by Eolake Stobblehouse

This machine rocks. Get it.

... What, you need more detail? Well, I'll try.

I have certain demands of my tools (cameras, computers, whatnot). I want them to be elegant. I want them to be reliable. I want them to be precise. I want them to be fast.

Apple's computers have always been elegant, and precise. They have not always been fast, and they have not always been reliable. Speed is coming along well now, though, thanks to Moore's law, and no thanks to Motorola. Reliability has been a tough one, mostly thanks to the legacy of the old Mac OS, which was a big bunch of spaghetti code, never meant to really multitask and so on. One must say that Mac OS 9 is an damn good product despite this, except for one thing, it is not stable at all. This has always infuriated me, and for that reason I was looking forward with barely restrained impatience to Mac OS X for several years while it slowly inched closer.

This is the year that Apple's new computers only will run Mac OS X, no longer OS 9, so getting a new Mac now means finally making the system jump if you haven't yet. Don't be scared, it is no harder than learning Danish or Chess. Just kidding, it is actually rather easier than either of those. I recommend the bestselling "Mac OS X, the Missing Manual" for an enjoyable transition. OS X is still slightly slower than OS 9 in certain things, the Finder for instance, but I would not go back now at gunpoint. Every time I started a machine in OS 9 in recent times, the machine crashed within an hour, and I got a minor shock, I had almost (and happily) forgotten that it could do so. The last time it happened, it even corrupted my disk so I had to go buy recovery software to make my Mac work again.

I am talking about OS X because it is all the PowerBook 12-inch will run, and because it is an inseparable part of the experience. OS X helps the PowerBook to be reliable, and it helps it to be elegant, even more than OS 9, and it wants it to be precise. It does not help it to be fast, but fortunately the machine itself has the chops to make that happen.

My new PowerBook is replacing an 800 Mhz flatpanel iMac as my email, writing, and web machine. And it feels just as fast as the iMac, something that was my main worry when I bought it. It is perfectly adequate for anything the ordinary user will throw at it. I also happen to have a big machine for heavy duty web design and image processing work. But the PB could even handle this in a pinch.

To get a bit of perspective here, the first portable I owned was a used PowerBook 180, which debuted in late 1992, and had a 25 Mhz processor. When it was new, it cost over $4,000. It seemed to me to be adequate for writing on, and that was it. Fortunately that was exactly what I needed it for. I wrote the course at WhatMeArtist.com on that machine, writing a chapter every day over lunch, in a restaurant or cafe.

A couple of years later I wanted to get a PowerBook for my main machine, but the then-current model, the early G3 model called the Wall Street, was very big and heavy. But then arrived the "Lombard" model, which was a much slimmer and lighter model, and I got that. It was about $3,500. And for about a year, I did all my work on that, even web design. (It helped once I got an external monitor it must be said, that Lombard screen was a little dull.)

I was never much in love with the TiBook for some reason. I do not like its looks very much. I like the "IceBook" (iBook) much better. And now I like the "AluBook" even more. The brushed aluminium surface is gorgeous. And it just feels good also.

What is amazing about the 12 inch model is that it basically beats the hell out of the Lombard in every way, and it is still only about half the price! I know, I know, it is so with computers when time passes. But it is still amazing, and honestly, I don't think you get the same experience with a Dell portable. Really. I have one, actually. It looks like it was built in the USSR.

I work from home, working on my web sites, and I have my e-mail and web computer in my living room. So I want it to be quiet. The iMac was nice for that. The PowerBook is even better, it has only the merest whisper from the hard disk. You gotta love that.

I have it set up with a large external display, so that I actually have even more screen estate than I had with the 17" iMac. And I can just unplug the machine and take my whole office with my on seconds' notice.

It is quite amazing. I can run it with a shared desktop spread out over two monitors (not just mirrored display like the iBook), or I can run with the lid closed and only use the external display. So far I am choosing the latter, it seems more elegant. So, when I want to take the machine away, I put it to sleep, and I unplug the monitor, the speakers (the tiny built-in speakers are surprisingly good, actually), and the power, and then the keyboard. Then the PowerBook seems to wake up, with the lid closed. The first time it happened, I thought "Oh no, that is not supposed to happen". But as it turned out, all the machine does is wake up for a second, look around, and observe: "Ah, no external keyboard or monitor anymore, gotta take note of that.", and then immediate go back to sleep. So when I wake it up on the road, it works just like an ordinary laptop. Brilliant. [Note: I have just been tipped off that if I unplug the power cable before I unplug the display, the machine does not do the waking-up thing. Weird, but good to know.]

And if I use both the built-in and the external display, I get two System Preferences panels for Display, I can set the settings for each display separately! And I can drag the menu bar to whichever monitor I prefer. Cool.

What you get with this machine is what Apple says: The most compact full-featured portable that can be built right now. And you get it at an amazingly reasonable price.

The built-in display is good, but not great. Perhaps it is because I am used to Apple's wonderful larger displays, but the critical angle of the portable's display bothers me a little when I am watching a DVD on it, especially when the picture is dark. It is like you can't quite put the screen at an angle so the black is equally black all over at the same time. But admittedly this is more or less nitpicking. The screen is quite good enough for most purposes, and not bad for DVD even. Just not perfect. But they had to save money somewhere to make that price happen, of course.

So what is the skinny? This: if this machine does not become the best selling portable computer on the planet, the planet does not know what is good for it. Good night, and god bless.

Yours, Eolake

- Stobblehouse