As Promised, here are some pictures of the powerbook..
It's really a beautiful machine, fast, easy to configure (actually, works right out of the box), display is very crisp and the lit keyboard is subtle.. not annoying as I was worried.
My one issue so far has been wireless. I have a Linksys wireless router 802.11b.. which has served me just fine with my old Dell laptop. The powerbook is not so happy with it. The signal keeps fading out (as those who tried to chat with me on aim last night probably noticed).. One option was to purchase an Airport Extreme station - but that's a bit pricey ($199). I opted to purchase the Linksys 802.11g WAP. Hooked it up at the other end of the house.. and it works very well. Actually the signal is very strong and works not just throughout the house but also outside! Note to Best Buy employees, who told me it will not work with AE.. as I suspected, you don't know what you're talking about. $80 less than the AE station and works just as well. Beautiful. I wouldn't have the heart to do it (well and then there's the warranty) but this guy disassembled one. |
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Linksys doesn't do NAT/dhcp though (or at least mine doesn't). That's a nice add-on.
#I have a router/switch that does that, so for me it would be unecessary.
#Don't ever listen to what the guys at Best Buy have to say...ever...
#I'm glad for ya that the LinkSys/G and APEx are working together now... I had extremely bad luck with the PB12 but that was before the draft finalized... I had pretty good luck with the LinkSys/B and the 12 so who knows? Either way, that's one sexy notebook.
#I have an iBook 12". Now, after looking at these pictures and reading your experience, I want a PowerBook 15" :-(
#Awesome! I have a iBook (switched from Linux) and here are a few quick things you may be interested in:
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/ - Launch bar. Great program, get it!
http://www.osxgnu.org/software/Fileutils/lsc/ - Colour LS (I'm Canadian, can't say color!)
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/index.html - What geek doesn't want to know their CPU/memory/network usage!?
http://fink.sourceforge.net/ - Fink (you probably know about this already)
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ - Just a cool editor--distributed editing of documents. Simple for just cracking out some quick code. Needs lots more work but it wayyyy cheaper than BBedit (can't get cheaper than free).
That's about it... don't forget the X11 Beta off of Apple's site and Safari is just crazy fast!
Disassembly is nowhere near as bas as it looks on PB's. It took about five minutes (I was being careful) to change the RAM in mine.
Besides, you have a whole forum to help you... ;)
#
Congrats on the Powerbook purchase! I'll be picking up one very soon.
Cool! We should be getting some of the 15" at work soon. Can't wait. I have been a power Mac user and tech since system 7 (Not as old as others, but still almost 10 years) and I was just thinking how OS X has united two very different type of crowds: the geeks, and the creative types. It is nice to be able to design on the same machine that can run your webserver, that can compile your apps. OS X has it many quirks, but with time you'll learn to appreciate its "personality". Good Luck!
Good places to keep informed with:
macfixit.com
macnn.com
macintocuh.com
maccentral.com
versiontracker.com
macobserver.com
If you have not checked any of these sites out, you should when you get a chance.
X
PS: If you ever want to shut down the machine without any dialogs just hold down the Control Option Apple and Eject CD key at the same time. This makes the machine shutdown without any dialog boxes. But who wants to when sleep mode is faster than booting up! I keep my 15" in sleep mode all the time!
#Get yourself iTerm it is much better than Terminal.app that Apple ships.
#This is way over my head but fascinating just the same.
#I had a girlfriend once named Kasia. You're the first Kasia I've seen with that name since her.
#I'll second the recommendation for iTerm, though I like GLterm a little better because I prefer how it handles bold text.
Both feel faster than Terminal.app
One question regarding the router: I already have a linux box working as Firewall/NAT/Webserver for me and plan to add WLAN to my network. Can I get a WLAN Router and just use it as an access point by disabling all the router related functionality? Maybe this sound strange but DSL-WLAN router are usually less expensive here than pure DSL-Access points..
#sure.. you can configure it to just act as a WAP.
#iTerm rocks. Check out the bookmarks feature. I love having ctrl-option-r start a new tabbed shell with a red background that logs in as root over ssh on my server.
Airport vs others — my understanding is that others don't do AppleTalk. Is this true?
On the other hand, do you care?
r.e. "colour ls" (hey, I'm Canadian too, eh?) -- you don't have to bother with that; Panther's built-in "ls" now handles colour just fine (see the -G flag). Note that you need to set your TERM/term to a colour-capable terminal. I use "dtterm", which I ran across on a site somewhere (MacOSXHints perhaps).
Darwinports rules for lots of stuff. I like jove personally:
http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/darwinports/
P.S. Sorry for posting a comment on such an old post, but google does that to you. I was looking for a Windows port of "vi" and hit your "vi does Windows" post! Hah.
#Is today National Re-brand Day? Abbey National is now know as Abbey. They will tell their customers shortly, or perhaps let the BBC do it for them. I think the old logo has the bigger glance recognition factor though. Also Apple are re-doing their logo...
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September 28, 2003 03:46 AM