an external desktop serial modem with the 5300. The 56k modem in the G3 works satisfactorily, and it is nice and fast on line, although significantly slower in dialing up my ISP than either the Global Village PC card or the US Robotics external modem I use with the 5300. Built-in Ethernet is a convenience. Of course there are still two PC Card bays, and serial, SCSI, and ADB ports, so there's plenty of built-in connectivity.

I get along quite happily with 24 MB of RAM plus RAMDoubler in the 5300, so I thought 64 MB in the G3 'Book (undoubled) would prove extravagantly luxurious. Think again. With a fairly comprehensive (but far from full house) set of OS8.5 extensions enabled, I had to turn on Virtual Memory just to open the same constellation of applications I like to keep running all the time on my 5300. If this were my machine, I think I would install RAMDoubler, and no doubt I could pare down the INITs to make a more svelte system heap, as I have done on the 5300 running OS8.1. However, to be reasonably carefree about real RAM with one of these babies, you would need at least 96 MB, and the standard 32 MB would be barely usable. The system heap I'm running right now is 19.2 MB (VM on).

Having an internal CD ROM drive is convenient, and I would probably make more use of CD ROM references and the like if I was using this machine every day. The 20x CD ROM drive works well, even though it sounds like a Boeing 767 taking off and vibrates alarmingly, in contrast to the completely smooth and silent old 2x drive in my ancient desktop Mac.

In theory I agree that floppy disks are obsolete and it's time to move on to better backup and file transfer media. In practise, even after a couple of days, I miss the quick convenience of the floppy drive. I often go two weeks or more without ever sticking a floppy in my 5300's drive, but when you need it, it's easy and slick.

The materials and build quality of the G3 'Books is extremely good, and makes the 5300 look cheap by comparison. This machine was made in Cork, Ireland, while the 233 12.1" TFT Series IIs (at least the ones I've seen) are made in Taiwan. On my very limited comparative observation, I would give the quality edge to the Taiwanese models.

One materials choice I don't like is the "rubber" cladding on the top and bottom of the G3 Series case. It appears to scratch very easily, and indeed this demo machine has some moderately bad scratches on its bottom already.

The Modem cable door is tricky to open when the PowerBook is sitting on a flat surface, and once you get it open, the phone jack is mounted too deep inside, making it difficult to unplug phone cables.

I dislike the G3's screen latch, which is also difficult to operate with the PowerBook sitting on a flat surface. The 5300's horizontal slider screen latch is superior. The expansion bay and battery release levers work nicely, but they also have an unhappy tendency to hook clothing when the 'Book is being carried or handled.

In my opinion, this G3 'Book is testing the borderline (possibly over it) of being too big and heavy to lug around on a regular basis. It's really more of a portable computer than a "notebook." Apple really needs a professional quality subnotebook PowerBook, a role that the coming "P1" or "iBook" may or may not adequately play.

Even without a L2 cache, this PowerBook is very fast. Much faster than all but a few users really need for most of the things they will do with it. The speed increase is extremely impressive compared with my old 5300.

So, am I sold? Not quite yet, but more than I was. A 3400 is still a possibility, and would have all the speed I really need right now. However, this is a really superb computer, and I think I will likely choose a G3 Series _something_ pretty soon, most likely a 233, as the 5300's replacement. I still love my 5300, but its 500 MB HD is just too small, and the performance boost I get with this machine, especially in online speed with both email and Web surfing on my slow rural dial-up line, makes switching rather than upgrading sensible and worthwhile.

I'll let you know what I ultimately decide. Meanwhile, back to the friendly old PowerBook 5300!


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cmoore@macopinion.com

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