A Bit of Switch

posted on april 12, 2003, tag: tech

In the last three months I have used my PC three times. Once to listen to music, once to make changes to one of the source PSDs for this site, and once today to upload a file to bring the forums back online. Granted, I haven't had an Internet connection on the PC until today, but still—a year ago I was using my PC 8 hours a day (at least), and had never touched a Mac running OS X. That changed last November when I bought an iBook.

Until last month, I had been using the 12" iBook as my primary machine at home. Because we still don't have high-speed Internet access here I hadn't been using my LinkSys Wireless Router, so instead I strung a phone cord along the wall in the living room (allowing me to take the 'Book into that room and watch television whilst using it). It wasn't terrible. I started to notice, however, that the iBook wasn't quite fast enough to be a primary machine for me. A 700MHz G3, the 'Book lacked a little oomph when using Photoshop (especially documents with many layers), and the speed was noticeable when I was working with more than five applications at once. I needed more. I needed desktop-machine strength at laptop size.

Enter the PowerBook G4. Same screen size as my iBook, but a smaller, more compact size in total. Made of aluminum alloy and roughly half a pound lighter, better keyboard, and best of all: an 867MHz G4 processor. Exactly what I wanted. I decided to sell my iBook (which I still haven't done—damn it) and model up to the PowerBook.

After a bad start (the screen had a ripple in the upper-left corner), and a quick repair (took 3 days total), the PowerBook has been fantastic. I have gripes (it gets so fucking hot), but most are being caused by the current build of OS X. A new build released two days ago fixed a few problems, and future builds will continue to do the same. The PowerBook is fast (like with my iBook, I maxed out the RAM (640MB), but the pBook's RAM is DDR 2100—much faster), and fantastic in design. The new keyboard is much better to type on (the iBook's keyboard was spongy because it was removable to add RAM and an AirPort card, the pBook has panels underneath for those items) and the screen is noticeably brighter and more colourful.

As part of the upgrade process I also bought an AirPort Extreme Base Station (with modem) [see picture], since my PowerBook came with a pre-installed AP Extreme card. The nice thing is, even though Extreme uses 802.11g (52 megabit speed), it is still backwards compatible with 802.11b (old AirPort speed as well as the most common wireless standard) so I was able to have both the iBook and PowerBook connected wirelessly (made moving all my files over very easy and quick).

Because the PowerBook is the same general size as the iBook, I can still use my Griffin Technology iCurve stand that I got in January. The original reason for this purchase was to allow my iBook to function like a desktop, but with the PowerBook now the iCurve serves an even better purpose: dual displays. The iBook had the ability to hook up to an external monitor and mirror the image. But mirroring is rather useless for normal use. The PowerBook, however, can span displays. Not only can it, but it does it perfectly and fantastically. Now I can use twice the screen space when I'm in my office [see picture], and then simply unplug and move into the living room. You don't have to readjust anything—OS X automatically moves items back to one screen when necessary, and spans them to two when possible as well. I gotta tell you, I fucking love it.

I gotta say, the outlook for my PC doesn't look good. Hell, when (if) I get high speed access here I will definitely use my PC again... for Counter-Strike. And maybe to work on a new version of CurrentlyHearing. Other than that, well, it's gathering dust until further notice.

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